Gratitude

I am so grateful that I have such a thoughtful husband, who, as a post-GRE present, brought me flowers and cannoli!  Now that's true love.

Gratitude

I am so grateful for the incredible weather we had this weekend.  70s in November?  Fabulous.

I'm also grateful for those pumpkin, black bean burritos.  They are so good I am already dreaming about having another one for dinner tonight!

Gratitude

I don't suppose anyone would imagine that an event which involved waking up to the Denver Boot on your car could result in feeling anything even approximating gratitude, but here it is (be patient, I'll get there)

First of all, I can't tell you how pleasant the people at City Hall were yesterday morning.  We had fun.

Second of all, my car was booted while parked overnight (legally) in a metered spot.  The meters are on from 8:00am to 6:00pm.  I parked my car at 9:30pm Thursday night and planned to leave for work before 8:00am on Friday.  Imagine my surpise at 7:45am to see the dreaded bright yellow contraption hooked up to my front tire.

Long story short, I take the L to my downtown office and pit stop at City Hall to pay the fines.  However, I now have a dilemma.  They can't tell me when the boot will be taken off, but as soon as they do, I will have my car sitting in a metered spot!  I called my local police district to explain my dillema and they told me if it did get ticketed that I would be able to contest it.  So I work my day as usual, planning on checking the car when I get home and moving it right away if the boot is off.

Flash forward to 8:30am today and as I'm getting out of bed (I don't work today) I remember that I NEVER MOVED THE CAR!  I could have 2 new tickets on the damn thing after shelling out $437 to clear all tickets off of both my and my husband's records to having the boot removed.

So (and here's where the gratitude part comes in) I race outside to find that I have been issued no tickets.  So, I am grateful that I do not owe the City of Chicago any more money and that my car is now safely parked in a regular spot. 

However, I'm one step closer to moving to the country.

Gratitude

I am grateful for the faith my friends and loved ones have in me.  Through no fault other than my own I am suddenly taking the GRE on Monday, having not yet really studied.  The two people I spoke to about my dilemma (my running partner and my husband) both had the same reaction.  "Well, that's kind of soon but you're smart, you like tests and you'll do great."

I still panicked and had to eat a Totino's Party Pizza last night (um, emotional eating anyone?) but those few words helped to assuage my racing heart.  It feels a little bit like college, hunkering down to cram. 

Minus the numerous smoke breaks, of course.

Gratitude and contentment

I just came across this post on The Happiness Project website. 

It encapsulates a lot of what I think, but states it more eloquently than I have.  I think a lot of what is wrong with our society is how innured we become to the comforts of our situations.  We seem unable to be content for more than a few minutes at a time before we want it bigger and better. 

In our Type A, overdrive, age of immediate gratification we seem to have completely lost sight of the concept of contentment or satisfaction.  We've had it beaten into our heads that if you aren't constantly striving for something better you're a loser.  However, we seem to have only adapted this mindset when it comes to material objects and seem to forget all about it when it comes to personal betterment, our relationships or our committment to a greater good. 

It comes directly back to my own Gratitude project.  Instead of living days, weeks, years in the future which inevitably leads to dissatisfaction with the present, let's all slow down and look at where we are and what we have.  And allow ourselves a moment to breathe.  And smile. 

Gratitude

OK, I'm a but behind and not really keeping up with my "one post a day" promise, but hey, what can I say.  The weekend was incredible, too much to do, too little time to blog.

Today I am grateful for the farm and the farmer's markets.  There is nothing more satisfying than being able to purchase your produce directly from the growers.  Except, perhaps, growing your own. 

Everything tastes better than anything you could buy in a store.  We didn't do a CSA this year and instead made our way to our local farmer's market every Sunday.  Greeting the neighbors and seeing the faces of the vendors who by now look familiar and recognize us by sight. 

I discovered a farm stand out near my suburban office and purchased a pie pumpkin, spaghetti squash, onions and green tomatoes.  This stand's season ends at the end of this week.  And my local farmer's market is done for the year.  However, they will be continuing once/month through the fall and early winter at a nearby inside location. 

I have big plans for the pumkin and green tomatoes.  I'll post my recipes here soon!

A Good Year

Over the last few months I have rekindled my relationship with the library.  It arose initially out of financial concerns.  It seemed frivolous to be spending the amount of money I was on books, especially books that I wasn't sure I would enjoy, let alone love.  I've gotten the last few bookclub books either on loan from friends or from the library.

