Thankful Thursday | Yup. Still thankful for the weather.
New here? Each week, we all practice the free art of hunting for things to be grateful for.
This week, I am thankful:
for the rain that washed some of the pollen away
The oak flowers have pretty much all fallen, and we've gotten a little rain to help wash the yellow dust away. Excellent.
for the lovely weather last night
Generally speaking, every time I plan to grill, I end up getting rained on.
But last night, the weather was perfectly, fantastically gorgeous: breezy, sunny, and in the low 70s.
It was heavenly grilling weather.
that I am DONE with my biology labs
I have one more week of lecture and then a week with two exams, but my lab work is 100% done for the semester.
This makes me happy because now I can focus on studying for our cumulative exam.
(cumulative = yikes)
that I only have two more lectures to get through
I think I've mentioned before that my bio professor is the sort that just reads through slides in a monotone. He seems like a nice enough person, but his method makes for extremely boring lectures.
Two more, and I'm done!
that I get to take Anatomy and Physiology next
Biology has been interesting and I have learned so much, but a course entirely focused on the human body is going to be much more fascinating, I think.
I'm taking the summer off, though; no more classes until the fall.
for the not-too-hot, not-too-cold spring weather
Can I be thankful for the weather again?
(This is going to be a regular occurrence all spring long, I think.)
Spring always feels too short, but I think it is the time of year with the most perfect weather.
that the bugs aren't here in full force yet
I really appreciate the pre-mosquito season.
for the delight of clear, sunny mornings
Even when it's cold out in January, I just love a sparkling morning.
And I love mornings in general. They just feel so fresh, cheerful, and hopeful to me.
that a family friend just got his second shot
We haven't seen him for over a year, but plans will be made soon!
that my face is feeling better
I had what seemed like some type of allergic reaction all over the lower half of my face and my jawline, which I have never had before. I hadn't changed anything about my routine, so I wonder if it was maybe a reaction to the high pollen levels.
At any rate, it's gone now and my skin is happy again. Whew.
that it is possible to feel joy even when life isn't perfect
No one's life is always going perfectly on every front, right? So I've been thinking about what a mercy it is that we humans are capable of feeling joy and gratefulness when things are not perfect.
Otherwise, we would be doomed to a miserable life in this broken world, where things go wrong all the time.
Even in the brokenness, there is always something to find joy in.
that the mum from my aunt came back this spring
You may remember that my aunt brought me a chrysanthemum from her yard in South Dakota last fall, because she wanted me to have one that survives winter weather.
And I am happy to say that it has come alive this spring!
for my new bathroom mirror
For my birthday, Mr. FG got me a really big mirror with a defogger and a built-in light (kind of like a ring light, but rectangular).
My dad installed a new recessed light in the bathroom too, so between the mirror light and the new overhead light, it's so lovely and bright in the bathroom.
I feel like I'm in a hotel every day now!
I'm thankful for...
1. This academic semester is coming to an end. I work at a university, and we always need the summer break to accomplish projects and have just a bit of quiet from the students.
2. Was able to convince my mother that she needs walking sticks. She and my father could use the support of a cane or walker, but they refuse. So I showed them hiking sticks and the "walking" versions with flat bottoms. They are actually in agreement.
3. My first ever dermatologist body scan came back clear. I have melanoma in my family history and it was nice to be in the clear. She also said I had nice skin for 41!
4. camping season is right around the corner. We are super jealous each time a camper passes us. The kids and I just want "to go." Memorial Day will be here before we know it!
5. Ebay is providing funds to help me save for upcoming vacations.
Beautiful weather.
Birdsong.
That this week is almost over!
aged cheddar
Good friends.
cellphones that record and programs that recognize speech--not sure I could have been a journalist back in the days of shorthand and little notebooks!
Thankful for my parents and in-laws who can provide some childcare while our daycare is closed temporarily due to the pandemic.
This week....
