Today's thirteen will be a list of things I am grateful for right now, I think I need to remind myself.
1. I am a living, breathing, loving, human who is not as broken as I feel. I can take pictures while laying on my back, sitting on my knees, and half way in between. I can get back up with only a small grunt to help me, but I can get up.
2. I choose most of the time, positivity. Life presents me with this choice often. I can get negative and live in that frame of mind, bad talking people, seeing only the bad stuff that comes my way, and in this frame of mind I ignore all the good. I do not want this. I want to choose positivity. I want to see all the good that comes my way. I want to feel good and light and be delighted by small things. I choose to let the negative roll off my back, sometimes faster than other times, but I choose to let it go. Keeping that negativity means I am keeping negativity! Why do I want that?
3. My family, Husband, Turtle, and three kittehs. We are a great functioning loving family. I love my husband more than I ever thought I could love anyone or anything. It is truly an overwhelming feeling, so much so that if I really let that feeling of love come over me I cry every time, it is overwhelming but in a really great way.
4. Coffee, this is the morning drink of the Gods, I know it. I love the whole morning ritual of it. Hot cup in my hand, familiar chips on the handle that I continually pick at with my nail. The smell intoxicates me, I feel alive with just one inhale through my sleepy little nose. every sip of the dark steamy liquid my eyelids become easier and easier to keep open. I drink two cups a morning, I know I am addicted because I need more now. But Coffee, I just can't quit you!
5. my neighborhood. I have so many wonderful people who live in my town. I have lived here my whole life and I think why have I only just met these people, then I realize I was a kid and we would not have had great conversation like we have now. I appreciate my town and hope to become more involved in the future of the town. It is at a boiling point with me right now, I need my farm lands, I do not need more traffic and a sea of tract housing where raspberries and lettuce once grew. I do not want higher taxes because I have to pay for more roads and more schools to support these new neighbors with boring yards I cant find one thing to photograph that is interesting, and that is BAD! I hope to make new connections and find out what I can do to help my community stay the way it is and always has been, a farming community.
6. fun note pads, it is always easier to cross stuff off of a to do list when it is on pretty paper. Hearts and hello kitties, sweet bears and ugly dolls. I am grateful for the smile these little note pads bring to my face and lighten my heart. They make me happy.
7. Striped socks. This is like the note pads, they just make me so happy to know my toes are wrapped in socks striped the colors of ice cream and rainbows. Even when my pants are long enough to cover them (rare event) It makes me so delighted to have colorful stripes on my feet and legs. I hope to always wear them, I will be 85 years old with pink and green striped knee socks. I will be happy.
8. music, I am grateful for music. It makes me dance, it makes me cry, it makes me think, it makes me laugh, it makes me cringe and plug my ears. I can hear songs released hen I was in high school and get thrown back into some long lost memory of friends I no longer see, of situations I am no longer in, of a young love just beginning. I remember the things I did not understand and wonder if in another 20 years I will have the same epiphanies.
9. Art, for most of the same reasons as music, but it also wakes something up inside of me. When I visit an art museum, or exhibit, I want to run home and get knee deep in pens, paper, paint, glue, scissors, photos, pencils, and beads. It makes me feel alive.
10. Funny people. This world would be unbearable without funny people, jokes that poke fun at ourselves. We tend to be a bit serious and a good laugh, with every fast loud breath out we release so much tension, with every fast happy breath in our bodies relax. I love to laugh and will laugh at just about anything, especially myself. I am a silly, strange, contradiction who takes herself too seriously sometimes.
11. my home, I have a nice house that needs bunches of TLC, but still a nice home. I love the feeling it gave me when I walked in for the first time. It hugged me when I walked into the kitchen on our first walk through, it warmed my heart when walking through the three bedrooms, and whispered "you are Home" in my ears before I left. I knew this was where I was supposed to be. I was not sure, it was not the style of home I had pictured in my head when I thought of owning a home. It is very 1950's modern. I saw myself in an old bungalow or victorian house. We were reluctant to look at this one, but I decided why not and we ran through the rain to the front step. The warmth I felt inside was great. It was not the heaters, they suck and we still have not replaced them. Haha! It is my home, my fortress, my safety from the rest of the world.
12. My husbands job. It enables me to stay home and get myself in a better frame of mind. To thnk of where I was three years ago really does frighten me. I was sleepless, anxious, depressed, hopeless, and thinking of a world without me in it. I was slipping away fast. Mr. Lavender worked himself through school almost a year ahead of schedule. He worked so hard to get a good job to support us both so I could quit working for some of the nastiest people this community had to offer. I survived it all because of him. I kept living because he was definitely worth living for. I am in this lovely place because of his hard work. I am grateful for all of that. In this shrinking economy I know how much of a luxury this life is, and I am truly grateful for it.
13. I am grateful for photography. Mr. L wanted to get me a digital camera because I was taking so many photos with our film camera that it was getting expensive. For christmas he gave me my new tool for relaxation. Like I said yesterday, my head does not shut up. I am random and scrambled with my thoughts, but when I walk out my front door with Ruby around my neck, well by the time I hit the corner, my first decision of which way I should turn, my head is clear. Quiet and relaxed. I listen to my body, to my mind, to my heart beating in my chest. I breath in deep and look for beauty. It is everywhere when you are in that state of silence. It jumps out of bushes, and gardens, from behind railroad tracks and light poles. In shadows and alleys. It is everywhere. I am grateful for photography that helped me open my eyes to see the true beauty of the world around me.
