Gratitude and Joy: Family and Friends and Christmas

Gratitude and Joy: Day 25

I am grateful for:

Friends and Family
I'm certainly not unique in having moved far away from my family or in finding it harder to make friends in my thirties than it was at any other time of my life. I've always been blessed with great friends and wonderful family, but being away from so many of the people I care for the most puts that in sharp relief. I'm grateful for every one of my friends, my family, and the husbeast. The older I get the more I think that making connections with other humans is the point of life. 


I feel joyful in the presence of:

Christmas
While I don't necessarily feel the religious joy of Christmas that devout Christians do, there is something about this time that does touch me, that does fill me with joy. Maybe it's a learned response, maybe it's some kind of collective memory of light festivals around the winter solstice, maybe it really is the good news. Whatever the reason, of Christmas "I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"*


*A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Stave I

Gratitude and Joy: Our Weather Guy and Giddy Scrooge

Gratitude and Joy: Day 24

I am grateful for:

Our Local Weather Guy
The gentleman who does weather commentary in our local paper is amazing. He knows his stuff and he explains it well, always making clear what's actually happening all up in the atmospheres and explaining what might develop and what's likely to develop. Our weather is pretty much 90% run of the mill, but the other 10% might kill you. I find his level-headed, intelligent commentary indispensable and frankly, instrumental in helping me keep perspective in a world where alarmist weather sells. 

I feel joy watching:

Scrooge Finding Joy in His Redemption
My favorite adaptation of A Christmas Carol is the 1951 version staring Alastair Sim (which is called Scrooge). Sim's portrayal of Scrooge is stunningly perfect, and part of what makes it so good is his performance of the reformed Scrooge. The last seven or eight minutes of the movie is made up of one brilliant joyful scene after another. Here's one of my favorite sequences. This one is a close, close second. (The background music here is perfect.*) Neither of these is the famous Boxing Day morning scene, which you should watch too. It'll have popped up to the side if you clicked either of those links. Oh, just go watch the whole movie.

*"Barbara Allen," what is about how regret over being hardhearted toward your fellow humans can kill you. Scrooge takes a different path by choosing to fix it/himself before it's too late.

Gratitude and Joy: Choir and Es Ist ein Ros Entsprungen

Gratitude and Joy: Day 23

I am grateful for:

My Experiences in Choir
Those of you who have been following along with me here have probably gathered that I deeply cherish the time I spent in choirs when I was in school. In addition to simply loving that time and relishing the memories of that time, I will always be grateful for the way being a part of those choirs taught me that discipline and enjoyment can go hand in hand and the greater appreciation for music it gave me as well.


I feel joy listening to:

"Es Ist ein Ros Entsprungen"
"Es Ist ein Ros Entsprungen" ("Lo, How a Rose e'er Blooming") is another one of those Christmas songs that just stops me dead in my tracks. I feel connected to something greater and timeless when I hear it.

Gratitude and Joy: Recycling Services and Once in Royal David's City

Gratitude and Joy: Day 22

I am grateful for:

Recycling Services
When we first moved here, our apartment didn't have recycling service. None. And as we had no good way to store recyclables until we could make a run to the municipal recycling center, we just didn't recycle at home. This drove me nuts. We have recycling pick-up just like trash pick-up now, and it gives me a little ping of satisfaction every time I drop a milk jug or a newspaper (or cardboard box!) in the bin. And I'm grateful I get to participate in our city's recycling efforts without having to haul stuff out to the center. It's nice that it's easy.


I feel joy listening to:

"Once in Royal David's City"
We sang "Once in Royal David's City" as our processional for our holiday concert every year when I was in chorus in high school. It's been one of my favorites ever since.

Gratitude and Joy: Amazon Prime and Giving Gifts

Gratitude and Joy: Day 21

I am grateful for:

Amazon Prime
If I have a little complicated feeling about Barnes and Noble, I have a big complicated feeling about Amazon. But let me tell ya, Prime is a godsend. We originally signed up for it when we were using a special cat litter that was supposed to be helping one of our elderly cats with box issues. That litter was not reliably available in town and was way cheaper online. We're no longer doing that, but we've kept the Prime after realizing just how many times we've trekked out to the strip mall wasteland for some non-food domestic item, come away frazzled and empty-handed, then found the thing in seconds on Amazon and had it two days later. So I continue to feel some kind of a complicated way about Amazon (the effect on local economies! the environmental impact of all that shipping! the cardboard boxes that end up in my garage!), but for the moment I'm grateful to live in a world where quick shipping of stuff is an option.