Over the last month I have been driving out to my suburban office for work.  Pretty much a 40 minute ride in the morning and an hour back in the evening.  Without tv in my home it was a great time to get my current events on with NPR and WXRT.  However, radio can get old after awhile. 

So last time I hit the library I decided to get myself an audiobook.  Now, the Logan Square library, while shiny and new, is still a little lacking in its overall selection of materials.  But I came across "A Good Year" by Peter Mayle.  The brief synopsis:  an overworked and newly fired English banker finds out his uncle has died and left him his estate in Provence.

I just started disc 4 out of 6 and can barely describe how much I'm enjoying it.  While barrelling down I-55 in the doom and gloom of impending winter, I am transported to a fantasy world of chateau, vineyards, simple country living, food and, of course, wine. 

I tend to eschew the idea of living in a fantasy world, preferring to be face to face with reality, and most often, the uglier side of that reality.  But my commute has become a magical time for me, free from the constraints of my quotidian existence.  Imagining myself, as Max, exploring the possibility of an entirely new life.  And in Provence no less.

Today it roused my memories of the time I was lucky enough to have spent in France.  A mere 10 days, but what a trip.  Paris and the Loire valley were incredible.  And it made me grateful, for it was me, myself who traveled by car from Frankfurt to Paris, stopping in the Champagne region along the way.  It is a permanent chapter in my life, my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, wandering the Rodin museum, the Louvre and my first taste of pigeon, the Hotel Diderot in Chinon and tasting wine with Catherine in her vineyard.

Life IS good. 

Gratitude

I am trying very hard to be grateful for my current lot in life and live in the present as much as possible.  I'm grateful that I have a super cool vintage condo.  I'm grateful that, like last night, my husband and I have the freedom to forgo cooking and meal planning and just head to Goose Island for a spur of the moment burger and a beer at 8:00pm.  I'm grateful for the flexibility afforded to me right now.

Gratitude

This morning I am grateful for my Neti Pot.  I know that some of you may not have heard of the neti pot.  Others of you look horrified when hearing about it.  But all I know is yesterday I felt like garbage and knew it was centered in my head.  I use the Neti Pot last night and I feel great today. 

Remind me to use it more often!

Gratitude

I am grateful for friends with whom to spontaneously spend a Sunday evening.  I am grateful for whole chickens and, I am even finding myself a little grateful for Football.  It makes a good excuse to get out on a Sunday.  But mostly, I am grateful for the friends.

Gratitude

I am grateful for my niece.  She is nuts, she does tumbling tricks and physical acts that I'm sure will get her hurt or maimed, yet she is always fine.  She loves her princesses and tells it like it is.  She give snuggles and kisses.  And she won't go to bed when her Aunt Amy and uncle J-J are babysitting, but that's ok.  I bet we all slept in this morning.

Gratitude

Ok, I wanted to post this during Friday proper, but was at a friend's house while this discussion arose and she did not have any internet connection.  So this is my Friday post although it will not show up until early Saturday morning. 

So today (Friday) I am grateful for the fact that shortly after college many of my friends married foreigners.

Not only have I learned so much about other cultures, I've also learned how to share a dinner with people with whom you can maybe only share a few words.  It has opened my mind and made me a better well rounded person to be around Germans, Basques, Mexicans, Italians, Ecuadorians, Poles etc.  It helps all of us to appreciate our current way of life while incorporating elements of the people and places we have visited.  It reminds us that the world isn't really that big and that strangers aren't really that strange. 

I am a Gemini, I thrive on the duality and mulifaceted nature of  humanity. If we were all the same I would die of boredom.

GRATITUDE

I've had kind of a rough go of it recently.  And it's been made worse by my attitude.  Especially as of late I have been a nasty, ungrateful, green-eyed (and often over-served) B**ch.

I've decided that it's time to take control of this situation (haven't the last couple of years been about empowerment?)

Here's what I'm going to do, every day, once a day between now and Thanksgiving I am going to write down something that I am grateful for.  It can be a person, an experience, a trait of my own or even a material object.  But I'm pretty sure I can come up with at least one thing every single day.  It's time to start viewing my life through rosier colored glasses. 

Feel free to share anything that YOU are grateful for.

Today, I am grateful for my fleece Columbia vest.  While it is not the most fashionable, and I have a tendency to wear it over my work clothes in the office, it provides a sense of security as the days get darker and colder.  It makes me feel warm and fuzzy.  And I'm wearing it right now.