1. So thankful that we leave for a week on the beach on Saturday!!!
2. For the Spring rain that we received this week as it washed away a good bit of the pollen and that has helped my allergies tremendously.
3. For the fact that said Spring rain did not result in tornadoes in our area.
4. For a lovely conference that I was able to attend for women at my church which was so healing and truly like a lovely fresh drink of water after such a long time away.
5. For all the lovely seedlings that are germinating in the garden right now. It is such a gift to be able to look out and see things growing no matter what is going on in the world.
Be blessed everyone.
Love the weather too! I'm thankful for the gift of gardening. I'm more of a pioneer, not a settler, so I have to find hobbies that enable me to constantly try new things and learn and forge new paths, or it's a waste of time and money. Gardening and baking give me lots of pioneering room. So I'm guess, more broadly, I'm thankful for useful, life-giving, mind-absorbing, wholesome activities. I'm thankful for early mornings with a good cup of coffee and the Word of God before my young children are up. I'm thankful for nutritious food. I'm thankful for a mother-in-law that loves on my kids and cleans my bathrooms once a week so I can run errands or go on a date with my husband.
Ooh, I love the idea of the pioneer-settler divide. Food for thought!
God bless your mother-in-law. When my children were young, my mother would clean out my refrigerator when she would come for a visit. I was beyond grateful.
This week
1) Our son is officially a college graduate!
2) For mild temperatures and sunshine
3) That major storms this week did not produce tornadoes or flooding in our area
4) The replacement of our flooring is starting this week. They are packing up everything in a POD today and work on the floor starts tomorrow.
5) That my annual performance review went well and I got a raise
Anatomy and physiology is fun! I went to tech school in the late 1990s for a couple of semesters to get up to speed on Windows software and talked the the administration into letting me take A&P along with business tech because it looked so much more enjoyable. A nice side effect of studying it is I know exactly what they're talking about on TV medical dramas. 🙂
I am also thankful for the rain for the same reason. Thankful the semester is over (I work at a university) and the students are going home, which means there's been excellent trash picking! Yesterday I scored throw pillows for our office sofa and a shower curtain to donate to Goodwill, all in perfect condition. Thankful that our youngest rescue dog, who is four and half now, has become such a good and trusting girl after a rough start in life.
I’m thankful that the fox kits are now big enough to be out and about where I can enjoy their fluffy shenanigans. There’s a den right along my hiking path, and I’m enough of a fixture that neither the parents, nor the babies are concerned if I sit to watch them from 20-30 feet away. It’s a beautiful way to begin the day.
This sounds wonderful!!!!
Funny but we took a weekend getaway recently and my only complaint about our accommodations was that the bathroom was SO DARK! Our bathroom at home has decent lighting, so the hotel was not an upgrade in that respect!
We were nevertheless grateful to be able to get away, but as always, we were grateful to get home again to our cat, our well-lit bathroom, superior showerhead, and nothing beats sleeping in our own bed with our own pillows!
Thank you for this wonderful message. It is truly a blessing that it is possible to still feel joy when life isn’t perfect. I have had the most trying week, but there were still happy moments.
It has been really, really hot where I live in Florida - in the mid-90s. It is just too early for this, but yesterday the rain finally came to cool things off. Instead of running indoors, I stayed outside for a few minutes. I was soaked, but the rain made me happy. Better yet, I was finally cool. I felt like this was the most spectacular gift.
I am also thankful that I was in the Trader Joe’s parking lot when I discovered damage to my front tire. I was able to call my sister to rescue me, and my husband was able to go up later to change my tire.it would have been terrible to be by the side of the road.
I am so thankful for my sister and husband. My life is so much better having them in it.
I am thankful that when my battery went dead a few days later it was still under warranty.
I feel so blessed to live where I do. Florida has grown by leaps and bounds. Sadly, paradise was found and they put up a parking lot. Yet, my neighborhood has always be a refuge from the chaos. This morning, when walking rescue pup, I saw a barred owl, 3 pileated woodpeckers, a family of ducks with ducklings, a pair of eastern bluebirds, cardinals, egrets, a great gray heron, a bunny and otters in the lagoon. It was lovely.
