Gratitude Friday

image by eric

1. Eric: He gets out more than me lately, takes more pictures. This one has a funny story behind it. When Eric left our house, the sky was the brightest red and he knew it would only last for about 10 minutes, so he ran as fast as he could to the park to try and get a good picture of it, but by the time he and Sam got to the first open field, it had faded to pink. Still a pretty amazing sky, picture if you ask me. Oh, and he also bought me flowers yesterday, not for Valentine’s Day but for being me, for being a good mom to our dogs.

2. Love. Deep and enduring, unshakable. “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.” ~Robert Fulghum

3. Being a writer. I love it so much. When I’m not writing as much (like recently), the words build up inside of me, my fingers itch and my heart aches, and in my dreams, I’m always writing.

4. My interns at CSU. It’s all the good things about teaching, working with students, without any of the grading or other tedious nonsense.

5. Retirement. I hadn’t had access to my account balance for awhile, set it up to only receive e-documents and then could never figure out how to get into my account. When I finally did, I was so happy to see the amount, so grateful for it.

Bonus Joy: The trainer who stayed after puppy class answering all my questions. All of my dogs have been hard puppies, and a full Blue Heeler is a whole other level of hard. I also seem to have total amnesia when it comes to how this whole puppy thing works, how long it takes for the uber puppy constant attention to be over.

Bonus, Bonus Joy: Sam. How lazy he is in the morning, how content being walked, fed, and loved. How well he’s made this transition, even though he’s not completely well. How he shifted so easily to not being crated when we aren’t home, mostly just hangs out on the couch and sleeps — we know this because we’ve videoed him a few times to be sure. How good he is playing with Ringo, even though we have to limit how much he does.

image by eric

1. Snow, the quiet and the white, the way it covers the back yard so Ringo doesn’t get into so much stuff that he shouldn’t, and snow tires so we can still get around in it.

2. Help for Sam. Our neurologist is going to share videos of his “thing” with her teacher, see if he can think of something we haven’t, and then we will be getting an MRI, to make sure we aren’t missing something. I can live with not knowing what it is if what we are doing is helping him and he’s stable, but he’s been getting worse, so it’s time to dig a little deeper. Keep him, and us, in your prayers, kind and gentle reader.

image by Eric

3. Sam and Ringo. I hadn’t realized how well they were actually getting along until I saw the contrast of Ringo with a group of new dogs at his first puppy class. Even though he wasn’t scared of things like the skateboard — we were warned to put our foot by the wheels because if it moved right away, it might spook our puppy, but instead Ringo immediately hopped on and tried to figure out how to ride it — he was too afraid to play with any of the other dogs. Not so with Sam.

4. Watching TV. I don’t get to do this much, and it’s been so relaxing when I do. An hour on the couch watching Downton Abbey calms me right down, seems like such a luxury.

5. Eric, having his support and companionship. Having someone who can run with Sam when it’s -11 degrees out.

Bonus Joy: Puppy class. Ringo most likely will need to go twice a week for a bit, just to get him used to being around strange dogs. It’s one of the only places he can go right now since he hasn’t had all his shots, and it’s a nice break from our routine.