The Kind Of Week Where It's Easy To See How Thankful You Truly Are

The past few days have been hard. So much sadness and destruction and loss of life. My heart hurts for those who are hurting. If there were ever a time to reflect on my many thankfuls, this is it. Here are my thankfuls for this week:

1. We had yucky weather again this week. On Wednesday, sleet began to fall mid-morning, and it was decided school needed to close early. HUGE thankful, because the sleet was piling up.

2. It not only sleeted, but it was bitterly cold with a biting wind. Streets were covered, and there was no potential for melting. Guess what? Snow day for Thursday, too!

3. Got more sleet and more snow on Thursday, which led to - you guessed it - snow day on Friday! Can't. Even. Believe it. It's pretty rare for us to get snow days for multiple days in a row!

4. I made terrific use of my time off by doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Okay, not entirely true. I spent most of my time blowing my nose, since I either have had a nasty head cold or my sinus infection/Covid is still with me. It's better now. Not GONE, but better. 

5. Lewis, my handsome tuxedo cat, enjoys playing with "found" items, meaning he goes in a room and finds something that was never intended for him to have in the first place and takes it. This habit started with taking stuffed animals and trinkets from the kids' rooms, escalated to  loose change left on table tops or counters, a wooden ruler that he carried all over the upstairs, and pipe cleaners that he learned how to open a drawer to obtain. 

In an attempt to stop my glasses from steaming up when I was out, I ordered aluminum nose bridge strips for my homemade face masks about a year ago. I never could get them to work with my mask pattern, so I gave up on trying. This week, Lewis was obviously rummaging around in my craft/sewing room, because I began to find these aluminum strips EVERYWHERE. They have become Lewis's new favorite source of entertainment. I shall concede that at least they are being useful for SOMETHING. I believe there were 100 in the package, so he will be entertained for some time to come.

6. My daughter is at it again. Last week, I announced she had made Law Review. This week, she was selected to be an associate justice on the campus Supreme Court, whose jurisdiction is the entire student body, including undergrad, graduate, and professional programs.

7. Our temps bounced up to the low 50s Fahrenheit this weekend, and is it any wonder my sinuses are a disaster?! 

8. There was virtually no wind this weekend, so I opened the windows in our bedroom, and the cats were in heaven! They are strictly indoor cats, and they don't try to escape into the big world, but they sure like to look at it and hear it and smell it from the safety of the windowsill!

9. My friend and co-worker Karen is retiring, and tomorrow will be her last day. I am extremely thankful for all the support she has given me, especially when I first started. Happy retirement, my friend!

10. Last night, I dreamed I was pregnant. I woke up a little panicked before I realized it was a dream. I'm 61 and that ship has done sailed!

Holy One, we pray from the relative safety of our homes and offices far from the threats of invading troops and the destruction of bombs and missiles, but we are mindful, O God, that our world is deeply interconnected. So on this day, we offer a prayer for peace.

We pray for your deep Wisdom and discerning Spirit to pour out on our world. We pray for a vision of the future that is grounded in collaboration and humility and not in competition and control. We pray for the power of words to prevail over the power of military might.

And we pray for the people of Russia and Ukraine. With sighs too deep for words we pray to You.

We pray for peace.

Peace in our hearts.

Peace in our homes.

Peace in our world.

O God, hear our prayer.

~Community Christian Church, KCMO

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It's Always A Great Week To Be Thankful!

The sun is shining. The birds are singing. The cats are napping in patches of sunlight. And it's time for this week's Ten Things of Thankful! 

1. First and foremost, I survived Valentine's Day at preschool. My nugs are not old enough to understand the holiday (is it really a holiday if you don't get a day off from work? Hmmm?), but they sure knew it was a great time to be completely wound up!

2. I've never really cared much for Valentine's Day. If you love me, love me. I don't need you to prove it one day a year. My husband and I exchange cards some years, and some years, we don't even bother. So imagine my surprise when one of my co-workers walked into my classroom carrying a dozen red roses in a vase. My first response was to ask who they were for, to which she said, "You!" Still puzzled, I then asked who they were from. She looked at me as if I were daft and said, "Your husband just walked in with them, so I assume they are from him."

And then I saw it. They were in a glass jar, not a vase. 

Who else but my husband? (He has what I call a jar problem, meaning he buys (way too many) jars at thrift stores and which I may or may not have used in a Six Sentence Story. It was a lovely surprise, one which I very obviously had not anticipated!

Should have taken a better photo.

3. Snow Day! We got a Snow Day on Thursday! We had freezing rain, sleet, and a little bit of snow, and it was enough to make driving hazardous. Snow Days are truly a gift!

4. This may not sound very nice in light of #2, but my husband was out of town on Thursday, and I got to spend the ENTIRE DAY in my house BY MYSELF (okay, by myself and with three cats). My husband has been working from home since Covid started, and as a result, I am NEVER home alone. Did I make it a productive day around the house when I could work uninterrupted? I did not. I did absolutely nothing. All day. And it was delightful!

5. Y'all, there's a Wordle2. Pretty sure it's not affiliated with the original Wordle, and it uses six letter words instead of five like the OG. 

6. Oh, and there's Nerdle. It's a math equation instead of a word, and the first one I tried nearly drove me to tears, but I got the hang of it and it's almost fun to do math!