Could we see pictures of your new bathroom mirror and light?
Good weather is always worth being thankful for!
1. Like Bee, we on the Gulf Coast side have also been overly hot, so last night's rain was indeed something to be thankful for.
2. I'm also thankful that we had just lovely rain, not damaging storms.
3. I'm thankful for my grown kids who are helping me wrangle doctors, rehab staff and yes, also their dad, to try to get him the best care possible.
4. I'm thankful for other family who check in regularly with me and my husband.
5. I'm thankful that my teenaged granddaughter didn't get hurt when the klutzy half-grown labrador retriever jumped off the couch and hit and shattered the glass topped coffee table, cutting his paw and needing stitches. She was home alone doing virtual school when it happened. He's been stitched up, and she, bless her heart, cleaned up a ton of glass and dog blood splattered everywhere, including all over her.
I am thankful for this weekly exercise.
I am grateful that now that I am fully vaccinated I feel safe doing more things, like having a friend in the house, waiting while my vehicle receives services, walking mask-less with friends. I am so grateful for the development and production of the vaccines, the government buying and deploying them, and all the people involved in the administration. Lots of wonderful people at so many levels.
I am thankful for the extended spring weather. Last week we used heat, A/C, heat. This week it looks like we will use A/C and heat. Overall the days have been wonderful.
I am grateful that despite all the strong winds we had last week we only experienced a couple very short power outages and a few small branches down.
I am thankful for the abundance that is once again available in the stores. I am nearing the end of my last tube of toothpaste yet I just today worked on procuring another tube. This time last year things were different.
I am grateful for the beautiful azaleas and flowering trees that are such common sights right now.
I am thankful that we have a lawn guy that mows, edges, and trims. He comes about once a week and it saves us so much time. He is worth every penny and he is a really nice guy.
I am grateful that the stye on my eyelid is gone. Not only was it annoying but hot compresses on older eye area skin makes the skin red for many hours afterwards. I am not much for vanity but this looked pretty bad.
I am thankful that it is time to go walk/talk with a couple freinds.
Thanks for posting this & reminding us to look for the good.
I'm grateful for:
-Beautiful spring weather. Not too hot, not too cold. Like Goldilocks, it's currently "just right". 🙂
-The end is in sight for the school year. I have one child who struggled a lot with remote learning, and I'm very happy the year is almost done. He is currently (mostly) in person, but it's hard to recover grades from 2/3 online throughout the year.
-That I'm double vaccinated, and able to do some short trips to take care of family things that need to happen.
- I was able to spend time with my sister & BFF last weekend. We combined a girls trip with a "clean out our vacation house" trip. Weeding, painting, cleaning, decluttering, trips to donate, and still we had so much fun. In between that, we played cards, drank wine by the fire pit, and had all of the laughs.
-I've built a plan for paying off our (very expensive) Bay Area house. It's looking promising for having it paid off in about a year, and I'm thrilled, thrilled, thrilled by this turn of events. It gives us a tremendous amount of financial flexibility & life flexibility.
Thankful Thursday here is definitely a time of dealing with brokenness--not only because of DH's continuing decline, but because one of our good neighbors died Saturday night after a year-long struggle with metastatic cancer. However:
I'm thankful that although I can't do much else for our neighbor's wife under my current constraints, I can put my writing skills to good use by writing an obituary--which I'll be doing as soon as she gives me her notes of what she wants said. And since she shares my slightly warped sense of humor, I told her this: "Folks are definitely better off with my obituaries than my casseroles."
I'm thankful that we've had a slight break in our series of cold rainy days, so that DH and I have been able to get out for a couple of walks and chat to other neighbors.
