Skip to main content

Ten Things of Thankful: Sometimes Exciting, Sometimes Boring, Always Thankful

Photo: The Colosseum in Rome, Italy 


I teach the 10-year-olds at church. Our class meets while the younger kids are meeting together for singing time. When our class time is over, we go to singing time and the younger children have class time. Today, as my class was leaving the room and the little kids were coming in, one of the boys announced, "It smells like vacation in here!" Apparently I still smell like Italy. 😄


Sometimes, I have exciting posts to share, like the posts about vacation. Other times, like this week, my life seems rather dull. However, there is always something to be thankful for, so let's jump right into this week's Ten Things of Thankful:

1. I am SO thankful I wasn't sick while I was on vacation. I know some in our group were not feeling well, and each day that I continue to cough and just generally feel run-down, I feel badly that some people felt this way while on vacation. 

2. I am also thankful that I'm not chronically sick. So many people battle chronic problems. This is nothing like that. 

3. I'm thankful I am (I assume) on the mend. No fever=feeling better.

3. I'm thankful that I don't really have many demands on my time at this stage of life. I can take it easy without disrupting others too much. (Although John has been heating up cans of soup more often than usual!)

4. I'm thankful that there are ways to be productive even while not feeling great: I've started on the taxes, did the budget, and tackled the email inbox.

5. I'm thankful for online shopping. What did I do before Amazon? This week I tried to cook something in my electric pressure cooker, but the pressure wasn't building up. I realized that I was missing a tiny little silicone part. I have no idea where I could find that piece in a brick-and-mortar store, but I could find it in about 2 minutes online. Two days later, I received the part. 

6. Similarly, I'm thankful online search engines. When I noticed some water on our laundry room floor, I could quickly find possible problems and solutions. The next load of laundry will let me know if the problem is fixed. 

7. I'm thankful for being able to see deer on the ridge, quail in the street, and snow-covered peaks across the lake. John has mentioned more than once that living here feels like being on vacation, and some of that calm feeling comes from the lovely views.

8. I'm thankful for good books. I've said before that I sometimes have a hard time sitting down to read for fun, because I think I should be doing something else instead. Being a bit under the weather has removed about 90% of my motivation to do anything, so I'm finding it much easier to just cozy up with a book.  

9. I'm thankful for a comfortable bed, soft Kleenex, cold medication, hot soup, and those wonderful frozen mango fruit bars.

10. I'm thankful for John. This week was Valentine's Day. Any other year, we would go out to dinner to celebrate. That did not sound fun at all this week. We heated up another can of soup and fell asleep watching a boring movie on TV.  It was a perfect date. 

Was your week boring or exciting? More importantly, what are you thankful for this week? 


Inlinkz Link Party

Comments

  1. Trust you will feel better. (The winter has always struck me as a better time to not feel well. But then, not being a fan of temperatures below 74 that kinda figures.)
    Excellent photo at the top of the post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I'm sure I'll feel better. (I already feel better than I did, but I am definitely looking forward to 100% better!)
      Thanks. I need to hurry and write more vacation posts before I forget the significance of the photos I took!

      Delete
  2. It is nice, when we do end up sick, to have someone we love to tend to us. Hope you are better soon, and that the scent of Italy clings to your memory and brings you joy for a long time to come.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah, yes, the scent of Italy will linger for a long time, I'm sure!

      Delete
  3. Better sick when back from vacation than during. Yes, perfect excuse to indulge in reading while on the mend :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just started a new book for next month's book club meeting: A Girl Named Zippy. It's a quick, entertaining look at life in a small-town in the 60's and 70's.

      Delete
  4. I'm thankful you aren't chronically ill too, and you are on the mend...awesome.
    wendy from picnicwithants.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have friends with chronic illnesses who seldom complain, but I know it's got to be infinitely more burdensome than my stupid cough.

      Delete
  5. "It smells like vacation" cracked me up. Maybe you can market that smell.
    I saw a whole family of quail along the road yesterday. I would have taken a photo, but it was an extremely dangerous place to stop, right after a really sharp curve, and no place to pull over. :-(
    All things considering, it sounds like a perfect Valentine's Day celebration. Hope you will be feeling a lot better soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Time seemed to stand still for the adults, as we waited to see just how he thought the room smelled. "Like vacation" was perfect!

      Delete
  6. Sending healing thoughts. Happy you were well during vacation.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Conversations are so much nicer when more than one person does the talking. :-) Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts; I'd love to hear from you!

Popular posts from this blog

Ten Things of Thankful: Live from Oregon, part 2

stock photo of old computer monitor When I was 10 or 11, I remember sitting next to my dad in our living room and reading computer code to him as he entered it into an Apple computer. We would finish the exercise and he would hit enter (or was it "run"?) and wait expectantly for the green type to appear on the screen. If we were lucky, the whole conversation would occur. Most often, there would be an error either in my dictation of the code, or in the typing of the code. We would then go painstakingly back through the lines, character by character, to find and correct the error. After what seemed like hours (and might have been), we would succeed and the computer would finally run the entire program. It was magical! My dad designed and built an earth-sheltered, passive solar home decades before solar panels were commonplace. He also was on a 9-month waiting list for a Prius, when hybrids were not seen on every street.  While my dad is definitely on the cutting edge of technol...

Monday Mentions: Equate Crutches

Have you ever needed crutches? I hadn't, until a week ago.  I'm pretty sure I strained a muscle while running a half-marathon.  (That sounds kind of cool, doesn't it? I'm not actually that cool; the last time I strained a muscle it was from carrying too many shopping bags at once.) In any case, I found myself in need of some crutches. I sent my husband to the store to get some. Photo: A pair of crutches leans against a wall  Not that crutches are all that complex, but because I hadn't used any before, I wondered if I could figure out how to adjust them to fit me properly. I shouldn't have worried. John came home from Walmart with their generic store brand of crutches, complete with instructions. First, I needed to take out a long bolt that went through the hand grip. Then I needed to find my height range, push down two metal pieces, and slide the crutches until the little metal pieces came up in the hole near my height range. (Having two people for this...

What a Wonderful World! (An #AtoZChallenge Post): Z is for Zion National Park

  Visitor Center sign in Zion National Park My husband recently re-retired, and we are front-loading travel. My #AtoZChallenge posts this year will explore our adventures--some pre-retirement, some post. Today's location: Zion National Park in Utah.  Zion is a bit of a shibboleth. People from outside of Utah (or those who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) tend to pronounce Zion as "ZIE-on." Locals (or tourists who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) use more of a schwa sound, pronouncing Zion to rhyme with lion. However you choose to pronounce it, it is an amazing, beautiful national park and has some amazing hikes. The last time my husband and I visited Zion National Park, we entered from the east, and traveled through the mile-long Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel. It is an engineering marvel, completed in the 1920s. Before we passed through the tunnel, though, we spotted a group of bighorn sheep, including some babies...