I feel joy:

Giving Gifts
I love giving gifts. I love making note of what folks seem to be into and then hunting down the right related gift. I love wrapping presents and picking out just the right tag and ribbon to put on the package. I love thinking about the joy I hope that package and its contents are going to bring the recipient. I love hearing that the gift did indeed bring that joy. Love it, love it, love it. I know lots of people get frustrated with the commercialism and the gimmes that can come with the Christmas season, but I am a happy little nurturer with so many opportunities to try to bring a little happiness to loved ones.

Gratitude and Joy: Our Post Office and A Christmas Carol

Gratitude and Joy: Day 20

I am grateful for:

Our Post Office
My gratitude is not for the post office, itself, as a thing that exists (although if you think about it, it's pretty cool, actually) but rather for the local branch of the post office where I go if I need to mail a package. It is laid out well and the staff is generally efficient and friendly. Especially at this time of year, when going to the post office can be a nightmare that seems like it will never end, I am especially grateful that ours seems to be so well run.

I feel joy reading:

A Christmas Carol
I've been rereading Dickens's A Christmas Carol every year for about twenty years. I love the redemption story, but just as much as that I get lost in Dickens's language and his brilliant descriptions. Reading this novella is the thing that most makes it feel like Christmas to me and it is the last tradition surrounding the holiday I would give up if time or other constraints forced me to lessen my holiday activities in any year. My annual reread starts tonight!

Gratitude and Joy: A Friend Teaching Me Crochet and the End of It's a Wonderful Life

Gratitude and Joy: Day 19

I am grateful that:

One of my friends taught me to crochet in middle school
A good friend of mine taught me a basic crochet stitch in middle school. I think someone had just taught her and she was just showing me because kids show each other things they've learned. I don't know how interested I was in it then, but I must have fooled around with some yarn after that because that stitch stuck with me. Years later when I did want to do some actual crocheting, I still remembered how to do that simple stitch, and having that knowledge made it so much easier to learn how to do other things and put together whole projects. Crocheting is one of my favorite hobbies now, one of my go-to things to do when I need some down time or feel the urge to do something with my hands, and I often think of her when I sit down to work on something.  

I feel joy watching:

The End of It's a Wonderful Life
I mean, Jimmy Stewart and all his friends singing together around the Christmas tree? How can you not smile? 

Gratitude and Joy: Barnes and Noble and My Grandmother's Clock

Gratitude and Joy: Day 18

I am grateful for:

Barnes and Noble
Ah, Barnes and Noble. I have a little bit of a complicated feeling about B&N. I would rather shop in a lovely independent book store, both because I usually enjoy the atmosphere in independents more and because I like the idea of supporting small businesses, especially small bookish businesses. But we don't have an independent book store. We have a lovely used book store, which I do support, but our independent closed several years ago. Given my brick and mortar options for new books are B&N or nothing, I do chose B&N. And the thing is, I like our B&N. It's familiar and decently cozy and a fair number of the staff recognize me when I come in. I am the sort of person who prefers to browse in person for books, and I like to do it fairly regularly. And I'm pretty keenly aware of what it would be like to have no chain bookstore either. I lived through that for a while right after Borders closed down all its stores. (Ironically at that time I lived in a town that did have an independent bookstore, but a less inviting shop with more cranky, snobby staff you'd be hard pressed to find, so I mostly avoided going there.) I've never experienced a real book desert (I always could go into the Snarky Store), but I had just a sharp enough glimpse of the possibility of one to be grateful that our Barnes and Noble, chain that it is, impersonal as it can sometimes feel, continues to chug along.

I feel joy around:

Grandma's Clock
When my grandparents moved into a smaller house, they gave some of their things to various members of the family. I got a lovely wall clock with spiffy pendulum action. It's gotten pride of place in the living room anywhere I've lived since, and it feels like home to see it, ticking away. 

Gratitude and Joy: Online Acquaintances and Green Ink

Gratitude and Joy: Day 17

I am grateful for:

Online Acquaintances Who Have Their Shit Together
Like so many of us, I have far more online "friends" than I do friends I ever actually see face to face. Most of the people I know only online (or now only know online) are just sort of there. But a handful of them are literally giving me life right now. These are regular women (they're all women), not celebrities or people otherwise in the public eye, who seem to be living their best lives--not just presenting the best versions of their lives to the world of social media, but actually living their best lives. The love these women have for their children and for their spouses, their dedication to helping make the world a better place through raising their kids right and putting their bodies where their values are for volunteer work, and their honesty and vulnerability in sharing when things go wrong as well as when they go right shine through each and every day. These are women I only "know"--we don't get together for lunch, we can't help each other out by running errands for one another when the going gets tough, we don't do any of the things "traditional" friends or even acquaintances do by dint of being in physical proximity to one another, but these women enrich my life immeasurably just by being their kind, awesome selves, and I'm so grateful that I get to glimpse them through my computer screen.  