7. Last weekend, I was in Kansas City and got to attend Community Christian Church in person. This weekend, thanks to technology and Covid, believe it or not (seriously, how many times can you actually say you are thankful for Covid?!), I enjoyed church via livestream on YouTube. It always fills my heart, whether in person or remote.

8. Daytona 500 is today, and THAT means spring is near!

9. We have potential for another snow day this week. Fingers crossed!

10. Later today, I am going to Pittsburg, Kansas, to see the musical "South Pacific" with two of my besties. We will be partaking in dinner at Chicken Mary's before the show, and I can't wait until it's time to go!

How was your week? Did you get a snow day? Spend time with friends? It's not too late to link up YOUR thankfuls!

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Back Among The Living

 After a rough week and a half with Covid, I am finally feeling like myself again and ready and raring to declare my Ten Things of Thankful for the week!

1. I went back to work on Tuesday. I was really tired by the end of the day, but I made it. The worst thing that happened was that, having done nothing but lie in bed or curl up in a chair for a week and a half, I pulled something in my left hip when I sat criss-cross applesauce on the floor with my kids for circle time. It's a little ouchie.

2. My new teaching assistant started on Monday. Note in #1, above, that I did not go back until Tuesday. She made it through the morning, though, and continued to come back the rest of the week, so I'm hoping this means she isn't going to run away and never come back!

3. While we had 7-8 inches of snow last week, THIS week, it was mild and sunny and I was even able to open the sun roof and get some fresh air on the way home from work. Ahhh!

4. My daughter found out she made the Law Review this week! So proud!

5. Wordle. 

6. My dad has been sewing again. He makes his own patterns and is completely self taught, and I'm going to leave it at that. He is currently experimenting with making top hats, and I will say that it's better than any kind of top hat I could make.

7. Minsky's Pizza in Kansas City. My favorite.

8. My husband and I went to Kansas City for a belated birthday weekend with our daughter (#MomRuinedEmma'sBirthdayWithCovid). Emma and I spent all day Saturday (and I do mean ALLLLLL day) trying to find a suit for her to wear for an interview this week for a summer internship. In case you wondered, women's suits are apparently not a "thing" anymore, and none of the department stores carried them (Macy's, Dillard's, Nordstrom, JCPenney). We finally found one at Express and will now be on the lookout every time we are in a thrift store for future needs.

9. We stopped by my brother and sister in law's house to deliver very belated Christmas gifts (#EmmaRuinedChristmasWithCovid). It was good to see them, even though it wasn't a long enough visit, because we were heading home from our weekend in KC and my husband wanted to get there in plenty of time to watch the Super Bowl (big WHO CARES from me, since the Chiefs weren't in it). We were about to leave their house for our 2-1/2 hour trip home when my daughter texted that her dad had left his coat at her place. Ugh! We had to drive back across town to get it, but we made it home before the coin toss - barely!

10. "Married At First Sight/Australia." Guilty pleasure.

I haven't unpacked one thing from our weekend yet, and I'm not going to tonight. It's off to bed to recharge for Valentine's parties at school. Wish me luck! 

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The Covid Edition

It's kind of hard to write a Ten Things of Thankful when you're on the tail-end of a bout with Covid, but as I wasn't feeling particularly thankful last weekend when it struck, I'm here to make amends and give you my thankfuls for the past week:

I'm thankful for the scientists and physicians who worked long and hard to get us a Covid vaccine. No, it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing and has afforded me resistance to the virus right up until last weekend. That Omicron variant didn't take no for an answer.

I'm thankful my class had already been quarantined due to a previous exposure and weren't at school when I started getting symptoms; therefore, I didn't spread my cooties to them. 

My boss has had to juggle a hella lot of schedules and quarantines and exposures in addition to the normal craziness of her job. She works really hard to keep us staffed and safe, and I truly appreciate all she does. She is the BEST.

I'm thankful for my friend Julie for lots of reasons, but this week, because she has called me every day to check on me. 

If you know me at all, you know I don't like to talk on the phone. Julie does. She never texts, because she never knows where her phone is, and it's most difficult to keep up a conversation via text when you lose your phone every time you blink (she might say I'm exaggerating, but if you know her, you know). So that's how thankful I am to have her in my life, that I'm willing to talk on the phone with her.

My husband has taken good care of me this week, as long as it didn't involve being within 20 feet of me. I had to walk in a room shouting, "Unclean!" if left my isolation quarters, even though I was masked. But he made homemade soup and pudding for me, stopping just short of putting it outside my door, knocking, and running.

I'm thankful that my husband has shown no signs of getting Covid from me. He has been exposed twice, once by our daughter (when she ruined Christmas) and once by me (when I ruined her birthday), so he either has terrific immunity or is a lucky duck, and either are okay by me.

We got snow this week, like quite a bit, and I didn't have to worry about whether or not there would be snow days called (there were), because I was already homebound.

The cats have been pretty good nurses. They followed me to my isolation bedroom (otherwise known as my daughter's room) and slept at the foot of the bed all week, including during my many naps. 

Nursing staff on duty.

My quarantine ends on Monday, so I get to go back to work on Tuesday! I have missed my little nugs!

Finally feeling like I might pull through.

Get vaccinated if you haven't already. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. And if that Omicron fucker gets through to you, get plenty of rest, eat pudding, and surround yourself with warm pets.

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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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