100 Gratitudes: A New Year's Project

Helllooooooooo!!! Hi, I'm back. Remember me? So, lots has happened since I last checked in and there is lots to write about, but most of it is along the lines of your average daily life stuff, so there is no pressing hurry to fill you in. Instead, I want to do a little exercise I was given by the lovely Ms. Mulvaney over at Persisting Stars. I am to write down 100 things I am grateful for. Simple right? Actually yes. The list is writing itself faster than my hand can follow. I have been writing it in a lovely blank book, but it occurs to me that shouting your gratitude to the world for all to hear (or in this case, read) is an easy way to spread a little joy around, and maybe get some of you all to think about everything you are grateful for in your own lives. I will post one or two a day until I have worked my way down my list. I am already discovering that 100 is an absurdly small number.

So, here we go, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER (lest anyone/thing get offended;):

#1)

My husband. My funny, loving, handsome partner in crime. I am deeply grateful to have married someone with whom I am so compatible. I am so lucky to have met him. I have loved other people and met many other people I could love, but he is my choice, and I am his. The fact that we don't take our luck for granted is a big part of what makes us feel so grateful. We are easy together. We can be ourselves. We know that there were and are other people we could be with. In a way, that is what makes our marriage so special. We choose it, over and over again. Yes we drive each-other bat-shit crazy sometimes, but honestly, we get along absurdly well. We are only 14 years into this thing, so who knows what the future holds, but for now and forever, I am so grateful that I get get to be with him while I can. Here is a picture from our wedding, almost 10 years ago. (Yikes! that went fast)

#2)

This boy:

Oh my, what did I do deserve being this child's mother? How on earth could anyone be so lucky! Sweet, smart, loving, funny and cuddly. Kai is sensitive and reckless, caring and wild, loving and tough. He is both easy and impossible to parent and has the dubious privilege of being the oldest, thereby bearing the brunt of all my parenting mistakes. This he does with a kind of grace and forgiveness I can only hope to emulate. He is a prince among boys with a heart big enough to encircle the world.