I feel joy using:

Green Ink
I don't remember now when I first started using green ink for everything I thought I could get away with not using blue or black for. (I still sign checks in blue. *sigh*) But I love my green ink. It's just such a happy and somehow still sort of dignified ink color. I still write a lot by hand (lists!), and it brings me joy to do that in a color I like. 

Gratitude and Joy: Dog Helpers and Really Good Television

Gratitude and Joy: Day 16

I am grateful for:

Excellent Dog Services
We've had our golden retriever for just shy of a year and a half. It's been an adventure, trying to get her  trained to be a well-mannered dog and to help her be the healthiest she can be physically and emotionally. Along the way we've encountered truly excellent vets, dog trainers, and day care facilities. I think we are truly blessed to live somewhere with so many choices for dog things and to have access to such good ones. The day care facility we take Thursday to is especially wonderful. She loves playing with other dogs, and we are not in a position to get her a friend right now, so it is fabulous that we have a place we can take her near home where they love her like we do and where she can play most of the day. She's a happier dog because she gets to go there (and I'm a more productive human, because I can actually get stuff done at home while she's away), and our cat is a happier cat (she has *not* warmed to the dog) with a few hours of dog-free house in her day. As Thursday grows up, I imagine we'll scale back how often she goes to "school" (it's expensive, and it's nice to have the dog around during the day, of course), but for now, I'm so grateful that I found such a great place for her to socialize, exercise, and get tired.

I feel joy watching:

Good Television
I love watching really excellent television, especially on demand. Growing up I had my weekly TV shows I Did Not Miss, but once the shows I was watching at the end of high school finished up, I pretty much stopped watching regular TV. Sports, sure. The news sometimes. But as an adult I haven't been much of a regular TV watcher. Even the stuff I DVR often sits there for year before I get around to it. What I do do, is watch a lot of TV shows on streaming services. I like to get really wrapped up in a show and watch multiple seasons over the course of a couple of months rather than several years. And it seems like there is so much good TV out there these days, both from the cable networks and from the streaming services. I love a good story told through TV or film almost as much as I love a good book, and it seems like what's on offer just gets better and better. The shows making me happy most recently are The Crown, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Father Brown. 

Gratitude and Joy: Christmastime Birthdays and "Ar Hyd Y Nos"

Gratitude and Joy: Day 15

I am grateful for:

Celebrations of Christmastime Birthdays
Between the start of Advent and the Epiphany, we have five birthdays in my immediate family, including my own. When I was growing up, it was only four (one of those winter babies turns three this year!), but that's still a lot of birthdays to squeeze into an already busy time around Christmas. Mine is the latest of them, so by the time we got to me, there had already been three birthdays, Christmas, and New Year's. Many people over the years have asked me if my birthday always got lost in the shuffle because it was so close to Christmas or if I didn't get birthday presents because my Christmas presents "counted" for the birthday too. This question used to surprise me, because no one in my family ever suggested any such thing. My parents always made time to make my birthday special despite what I'm sure was sometimes some fairly intense "festive fatigue." So, with gratitude to my parents for that and with a hearty "Happy Birthday!" to my mom, who kicks off our familial Christmastime birthdays today.


I feel joy when I hear:

"Ar Hyd Y Nos"
I first heard this Welsh folksong at the end of the TV adaptation of "A Child's Christmas in Wales." It's been forever associated with Christmas for me, though really it's a lullaby that's not really specifically Christmasy. 

Gratitude and Joy: Growing Up with Grandparents and Christmas Colors

Gratitude and Joy: Day 14

I am grateful for:

A Childhood with All Four Grandparents Living
We lost both of my grandfathers when I was in my early twenties, and now, well over ten years later, I sometimes still get sucker punched, seemingly out of the blue, by how much I miss them. These little grief whammies are usually short lived and followed quickly by wonderful memories of both of them. My grandmothers are still with us, and I count myself lucky beyond measure to still have them in my life. When I'm hit with those moments of grief and happy memories about my grandfathers, I'm often struck with how grateful I am that I got to grow up with all four of my grandparents living, that I got to know them all; that I got to see them interact with each other and their children and their other grandchildren; that I got to have the benefit of their kindness, love, and knowledge; and that I did not experience losing any of them as a child. I think this is somewhat rare, and it is absolutely one of the greatest blessings of my childhood.