I'm thankful that DH's geriatrician and I seem to have hit on a medication regimen that is enabling him (and thus me) to get a passable night's sleep more than 50% of the time.
As always, I'm thankful for DH's team of home care aides. These wonderful women know more about dementia care than I ever will, and I've been gratefully following their advice about nitty-gritty details like toileting. (We haven't actually reached Incontinence: The Final Frontier yet, but we're getting close.)
Finally, as comic and musical relief, I'm thankful for having stumbled onto a really good "semi-staged" version of The Sound of Music on YouTube. This one was performed at the Hollywood Bowl in 2006 with John Mauceri as musical conductor. IMHO, Melissa Errico is the best Maria I've ever seen (Julie Andrews included), and John Schneider (yes, the same John Schneider who was Bo Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard?!) does a very respectable job as the Captain. And the actress playing Elsa is a proper villainess. I must confess that when I watched the Carrie Underwood version on TV, I was actively rooting for that Elsa to get the Captain back.
I'm so sorry about your neighbor A. Marie! How sweet of you to write an obituary for the wife.
That Sound of Music version sounds like something I need to check out (although it would take a lot for me to like a Maria other than Julie Andrews).
In the midst of your own struggles, you have found a way to reach out to your neighbor. What a big heart you have!
Here's the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDvM3HPJQM
I love the attitude you take with your struggles! And I am so happy that you and your husband are getting better sleep. That makes everything so much easier.
I’m sorry for the loss of your dear neighbor. I think it’s lovely that you are writing his obituary. Your love, humor and positive energy comes through in every word you write.
1. I found an old gift card to a local nursery, given to me after a presentation I did for an agency. I promptly bought three roses. They only overwinter if I bring them in and store them in a cool part of the garage, and even then it is iffy so I have given up on roses. But this was a $150 certificate so felt like free money and I bought three roses in pots ($45 each!), plus a chocolate mint. The roses will bring me a lot of pleasure, even if I fail yet again at overwintering them.
2. My dinnerplate dahlias have survived the winter in the garage and are shooting up under lights, waiting for June to be planted outdoors. I am so looking forward to bouquets of roses and dahlias in July!
3. Won a local contest for a gift certificate to a small bakery. $10 of treats in our future.
4. One of my favorite authors just had a new book come out and our library is getting it and I am first on the list for checking it out when they finish processing it.
5. My husband sings in a barbershop group. Every single man has gotten both vaccines so they can go back to regular practicing (they still wear masks, ones made special for singing. They have wife frames so extend far out from the lips and cheeks. They are all in their 50s through 90s and when they mask up as a group they look like a bunch of aging platypuses). My husband sorely missed singing so this makes him happy, which makes me happy.
wire, not wife frames!!
Aww, I would love to hear them sing!
Those masks always make me giggle! I bet they're much easier to breathe/sing in though. That's great they found a way to keep singing!
Lindsey: I cannot now un-see "a bunch of aging platypuses." Careful with the similes there, my friend!
And I wish you warmer weather and the best of luck with the roses and dahlias.
I'm thankful for lots this week but something not listed in my post is I'm thankful for being close to my inlaws home so we can do laundry!
Thankful for the folks at my son's school who pulled off an Honors Banquet this past Sunday--not an easy task, what with all the restrictions, but I am so impressed that they found a way to make it lovely. Also, for my husband and kids who all created their own homemade gifts for my birthday--I always feel like there is a little extra "heart" that goes into a homemade gift. For good weather yesterday so we could hike off the delicious but heavy Mexican take-out meal we had. For birthday cards--I know it seems silly, but I love getting them. For my boss who continually is kind and helpful and supportive.
- I'm also thankful for the weather. I love living in a hot climate (I'd choose too hot over long cold winters). I'm also thankful last night and this morning was a little cooler.
- Just found out the way we had hoped to ship this year's school books will indeed work out, after a scare that it might not.
- Good health of all our family members at the moment.
-Peace and joy from having God as my Father.
