Time for a Stretch

Thank you Viv for this award!

In return, I am charged with being grateful.

Wow.

Isn't that kind of antithetical to all the bitching and complaining I usually do?

Only some of it ends up on this blog, but the rest of my dissatisfaction with life is strewn liberally across my kitchen, where I spend so much of my time, and I'll have a job clearing it all to the side to find those gems of gratitude buried around here somewhere.

It is a well documented truth that the only motivation strong enough to make me clean my house is the threat of visitors. Now it seems the same is true of my head and heart: the only thing motivating me to clean them up today is the prospect of visitors to this blog. That plus the gauntlet thrown down by this Happy 101 Award.

So, thanks to Viv, I will now search my head and heart to find 10 things that I am grateful for, that make me happy. (I considered using spots 1-5 for each of my five kids. But that's a little bit of cheating right there, plus, they're driving me nuts, so it wouldn't have been incredibly heart felt. They are up too early, and they are clamoring for food, wii-time, and valentines print outs. The three little ones are giving me approximately -1 centimeter of space in which to move. Why is that the under 10 set does not understand the concept of personal space? Or perhaps they understand but do not care?)

OK, back to the task at hand. S-T-R-E-E-E-E-E-E-T-C-H!

1. I am grateful for my parents. They are really wonderful to my children and very supportive to Rick and me. They host sleepovers, take the kids to movies, do art with them, ride bicycles with them (bicycles they purchased!), and come to their sporting events. Plus, every year on my birthday, they renew my subscription to The New Yorker. Which is good because I spend so much time doing mind-numbingly mundane tasks that without a little high-brow content to read, I think my brain would have been mush a long, long time ago. Thanks for keeping me smart, mom and dad!

2. I am grateful for the very wide circle of friends Rick and I have. We have been showered with so many kindnesses, so much generosity, and so much plain old love, that no matter how stressful and difficult things may get while raising five children and working multiple jobs, I am forced to recognize that life is good, the world is full of beauty, and that people are truly wonderful. We are blessed.

3. I am grateful to the writers and actors of the show Friday Night Lights. They make me happy, after they rip my heart out with their story lines. What a great show.

4. I am grateful to the writer of the blog pantrymd.com. Check her out. She gave me the idea for kale chips, which my kids actually fight over. Kale. They can't get enough. That makes me incredibly happy, and gives me hope that these kids might just turn out to be successful, happy adults.

5. Coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

6. I am grateful for the internet, just like Viv, because it connects me to so many people and interesting ideas, and because I love to blog. Stay-at-home-parenting can be so isolating. The internet gives us that white picket fence of yesteryear -- a place to lean and chat with neighbors. (Thank you to my friend Gabriele for that image!)

7. I am grateful for the jobs Rick and I have. Work is a good thing, especially given that we are both self-employed.

8. I am grateful for hot showers, and I don't get nearly enough of them.

9. I am grateful for sour dough french bread.

10. I am grateful to Viv, for giving me this exercise to do. My mind and heart really needed the workout.

As for the passing it on part. Funny, I always enjoy getting these awards and the invitations to write about something, but I am entirely uncomfortable with sending them. So I guess I will instead invite everyone to consider what makes them happy and do a little posty-posting about it. Take the Happy 101 image from the top of this post, and join the party.

* * *