I feel joy seeing:

Christmas Red and Green
This might just be conditioning--I mean you see enough red and green on presents for you and in moments of happiness and you're bound to associate those colors with good feelings--but I really do just love Christmasy red and green. On wrapping paper, on decorations, and most especially in nature, such as on a holly bush or mistletoe. That color combo often makes me stop short and say, "Well now, isn't that lovely."

Confessions of a Mood Reader

I have always been a mood reader, picking up my next read based on what I feel like or on what has recently piqued my interest. Feel like hibernating on the couch for days? Time for a fluffy romance novel! Just binge-watched a detective show? Read a murder mystery! In general, I'd say this is no bad thing. Reading is one of my chief comforts, so why shouldn't it reflect the mood I'm in or the most recent rabbit hole I've fallen down? 

But in the last few months, reading according to my mood hasn't been working so well for me. Possibly because the world and my feelings about it are so unsettled these days or maybe just because I've been letting mood entirely govern my reading choices for too long, lately I end up flitting from book to book, often finishing none of them. This leaves me pretty unsatisfied, as you might imagine, but I've noticed that being a mood reader has also led to other aspects of my reading life that don't always please me.

Neglecting the Library

The nature of checking books out of the library is that you have a specific book during a specific span of time. There's always the option to renew, of course, and you can take the same book out as many times as you like, but the general gist of the thing is that you read this book now. Add in library holds that might come available at any time, and the issue is compounded. None of this is terribly in line with mood reading. Nothing makes me want to read a book less than knowing I have to finish it by a certain date. (I blame grad school.) As a result, I tend to buy books rather than check them out of the library (because they will always be within reach of my hot little hands).

Buying Too Many Books

No such thing, right? Weeell. I'm blessed with a nice-sized house, but the space for books still isn't infinite. (Alas.) My recent book-buying M.O. of picking up two or three paperbacks that suit a current mood has our bookshelves sagging. And because my moods usually change faster than I can get through three books, I end up with unread books lying around. Which is great! Until I get  paralyzed by too much choice. I want to read everything, but I can't, so I read nothing. *sad trombone* 

Reading Less Diversely Than I Would Like

I am mentally committed to reading diversely in as many ways as I can squeeze into my reading time. I want to seriously up the number of authors of color I read, and the number of lesbian and trans* authors, and the amount of poetry, and and and. But, see, none of those things is a mood. So even though I have piles of books by diverse writers that I really want to read, unless one of them fits whatever particular mood I'm in, I just don't get around to them. While the other consequences of letting my reading choices be dictated entirely by mood have been making me less than fully satisfied with my reading life, this one makes me downright cross with myself. Reading diversely is something I value, and I'm letting it fall by the wayside. Get it together, girl!

In the years immediately after grad school, when my reading time was completely unfettered for the first time since... ever, I set out little reading challenges for myself. Sometimes they involved reading a themed book for each month (something about love in February, something about school in September), sometimes I simply picked a topic I was interested in and found a couple of books about it (maybe a novel and a piece of nonfic, or a memoir and a more scholarly work) and read them back to back. While I did complete most of those challenges, I found them constraining. They made reading too much like work. Now I think I've swung too far back the other way, letting my reading be completely freeform and thus ending up with a reading life that is largely directionless.  

So for 2018, I have a plan. I'm picking three or four categories of books that I'd like to see myself read more of (I haven't decided exactly what they'll be yet, but you can bet that at least one of them will be to do with reading diversely), and I'm going to challenge myself to read ten books in each of those categories at any point throughout the year. Since I typically read 75-100 books in a year, this will mean forty to fifty percent of my reading should be directed reading in 2018. Combined with a modified book buying ban (stop. buying. three. of. the. same. kind. of. book. at. once.), it should still leave room for mood reading while giving my reading life more focus.

Are you a mood reader? How do you choose your reads/make room for directed reading? 

Gratitude and Joy: Bluetooth and Unlit Rats

Gratitude and Joy: Day 13

I am grateful for:

Bluetooth

How did I live before I could connect my phone to things like my car? (I mean, the simple answer is that my phone did nothing but call people before Bluetooth and thus there was no need to connect it to things like my car, but.) Bluetooth lets me talk to far-away loved ones while also doing other things, like crochet or clean up the kitchen or stop the dog from chasing the cat around the entire interior perimeter of the house again. It lets me listen to my podcasts while I'm driving on my many errands. (How are there so many errands? I think they get together in small groups and multiply in the night.) This is one of those things I could live without, but that I marvel about on something like a weekly basis. How cool is it that I don't have to? In any case, I'm grateful that I don't.

