One Card, Ten Thankfuls

Look who almost didn't make the TToT this weekend! I had a good reason, and if you watched the Bills v Chiefs game this evening, you would understand. My heart rate still hasn't returned to normal, but the Chiefs win in overtime sure made for the cherry on top of a terrific game.

This week, my TToT is devoted to one big thankful, broken down into ten parts:

I lost my debit card last weekend. Or I THOUGHT I lost it. It had been in my coat pocket after getting some gas, and when I went to put it away, it was gone. I searched the car, my purse, called the gas station, nothing. Fortunately, I can turn the card "off" with my bank app, which I did, and the last transaction was mine at the gas station. I planned to go to the bank first thing Tuesday morning and get a new card.

Lost debit card, part 2: I didn't tell my husband I lost the card, because then he would start haranguing me for being careless with it. (For the record, I will admit I am somewhat cavalier with it, but I'm not careless.) He texted me a photo of my debit card on Tuesday morning with the angry emoji. Said he found it on the driveway - whew!

Lost debit card, part 3: We had been at the lake house for the weekend, and I couldn't spend any money, which is probably a good thing, even though I'm not really a shopper.

Lost debit card, part 4: I had gone to the bank on Tuesday morning before work, because the Google said the bank lobby opened at 7:30 a.m. This is not true. It opens at 8:30, so I had to go on to work with no card. That turned out to be fortuitous, since my husband found the card on the driveway.

Lost debit card, part 5: I figured out that the card must have fallen out of my pocket when I took my coat off and tossed it in the back seat of the car before we left for the lake house. It skipped under the car, or I would have seen it lying there. It landed jelly side down, so it wasn't obvious what it was to anyone who passed by.

Lost debit card, part 6: It snowed while we were gone, further hiding the card from anyone who may have passed by.

Lost debit card, part 7: We really don't have passers-by in our neighborhood. A lot of our neighbors walk dogs or just walk, but they don't wander up driveways for no reason, so the card was reasonably safe where it had landed.

Lost debit card, part 8: When we pulled in the driveway Monday evening, I looked along the edge of the driveway (snow was melted by then) for the card and didn't see it anywhere, so, unknown to me, it spent its last night in the wild safely covered by my Sequoia.

Lost debit card, part 9: It is possible I may have driven over the card, as it has some, well, texture that it didn't have before it went AWOL, but after I re-activated the card from the bank app and used it at the grocery store, it worked like a champ in the card reader.

Lost debit card, part 10: The whole lost card debacle has made me a better caretaker of the card, putting it back after each use (most of the time, unless it's in my pocket...). 

Join the Ten Things of Thankful, if not this weekend, then next!

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Dream On

My mother always told me I was a terrible sleeper as a baby and didn't deserve the good sleepers I birthed. The problem is that I'm STILL not a good sleeper (my kids, however, still are), and I spend a good percentage of every night awake. You can ask my Fitbit if you don't believe me.

Last night, around 3 am or so, I was lying awake and came up with a brilliant line for this week's Ten Things of Thankful post. I was going to grab my phone and write it in my notes app, but instead, I committed a key phrase to memory that would bring the whole thing back to me.

As you may guess, I don't know what those key words are and the brilliantly worded sentence no longer exists. And you know why? Because I WASN'T asleep, I only DREAMED I woke up and wrote that sentence, then I woke up FOR REAL and the beautifully crafted words disappeared with the dream.

How do you like that?

I guess the lesson learned here is that a TToT post needn't be perfectly crafted. It can be. Or it can be the equivalent of a grocery list scratched on a scrap of paper, for it's not important that it be a work of art but a work of heart.

Here is my grocery list of thankfuls:

1. I was in Kansas City last weekend and got to attend church in person. It makes my heart full to be there. I love Community Christian Church.

2. My daughter is back in Kansas City after spending most of her Christmas break with us. Grateful for the time we had, even if she did ruin Christmas by having Covid (jk - she didn't ruin anything, and I'm especially thankful that, even though her case was mild, she was with us and not alone in KC).

3. It was a fun week at school. I love my nugs. 

4. Our school is warm and cozy on these cold, winter days.

5. I took a home (or in this case, school) Covid test because I had a headache and nasal congestion, and it was negative.