Very thankful today for the incredible staff at our school. Our girl's basketball team made it to the state championship. They won their qualifying game on Tuesday and in one day the staff arranged a field trip for almost the entire student body (2nd grade and up--so about 30 kids) to drive on the activity bus three hours to the championship game today. The district paid for their tickets, lunch, and a snack on the way home, and the kids were SO EXCITED. There hasn't been a lot of this kind of fun stuff in the last year, so I especially appreciate the school's willingness to deal with the logistics of this for all the students to do it.
Been a crazy week, but my inlaws have decided to move here (to Florida, the Villages, specifically), so we will have both sets of parents less than an hour away by the end of summer! I'm pretty excited, I am good friends with my mil and it will be great to have her so close (Wyoming is VERY far from Florida)
We have signed a contract for a new roof, NOT cheap, won't be putting this on "Five Frugal Things," but I am thankful that we can afford it and it will stop the small leak. Roofs are particularly important here in Florida!
A friend that I have had a LONG time. We started homeschooling together in 1997 and now we chat (long distance) about taking care of aging parents. SO nice to have a kindred spirit, God is so kind.
Buffalo Games Charles Wysocki 1000 piece puzzles. I pretty much always have one going..and they are only $2 at our Friends of the Library Store, surprisingly, they always have all the pieces and some times people have divided out the edge pieces! 😉
New podcasts that I have found.
SCRIBD, so I can read or listen to books that I don't care to own or store.
I feel you on the allergy situation, I don’t have seasonal allergies but I developed an anaphylactic allergy to nuts in my late 20s, and stopped being able to tolerate dairy at 38. Apparently most food allergies are adult onset. Maybe look at the big 8 for that allergic reaction.
I am glad that the pollen has beeb washed away.
Here, in subtorpical Australia, autumn has begun.I am enjoying the cooler weather. Sleeping without the air conditioner is wonderful.
I am enjoying my granddaughter more and more and am happily waiting for another granddaughter. My daughter is battling the family odds and is doing brilliantly. I am so thankful that she has had no signs of preeclampsia, hyperemesis or early labour. The baby is stringiest and kicking her mother a lot.
Due to an egg allergy I have never had a flu injection. Finally there is one I can have. The doctors and nurses at my surgery paid great attention to the vaccine. I have had some reaction but I do hope that I don't get the flu this year. Bonus.
Hugs, kisses and tickle cuddles for someone I mentioned earlier.
A laugh...on Wednesday I was reading to the three year old. My mother came up and curled up with her. The little one stayed awake and her great granny fell fast asleep.
I am thankful that I was able to book a free hotel night in LA for the night we fly back home. It's actually within walking distance of the airport, which is great, and it will be nice not to spend 16 hours at the airport. I also signed up for another mystery shop at a wonderful restaurant here in Hong Kong, which means we'll get a free steak dinner next week. AND, my husband and I are wanting to take a little time off when we move back to the US this summer, so I wasn't really looking for work yet, but I saw a advertisement for a camp nurse for just 2 weeks and the pay was crazy good, so I decided to go for it---and I got the job! With the money I will make from that one job, I will feel much better about taking a few months off. Yeah!! TGIF!
Thankful for...
* Medication
* A nest of Robins in my backyard, with 3 little ones in there
* Frozen meals for lunches
* Not having to work nights and weekends
* Not having to work full-time
* My husband and kids
* Having curly hairs (and getting a much needed haircut tommorow!)
Thankful for-
My dad hospice workers are really really nice. Very helpful indeed. He isn't terminal, just old.
He qualifies for an additional 4 hours of respite without any cost. This will be helpful when my sister has to run errands (or have a life).
My boss is the kindest hearted person & so easy to get along with.
My puppers mouth is starting to heal after his molar removals 3 weeks ago. One in particular was giving him problems.
That I was able to go 2.5 weeks without shopping other than fruit n veggies and I only went to find some decaf tea. 3 stores later I found some.