I feel joy watching:

This scene from The Muppet's Christmas Carol

This is basically my sense of humor in one tidy twenty-five second filmic nutshell. 

Gratitude and Joy: Reliable Heat and A Child's Christmas in Wales

Gratitude and Joy: Day 12

I am grateful for:

Reliable Heat

It doesn't hang out below freezing too much where I live now, but we usually get a snap or two of below-freezing daytime highs each winter, and it is certainly cold enough from November through March that you'd know it if you didn't have a reliable source of heat. Like hot running water, this is something I don't think about much on any given day--it's cold in the house, turn the heat up a little. But in this moment, when I did just that, I'm reminded that not everyone has this luxury, and that it is a luxury indeed, just to push a button a couple of times and get warm air. I'm grateful that our circumstances allow us to keep warm and to not have to worry about how we're going to do so. 

I feel joy watching: 

A Child's Christmas in Wales

This 1987 TV movie adaptation of Dylan Thomas's short story about Christmas in early twentieth-century Wales has been a favorite of mine since childhood. Many of my family's in-jokes come from this film ("You're sure it isn't socks?"), and it's one of the handful of movies I watch every year instead of giving a skip every once in a while. Every moment of it is a delight and a joy.

Gratitude and Joy: Luthien and a Friendly Stranger

Gratitude and Joy: Day 11

I am grateful for:

Luthien
Luthien is the cat I adopted within weeks of moving into the first apartment I would live in alone. This was twelve years ago now. She was an adult cat then (though young), so now she's a cranky old bat. She's honestly harder to love than she used to be, what with all the medication she needs and the constant vocalizing, but love her I still do. I'm going to be crushed when she goes, so I try to remind myself as often as I can, while she's still with us, how much joy she has brought into my life (and still does, along with the frustrations) and how instrumental she was in my getting through grad school sane (ish).

I felt joy when:

A Stranger Was Friendly
Our neighborhood sees a fair amount of people going for family walks or walking their dogs. One lady comes here specially to walk because it is a quiet area and very pretty. I've seen her walking of an afternoon, usually on Sunday. We've exchanged greetings a few times, and one day--four or more months ago now--I was out with the dog and we stopped and chatted. She loved on the dog, and we spend a few nice minutes together. I hadn't seen her since, until yesterday. We didn't stop to chat this time, but we enthusiastically said hello to each other and she greeted my dog (who she's met once, remember) by name. How nice that was.

Gratitude and Joy: Kind Cashiers and The Hallelujah Chorus

Gratitude and Joy: Day 10

I am grateful for:

Kind Cashiers
The other day I picked up a few gift cards at the grocery store when I did my week's shopping. For whatever reason--maybe the cashier passed them to the bagger and he missed them or maybe she set them aside thinking I would put them in my purse and *I* missed them--I walked away without them. And then she noticed I didn't have them and chased me down to make sure I didn't walk way without the single most expensive thing I bought that day. Sometimes the little things are actually the big things, and I'm so grateful this woman saved me the inconvenience and expense of losing those gift cards.


I feel joy listening to:

"The Hallelujah Chorus"
They performed "The Hallelujah Chorus" as the encore at the Holiday Pops concert Friday night. Dang but I love "The Hallelujah Chorus." It is so majestic, so joyful, so so. It's one of those pieces that gives me that swelling emotion feeling that gets stuck in your throat. Also, when people actually know to stand up? Because tradition? It makes me feel connected to something bigger, just like the music does. If I had to describe joy, I don't think I could do better than to point to the feeling I get during those high, high notes in "The Hallelujah Chorus."

Gratitude and Joy: Podcasts and the RSO Holiday Pops Concert

Gratitude and Joy: Day 9

I am grateful for:

Podcasts
I debated with myself about whether this was a cheat since so many of the podcasts I listen to are part of the bookternet, and well, I already talked about that. But not all of the podcasts I listen to are about books, and what I get out of podcasts specifically isn't the same as what I get out of the bookternet generally, so here we are. Four years ago I had never listened to a podcast. Now I subscribe to a bunch, and I anticipate the days of the week based on which podcast drops on that day. My favorites are little daily treats, little highlights to my day, and they often help me get through my morning routine (and driving time) and prepare for the rest of the day. Like a favorite TV program or book, they become like friends I look forward to hanging out with once a week. In addition to entertaining me, they've also allowed me to easily expand my horizons in ways I might never have done without this format. I'm better informed about politics, science, and (definitely) the book world than I was before I started listening to them, and that's always a thing to be grateful for. 