6. I have a cold. An ordinary cold. And I couldn't be happier to have it, considering the high Covid rates.

7. Even with snow in the forecast for Saturday, my husband and I took the risk and went to the lake house this weekend, since we have Monday off and felt pretty confident the snow would be long gone by then. While this is usually an optimal time for Mother Nature to pull a fast one and send us two feet of snow, she was kind, the snow was only 4-5 inches, and what little was stuck to the roads was easily scraped off by the snow plows.

8. I'm thankful for homemade chili on a cold night.

9. Last week, I mentioned that I got a new heated mattress pad for myself for Christmas. The old one? Brought it to the lake house, and my bed is now toasty warm here, too!

10. And another Chiefs win! 

Stay warm! Drink water! Be thankful!

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Back To Work We Go!

It was back to school after Christmas break this week, and while I have said it before and will say again that I was born to be a woman of leisure, I do love my job and was glad to get back to a normal schedule, particularly one that didn't include eating every five minutes. How's that for number one of this week's Ten Things of Thankful? I agree! On to number two!

2. Almost all of my little nugs were happy to see me! 

3. I rearranged my classroom, and after much experimentation, I THINK I finally got it where I want it. I need to document this change with photos, but I have to dump about a thousand photos off my camera roll on my phone before I can take any new ones. Someone remind me, k?

4. Another Chiefs win!

5. All* the Christmas stuff is put away for another year.

*okay, with the exception of the candles in the windows, because I like them longer than just for Christmas, and I will put them away by the end of the month, I PROMISE

6.  The freezer part of our refrigerator stopped working, but my husband (Mr. Badwrench) turned dials and got it running again. This was not without two real fruit (important differentiation, as the color is more reddish than purple) grape popsicles (that I don't ever remember buying) melting and creating what looked like a crime scene all over the inside of the freezer door, then dripping and running onto the floor in strangely blood-like pools.

7. Thankful for Mr. Clean magic erasers.

8. I got myself a new heated mattress pad for Christmas, and it's even better than the old one I raved about. Warm feet, baby!

9. We have had some nasty cold weather, along with a little skim of snow, but there wasn't ice first, so it wasn't terribly slippery. Of course, my hope is the NEXT time we get snow (IF there's a next time), it's enough to give us a couple of snow days. Fingers crossed.

10. Good hair days. When you know, you know.

Stay safe, my friends! Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. Stay home when you can.

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Year End Thankful Roundup

2021 has been sucky in many ways, but it wasn't ALL bad, was it? Well, of COURSE not. For this week's Ten Things of Thankful AND to commemorate the last TToT of 2021/first one of 2022, I shall regale you with my top 10 thankfuls for the year:

The availability of a Covid vaccine (mine was Moderna - thanks, Dolly Parton!).

My son and (now) daughter in law matched for their residencies in Little Rock in March and we got to attend the ceremony.

The doctors got married in April. It was a beautiful wedding, we had a terrific time with family, and I gained a daughter!

My college girl was selected to be a Senior of Significance and further honored to be named a Razorback Classic (in the top 20 of the senior class) at the University of Arkansas.

College girl graduated from the Honors College of the University of Arkansas Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in Political Science and Journalism (double major) and a 4.0 GPA while being involved in a sorority and other campus activities, including being secretary of the student government her senior year. She certainly made the most of her four years there!

The doctors graduated from University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. My son is doing his residency in Internal Medicine and my daughter in law is doing hers in Pediatrics. They are settled in Little Rock now, working long and hard, and I'm so very proud of them!

I went from part time teacher to full time early this summer. I really do love my job, and I am so grateful I got to become a full time employee!

The college girl is now a law student at University of Missouri at Kansas City! She has her first big girl apartment, an adopted cat named Calvin, many friends, and is doing well with her studies. 

We enjoyed a lot of weekends at the lake house this year with my dad, with the highlight being the weekend the sailboat was sold.

My last thankful for the year was going to be that our family made it through the year with no one getting Covid, but if you read my post last weekend, you will know that my daughter came home after two weeks of finals not feeling well and tested positive for Covid. Since it was a breakthrough case, she had pretty mild symptoms, so my thankful is that the vaccine did its job protecting her from serious illness and my husband and me from catching it from her.

We at the TToT would love it if you would join us this week and every week for the Ten Things of Thankful blog hop! The link opens just after midnight CST on Fridays and ends just before midnight on Sundays. 

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