Is this a late post for Wednesday's Long & Short Reviews link-up or an early post for Thursday's Ten Things of Thankful link-up? Hmmm...since the prompts are so similar and I'm typing this in the middle of the night between Wednesday and Thursday, why not both?
This will be a short post because I think the list is mostly self-explanatory...
1. Our mostly mild weather
(Meteorologists explain most of the vagaries of our admittedly unpredictable, usually inconvenient, weather as the Edges of even worse weather taking place somewhere else. At least that seems more scientific than the Theory of Maximum Inconvenience. Either system seems about equally effective at predicting the weather. Virginia weather almost never kills anybody--it just gives most of us something to complain about on any given day.
Some ways people might feel moved to give thanks for our mostly mild weather...
2. My awesome celiac genes
Frankly I've not been feeling very good or very thankful today. I dozed off on the screen porch in front of the laptop last night. Serena was with me--she's been doing some sort of love-bombing I have yet to figure out. Having waited patiently for five hours, and watched the sun come up and put the end to prime mouse-hunting time, she planted a paw on my midsection. "Owwwch. Stop that," I said. Serena stopped that immediately, put another paw between two ribs, then another paw, and then leaned over me and licked my face. I had been aware of a reaction to New Roundup on Monday and Tuesday, which was causing the midsection to feel as if it were bruised on the inside, but on Wednesday morning the hypersensitivity had spread beyond the midsection. Serena weighed on my ribs like a ton of bricks. "Oh right, I'll get up now," I said. Sitting up hurt. Serena, who reacts to the current version of Roundup with something like hayfever, sneezed on my face in the most sympathetic and affectionate way. "Go out! Go home!" I growled, holding the door open. Serena obligingly did. I went back to sleep. I did, eventually, go home and break out the cat food, but not on what most cats consider a cat-friendly schedule.
Serena, when she was about one-third of her present size, taking over her mother's Safe Place with very much the same attitude she took while sitting on me.
I have been through a lot of unnecessary pain, caused by other people's greed and stupidity, during the past fifteen years.
I am still, most of the time, a healthy person.
I'm not worried about COVID.
I'm not afraid to plan to work--even to do physical labor.
I'm still a person who gets asked to spend time with people who may not be as old as I am, but feel less strong and healthy than I do.
I still see the first snow of winter coming down and think "I have to be out in it." As distinct from "Oh ouch my arthritic toe," or "I dread the cold," or "I could fall and break a hip." I still think falling down into deep snow is fun.
I remember a time when it seemed that all sixty-year-old women looked alike (dumpy figures, hair cut short and artificially reshaped and re-colored every week, dowdy polyester suits, glasses) and none of them ever did anything that looked as if it might have been fun...I don't look like that, nor do I live like that, and I'm thankful. I'm not part of the new wave of sixty-year-old women who spend most of their salaries trying to look like the 25-year-old surfer chicks of our youth, either, but at least I can see a way through middle age without becoming one of what a college classmate called the "Friday afternoon beauty parlor pin hags."
I'm not related to Sydney Sweeney and don't look as if I were, but I do have good survivor genes.
3. The Resident Cats
It's possible that Serena's love-bombing has something to do with Silver's having come home, after she'd disappeared for eight months and I'd been sure she had either been petnapped or died. (Silver is Serena's daughter; they are social cats.) Serena could leave the house in Silver's care now? Maybe.
4. The Computers
Writing for the Internet may never make me rich, but it's certainly more fun than a lot of other jobs that would never have made me rich, either.
5. The Blog Roll
That was a previous year's Thanksgiving post. No repetition allowed. More about the Blog Roll blogs on more Thursdays. Let's just say I am very thankful for the worldwide community of little old ladies who like cats, books, old songs, the children in our lives, flowers, and also politics, law, science, engineering, and computers.
6. US Senator Tim Kaine
For having the fortitude to do the right thing, even if he is a lifelong Democrat and has loyalties within the party of the "Use the Poor People's Distress to Manipulate the Majority" Stubborn Jackasses. Senator Kaine voted to end the government shutdown and resume funding for most, if not all, of the handouts on which too many of our fellow Virginians are too dependent. I'm thankful that, if we must have two D's in the Senate, they're among the decent human beings left in the D Party.
7. Real Printed Books
Soooo much easier to read than "e-books."
8. The Other Members of This Web Site
I write it. Other people are involved with it, behind the scenes. Nufsed.
9. The Nephews
Who are, of course, in real life a mixed lot of young men and women who are and are not physically related to me. (Of the ones who are related to me, more are nephews than are nieces.)
10. You Readers
I wish more of you would say more about who you are...because this web site is for you.
This is great, Priscilla! And yes to real printed books. There's no comparison! 😊
ReplyDeleteThank you, whoever you are!
Delete