I feel joyful at:

The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra Holiday Pops Concert
Like many local symphonies, ours has an annual pops concert in December devoted to Christmas music. We almost always go, and I can't express how much I love it. In addition to the orchestra, it always features several area choirs, and that may be part of why I love it so much. I was in choir from seventh grade through the end of college, and it was one of the single best things I ever did. I have great memories from those years, and I am always thrilled to see any choir perform. But the whole evening is always a delight: the symphony is excellent, the conductor is a hoot, and there's a bit at the end where the audience sings along through a medley of well-known carols and songs. This is the official start to the season for me, and it never fails to get me in the right spirit for Christmas.

Gratitude and Joy: My Physical Therapist and Snow

Gratitude and Joy: Day 8

I am grateful for:

My Physical Therapist
I've suffered headaches all my life. I have migraines, and I also get tension headaches. Six months ago or so my doctor suggested seeing a physical therapist to sort out the neck muscles that get cranky and give me those tension headaches (which, not a word of lie, you guys, are often worse than my migraines). And my physical therapist is amazing. The headaches have improved and my shoulders mostly hang out where they are supposed to now, rather than up around my ears. This was like a revelation. The first time I got in the pool to do some laps after I'd been working with her for a bit, I was like, "Oh. Oh! This is how shoulders are supposed to move." I'm so grateful that she is so good at what she does and that I have been able to see her. And, I'll just say, if you hang out at a desk for 10+ hours a day 5+ days a week, make sure you're taking care of your supporting muscles. Because if you don't, they'll eat you, you know.

I feel joyful around:

Snow
So, I don't like having to drive in it or shift it about so that I can drive in it, but beyond that, I love the stuff. Nothing is quite as magical as snow softly falling from the sky and turning everything crisp and white and sparkly. Seriously, it me.

Gratitude and Joy: History and Scottish Christmas Album

Gratitude and Joy: Day 7

I am grateful for:

History
I personally find history fascinating and entertaining, but what I'm grateful for is our access to it. I've been thinking about two different quotations lately: "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it" (Winston Churchill, and literally every other person interested in history ever, probably) and "May you live in an interesting age" (probably not an ancient Chinese curse). We certainly seem to be living in an interesting age, and one that is marking the rapid and increasing loss of our remaining elders who have meaningful memories of the greatest upheaval in the western world in the 20th century. A human being in their late teens at the end of World War II is, if still living, near ninety now. Our access to the terror, the horror, and the lessons of WWII, the Holocaust, and their fallout is increasingly becoming limited to what history has left for us. Our ability to generate and record new primary materials about the events that still ripple through our world in the form of ideologies, borders, and still simmering disputes is passing away. In another decade, it will be fully gone. This is the nature of life, of time. Those who remember will always pass away. Thus it is forever incumbent upon us to value our access to the truth and to support continuing efforts to record history as truthfully as we can. Of course historical accounts are always biased, but I am grateful to live in a time and a place where it is usually easy enough to identify those biases and avoid material that contains outright lies. May we remember that this is by no means guaranteed and fight for this kind of freedom to continue to be the case. 


I feel joyful listening to:

A Scottish Christmas
My grandparents gave me this Christmas album some twenty years ago, and it has remained one of my absolute favorites since then. I have always felt a strong affinity for my Scottish ancestry, and I'm one of those people who feels that sharp combination of joy and pride that almost turns into weeping at the sound of the bagpipes. If you are one of those folks who finds them screechy, I don't want to hear about it, but I will warn you that you aren't going to like this, one of my favorite pieces on the album. 

Gratitude and Joy: Hot Running Water and O Come O Come Emmanuel

Gratitude and Joy, Day 6

I am grateful for: 

Hot, Running Water
Yesterday, having no where to be and being somewhat behind my time in the a.m., through one thing and another, I didn't shower until late in the afternoon. So by the time I got around to it, it felt like a real blessing to be able to wash away two days' worth of grime under a steady stream of hot water. Hot running water is one of those things I mostly take for granted--it's always there, and if it's not, it's because something is *wrong*--and it's easy to forget how lucky we are--within the world and within history--to have access to it with the twist of a knob. As someone with cranky sinuses and perpetually tight shoulder and neck muscles, I'm particularly grateful to be able to apply hot and steam to myself every morning, and not just because it helps me get clean. 