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1. I am a living, breathing, loving, human who is not as broken as I feel. I can take pictures while laying on my back, sitting on my knees, and half way in between. I can get back up with only a small grunt to help me, but I can get up.
2. I choose most of the time, positivity. Life presents me with this choice often. I can get negative and live in that frame of mind, bad talking people, seeing only the bad stuff that comes my way, and in this frame of mind I ignore all the good. I do not want this. I want to choose positivity. I want to see all the good that comes my way. I want to feel good and light and be delighted by small things. I choose to let the negative roll off my back, sometimes faster than other times, but I choose to let it go. Keeping that negativity means I am keeping negativity! Why do I want that?
3. My family, Husband, Turtle, and three kittehs. We are a great functioning loving family. I love my husband more than I ever thought I could love anyone or anything. It is truly an overwhelming feeling, so much so that if I really let that feeling of love come over me I cry every time, it is overwhelming but in a really great way.
4. Coffee, this is the morning drink of the Gods, I know it. I love the whole morning ritual of it. Hot cup in my hand, familiar chips on the handle that I continually pick at with my nail. The smell intoxicates me, I feel alive with just one inhale through my sleepy little nose. every sip of the dark steamy liquid my eyelids become easier and easier to keep open. I drink two cups a morning, I know I am addicted because I need more now. But Coffee, I just can't quit you!
5. my neighborhood. I have so many wonderful people who live in my town. I have lived here my whole life and I think why have I only just met these people, then I realize I was a kid and we would not have had great conversation like we have now. I appreciate my town and hope to become more involved in the future of the town. It is at a boiling point with me right now, I need my farm lands, I do not need more traffic and a sea of tract housing where raspberries and lettuce once grew. I do not want higher taxes because I have to pay for more roads and more schools to support these new neighbors with boring yards I cant find one thing to photograph that is interesting, and that is BAD! I hope to make new connections and find out what I can do to help my community stay the way it is and always has been, a farming community.
6. fun note pads, it is always easier to cross stuff off of a to do list when it is on pretty paper. Hearts and hello kitties, sweet bears and ugly dolls. I am grateful for the smile these little note pads bring to my face and lighten my heart. They make me happy.
7. Striped socks. This is like the note pads, they just make me so happy to know my toes are wrapped in socks striped the colors of ice cream and rainbows. Even when my pants are long enough to cover them (rare event) It makes me so delighted to have colorful stripes on my feet and legs. I hope to always wear them, I will be 85 years old with pink and green striped knee socks. I will be happy.
8. music, I am grateful for music. It makes me dance, it makes me cry, it makes me think, it makes me laugh, it makes me cringe and plug my ears. I can hear songs released hen I was in high school and get thrown back into some long lost memory of friends I no longer see, of situations I am no longer in, of a young love just beginning. I remember the things I did not understand and wonder if in another 20 years I will have the same epiphanies.
9. Art, for most of the same reasons as music, but it also wakes something up inside of me. When I visit an art museum, or exhibit, I want to run home and get knee deep in pens, paper, paint, glue, scissors, photos, pencils, and beads. It makes me feel alive.
10. Funny people. This world would be unbearable without funny people, jokes that poke fun at ourselves. We tend to be a bit serious and a good laugh, with every fast loud breath out we release so much tension, with every fast happy breath in our bodies relax. I love to laugh and will laugh at just about anything, especially myself. I am a silly, strange, contradiction who takes herself too seriously sometimes.
11. my home, I have a nice house that needs bunches of TLC, but still a nice home. I love the feeling it gave me when I walked in for the first time. It hugged me when I walked into the kitchen on our first walk through, it warmed my heart when walking through the three bedrooms, and whispered "you are Home" in my ears before I left. I knew this was where I was supposed to be. I was not sure, it was not the style of home I had pictured in my head when I thought of owning a home. It is very 1950's modern. I saw myself in an old bungalow or victorian house. We were reluctant to look at this one, but I decided why not and we ran through the rain to the front step. The warmth I felt inside was great. It was not the heaters, they suck and we still have not replaced them. Haha! It is my home, my fortress, my safety from the rest of the world.
12. My husbands job. It enables me to stay home and get myself in a better frame of mind. To thnk of where I was three years ago really does frighten me. I was sleepless, anxious, depressed, hopeless, and thinking of a world without me in it. I was slipping away fast. Mr. Lavender worked himself through school almost a year ahead of schedule. He worked so hard to get a good job to support us both so I could quit working for some of the nastiest people this community had to offer. I survived it all because of him. I kept living because he was definitely worth living for. I am in this lovely place because of his hard work. I am grateful for all of that. In this shrinking economy I know how much of a luxury this life is, and I am truly grateful for it.
13. I am grateful for photography. Mr. L wanted to get me a digital camera because I was taking so many photos with our film camera that it was getting expensive. For christmas he gave me my new tool for relaxation. Like I said yesterday, my head does not shut up. I am random and scrambled with my thoughts, but when I walk out my front door with Ruby around my neck, well by the time I hit the corner, my first decision of which way I should turn, my head is clear. Quiet and relaxed. I listen to my body, to my mind, to my heart beating in my chest. I breath in deep and look for beauty. It is everywhere when you are in that state of silence. It jumps out of bushes, and gardens, from behind railroad tracks and light poles. In shadows and alleys. It is everywhere. I am grateful for photography that helped me open my eyes to see the true beauty of the world around me.
