Ten on Tuesday: Things for which I am Thankful

1. My family. Whether it is my tiny little family surrounding me in Michigan (i.e. P, Zeby, and Dulce) or my parents and sister in Connecticut, I am so thankful I have them in my life. The more I talk to people the more I realize how incredibly lucky I am to have the family I do. P is a wonderful caring, loving husband who loves me unconditionally.  He waited for an unreasonable amount of time for me, and I have no idea why. But I am so thankful that I finally saw what he was offering and realized what it meant. My father is always supportive, my mom is the most patient and loving person I know, and my sister can be depended upon to put the best, most ironic twist on any bad situation so that you have to laugh.  My family has made me a resilient and whole person.

2. My health.  Not always healthy, but very practiced at healing.  My body is covered in scars; a half moon on my knee from learning how to walk, my keloids and other scars from chicken pox, and my most recent addition, a 4-inch surgery scar on the back of my ribcage. I am working on my day-to-day health by eating better, going to the gym as often as I can stand, and running from time-to-time when the mood strikes.  Every night I am reminded how lucky I am to have modern medicine. As a chronic asthmatic I am on permanent medication, and I sometimes worry about post-apocalyptic scenarios.  While other people will be breaking into pharmacies to get methadone, vicodin, or oxycontin, I will be breaking in to stock up on asthma medicine.

3. My friends. I make nice acquaintances quickly, but good friends are only seldom made.  My closest friends are spread out across the country - Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Maui, HI, NYC, NY. I miss them each terribly, and I should really tell them how much they mean to me.

4. My boss. I have always worked for women, but my current boss? Best of them all. Creatively supportive, wickedly funny, and Trouble with a capital "T".  I am often mistaken for her daughter, and when that idea is negated, customers ask if I am a relative. (If you see me with her daughters it is abundantly clear that I am not one of them.) She is a pleasure to work with, and I miss her if she takes the day off.

5. My Job. I used to work someplace else when I first moved to Michigan, and it made me miserable. The endless bureaucracy, the menial labor, the inability to be creative or think for oneself. I believed in the mission of this place, but it was soul-crushing. So I decided to look around at my local LYSs. I had actually received two job offers from two different shops.  One just didn't feel right - and I am glad that my instincts were so fine tuned - because I turned it down. The second came out of the blue, quite literally, and I was so happy to accept a few months later. My job feeds my creativity, and even in the bleak midwinter I can shelve brightly colored wool to battle the effects of a Michigan winter.

6. Knitting. Nothing has given me more comfort in hard times than being able to make things with my hands.  Knitting has given me a community when I had none. Knitting has given me something to do when my husband has had to study and work late. Knitting continues to introduce me to new people and new challenges.  Knitting has led me to both spinning and weaving - crafts that I am only beginning to understand, but enthusiastically embracing.

7. My house. The Little Yellow House (LYH) is so odd and quirky. Too-steep stairs, tiny little rooms, a cozy living room with a smokey fireplace, and the non-winterized "sunroom" with windows from ceiling to floor - the perfect height for a corgi to watch squirrels run around in the backyard. Yes, sometimes it feels like the LYH is going to fall-down around our heads, but I adore it.

8. My green Subaru. Even though I drive its replacement now, (my green Subaru is P's commuting car) I love this car.  It has protected me from two crashes.  Crash #1 was with a large deer or small elk when I lived in New Mexico. I was going 75 mph (the legal limit in NM) and the deer was between me and the sun on a sweeping turn. I didn't see it until it was on my windshield and then rolling down the side of my car.  With a little help from a State Trooper and P, I was able to pull the melted plastic liner from my wheel-well off my tire, and P drove it back to Albuquerque. That weekend P and I had traded cars. I had been driving P's soft-top Mazda Miata for several weeks while P worked in the Four Corners region. Had I been in the Mazda I probably would have been killed. Because of my glorious little green Subaru, I was shaken, but unhurt. Crash #2 happened in Cambridge, one block from my house. It was a T-bone crash with a crazy driver with a canoe on the roof of her car. She must have been texting or something, because she blew through a very dead red.  Poor Subaru - this happened on the same side of the car as the deer.

9. My garden. It is a total mess, and is often neglected, but being out in the dirt and the bugs and the worms seems to feed something in me that is just waking up.  Considering both of my parents are hardcore Gardeners, I consider these feelings a dominant gene that is just being switched on. I get overwhelmed easily, and sometimes I throw up my hands in frustration that I will ever get my gardens looking like ANYTHING. I am assuming at some point I will, because my genes tell me so.

10. My yarn stash.  Yes, it is huge.  Yes, it is sometimes a burden.  I may also have made provisions for it in my will.  But it represents untapped joy (and frustration) that only the creative process can bring.  As money has gotten tighter I have been able to rely on my stash to provide creative nourishment to me.  I am on a yarn diet until April for many reasons.  But this means that I can explore the wonderful yarn that I have squirreled away over the last (gulp!) eleven years.  I could easily go four or five years without buying yarn. But considering I often think about post-apocalyptic scenarios, a yarn diet of that duration will never happen. I need to be useful in a society that needs rebuilding. The ability to make warm clothes from start to finish can only be deemed as truly useful, right?

So there you have it, 10 things that I am thankful for today!