I feel joyful when I listen to:

"O Come O Come Emmanuel"
This plaintive Christmas hymns is one of my favorites. It never fails to give me the shivers. There's something elemental about these harmonies. This is a nice version. Close your eyes. Yes? Shivers. 

Gratitude and Joy: Reading and Advent Calendars

Gratitude and Joy: Day 5

I am grateful for:

Reading

I am happiest when I can read for at least one uninterrupted hour every day. Some days I get a lot more than that, and most weeks there's a day or two (or three) where I'm lucky to manage ten minutes. Reading is one of my chief joys, and I've realized (not really for the first time) lately that it's also one of the most important ways that I take care of myself. Reading allows me to pause, to rest, to reset, while it also exercises my mind and entertains me. Long stretches without sustained reading time (even when those stretches are otherwise happy or fulfilling times) are invariably times when I feel out of sorts, not quite right with the world or myself. 

In the last nine days, I have only managed a proper sustained read once. I'm right in the middle of the harried part of the preparation for Christmas, the two weeks or so when all the decorating, buying, wrapping, card writing, post office going and last-minute yarn-craft-gift finishing happens, and I simply haven't had the time (or sometimes the energy, when the end of the day comes and I only have enough brain cells left for television). The absence of sustained reading makes me realize how much a I love it, how much it does for me, and how grateful I am that I have the ability--through literacy and leisure--to engage in such a sustaining hobby. 

I am made joyful by:

Advent Calendars 

We always had an advent calendar when I was growing up. The one I remember best was a 3-D jobber of a cathedral. You had to walk around the whole thing to find the right door for the day. I delighted in it every morning. That particular calendar kind of died at some point and we had others in my teenaged years. My high school German teacher always incorporated a German advent calendar into lessons in December. (Those had chocoloate behind the doors, a thing which until that time was unheard of in my world, though it seems to be very common here now.) I've had one every year of my adult life too, supplemented in the last few seasons by a nifty animated one on the computer that involves music and activities. They are a simple treat, a small thing to look forward to , and the prospect of opening the door each day still sparks that little joy in me that it did as a kid. Now, too, it helps me slow down and notice the passing of each day rather than letting them all congeal into one great seasonal clump.

Gratitude and Joy: Thursday and Ceehke

Gratitude and Joy: Day 4

I am grateful for:

Thursday:
Thursday is my golden retriever. She is a year and a half old, and she is made of equal parts adorable, twirl, and buttface miscreant. I can just about remember not having a dog as a kid, but only just. I was six when we got our first one. But when I moved out, I wasn't in a position to have a dog--apartment living and long, looong hours away from home in graduate school. I got a cat as soon as I thought I could manage one financially, and I adore her. But I missed having a dog. So once we got a house and got settled into it and got a proper fence in the back yard, the search for a doggo began. Thursday is work, I'll tell ya. She has all the energy. Have you been feeling run down lately? Mmmhmm, it's because my dog took all the energy for herself. And she wants all the attention, always. And, oh hey, did you know that a dog has to be taken outside to do its business where a cat just saunters off to its box and leaves you alone? But I wouldn't trade her for the world. My mom calls pets our "furry blessings." That couldn't be more true, and every evening when I get the dog settled for bed, I try to remind myself how grateful I am to have the Blonde Wonder in my life. 

I feel joyful watching:

This scene from episode fourteen of season two of All Creatures Great and Small
The set up! The unhurriedness of it all! The constant mooing and birdsong in the background! How serious they all are!

Gratitude and Joy: My Neighborhood Church and Trees

Gratitude and Joy: Day 3

I am grateful for:

My Neighborhood Church:
We didn't go to church growing up. My parents grew up Methodist and were not "lapsed" so much as intentionally "nah" by the time I came around. Both sets of grandparents went to church and nearly all of my childhood friends did, so I went sometimes if I was staying over the weekend with someone who did. Recently I've become interested in exploring my spirituality and religion, less because of any kind of newfound belief and more out of a desire to see what's what and find out what I believe and what a spiritual community and ritual might have to offer me. I'll go from there. 

I did some research before picking a church to attend, and boy, did I luck out. The Presbyterian church I've been going to--still very sporadically--is literally in my neighborhood (which feels important somehow, and beyond the pleasantness for a newbie to a Sunday morning get-up routine of a less than ten minute round-trip), the service is traditional without feeling out of touch, the sermons are excellent and on point, the music (my single favorite part) is lovely, and--most important--everyone is genuine, friendly, welcoming, and *not pushy.* I don't know yet whether I will become a regular attendee of this (or any) church or if my attendance will change anything about what I believe or my relationship with faith, but I'm so grateful to have found a place to explore it that I enjoy going to and where I feel welcome.

I feel joyful around:

Trees:
You've probably seen one of those articles of foreign words for things we can't say in English and come across the Japanese word shinrin-yoku, which means "forest bath," and refers to a contemplative walk through nature. They're always accompanied by pictures of beautiful trees, these articles, and every time I come across one of them, something inside me goes "Yep." I've always been a lover of trees, and lately I've been trying to go for a short walk through our neighborhood as near to every morning as I can manage. We're right on the edge between the end of the city and the beginning of the country here, and we have a lot of trees and almost, almost, a forest just up the road. For a joyful start to the day, nothing beats a quiet walk under sunlight dappling through the trees.

Gratitude and Joy: Extras and Pentatonix's Hark the Harald Angels Sing

Gratitude and Joy: Day 2

I am grateful for: 

Extras:

Today was tree day in our house. We drove our SUV ten miles to the edge of town and bought a freshly cut Christmas tree and brought it back to our spacious house and decorated it with lights and ornaments while we listened to music on our fancy entertainment system. Yesterday I went to Target and bought a fair amount of nice things that are pretty and pleasant to have that we do not need, like a new pillow that says "Merry Christmas" on it and some new tree ornaments and a spiffy plastic box designed to keep your light strings from getting tangled up in storage. I derive a lot of emotional security and real, but surface-level, happiness from having pleasant things, but in the end, they are extras. Because they do make me feel genuinely good, I am grateful that we are in a position to provide them for ourselves. But today I'm using my gratitude to challenge myself to remember more often those who live without the extras and those who struggle without the necessities. We support a number of causes that are important to us, but it's been a while since I've put my body where our money is. I've been thinking about finding a soup kitchen to volunteer at regularly or training to help out at our local literacy initiative, which largely helps refugees who have relocated to our area learn the English they need to help them rebuild their lives in our country. In light of the extras I'm glad to have, it's time to commit to one of these inclinations to help those who don't.   

I feel joyful listening to:

"Hark the Harald Angels Sing," by Pentatonix

The first verse of Penatonix's "Hark the Harald Angels Sing" brings tears to my eyes. The harmony! The bass! I'm going to let this one speak for itself: go listen. If you have a good pair of headphones you can plug into your device, do. Trust me, it will be worth it. 

Gratitude and Joy: The Bookternet and The Moon

Gratitude and Joy: Day 1

I am grateful for:

The Bookterweb
As an eighties kid, I kind of grew up along with the internet. It started out for me as a thing you got on to do a specific thing, like check your email or read a fannish bulletin board. It remained a novelty for quite a while, a thing I sometimes did (not so much used) just for the sake of doing it. Hey! I'm internetting! How cool is this? It's morphed by now, of course, into an ever-present entity, a thing I kind of can't really get through my day without and which I find myself doing brain hacks to lessen my reliance on. My relationship with it has soured, in other words. But there's one piece of it that invariably improves my life, and that's the bookterweb.

I've always been a bookish person, and for long years my desire to be a part of the book world was satisfied by being a college student and later a graduate student in English. Book people everywhere! But those days are behind me now, and I miss having bookish people wherever I turn. But the bookish parts of the internet do an excellent job standing in for a large circle of book-friendly acquaintances. (Sometimes it's better than a large circle of book-friendly acquaintances. The bookterweb will always be more diverse and cater to more niches than any group of humans gathered in one place can hope to be.) It's only been in the last four years or so that I've really sunk elbow-deep in bookish places online, and I've realized lately just how much all of those places add to my intellectual and emotional life. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I saw that a day does not go by where I am not brought happiness by bookish websites, forums, podcasts, or Youtube videos that I would not find anywhere else. They say the internet makes it easier for people to find their tribe. I've found mine, even if I might like to interact face-to-face more than the internet allows for, and seriously, how cool is that?

I feel joyful around:

The Moon
The moon is just a sliver shy of full tonight, and as I was walking the dog, trying to hurry her along a bit to get us inside the nice, lit-up house and out of the dark road, I caught sight of the moon through the bare branches of a tree in our yard. And it stopped me cold. It often does. I glance up and it catches me, hanging there in all its certainty and improbability. I'm not the first person to feel small gazing up at it or the first person to get kind of warm in the chest and break out in a grin at the sight of it either, I'm sure. It takes me a minute sometimes to identify that feeling I get, because it's so big, and tinged with something just a bit fearsome, but it is joy. Hanging right there in the sky.