11/19/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 19

I am grateful my husband gives me assignments when he knows I am feeling blue, to go outside with my camera. Otherwise, I may never have noticed that spiders build webs in clothespins. I am grateful for date night takeout and not having to cook dinner. I am grateful for the reflections shimmering on the bay, the moon slipping out from behind its veil as it followed us, and the surprising coating of hail around one curve of the bay road. It’s easy to feel grateful on Thursdays.

11/20/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 20

I am grateful for hope.

11/21/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 21

Today I am grateful that my husband bought me a heated shirt, and that he reminded me it might be a good day to wear it at farmer’s market. He bought it back when I used to spend hours at a time in a 2 degree C cold room siphoning carefully around Arctic cod embryos, and it was a game changer in my life on the same level as the sun ball. (Cold/dark are not my happy places have we talked about this?) I was so happy to push the power button on my shirt after the initial hustle to get the booth set up was over and it was time to stand in one place where I’d need my extremities to continue to function in order to punch calculator buttons. Continue to function they did! Also, the sun was especially shiny today and I am grateful for that excellent light, in addition to warmth.

11/22/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 22

It has been eight years and eleven months since Rich first talked to me about watching the sunrise while out in the forest cutting firewood… and today we celebrated by taking a drive out to the forest to cut firewood! I didn’t lift a finger, but instead hiked around the surrounding area with my camera, finding fungus in all colors and sizes, and admiring the stumps of the original old growth trees that once presided over the area. These stumps had seen fire long ago, and the moss and lichen layers now knit variegated green tapestries across the charred black canvas. My favorite aspect of the fantastically gigantic stumps was that they each had some sort of window or archway or dome built into them, and each one now housed a hollowed out center – or maybe more accurately, a hallowed space. I peeked through the windows, positioning myself where I could gaze upward through them at the stained glass effect made by the trees and sky, but I did not enter each cathedral, fearing I’d drop down into some underground root system catacomb never to be heard from again. As I circumnavigated each stump, I would inevitably end up on my knees, photographing the tiny mushrooms juxtaposed against such immensity, marveling at the poetry of the whole thing. Rich watched a half dozen elk glide through the ravine from his vantage point, and when he was done filling the truck, he met me down by the stream that coursed for stretches out in the open, then snuck underneath the spongy moss-covered layers of old decomposing timber. Eight years and eleven months ago, Rich and I concluded that we have the same idea of how to go to church on Sunday, and I am grateful we got to spend our morning doing just that together.

11/23/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 23

So much to be grateful for, like a brother phone call, a super quick and friendly grocery pickup (I had my book with me…), a kitty perched sideways on his tower, a pastel rainbow halo around the moon as its reflection in the swamp water looked like a shiny egg in a nest of twig shadows, then hovered in just the perfect pocket between tree limb silhouettes on a bayou walk, in the periwinkle sky as our after work walks inch closer to dusk. Scattering more seeds in the gratitude garden.

11/24/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 24

I am belatedly posting a Tuesday post again, because between actually having lab work to do again, and the third session of my writing workshop, I ran out of both time and words. It’s funny because with how I am fairly stewed in words by the end of a workshop session, I simply cannot form sentences. Then this morning my brain woke up at 4:40 with words, but they were for the workshop piece, not the gratitude post! I joked today that I will dedicate my first book to the sun ball which is 100% responsible for me being a born again morning person. I am grateful both for work and workshops, and that my gainful employment brings me up close to creatures such as cod #9436, pictured here looking out from the swim tunnel (think fish treadmill). Of all the years to have been learning so much about respiration, a year characterized by so many horrific examples of struggling to breathe. I am learning all kinds of things about how cold water fish like #9436 breathe, and how they struggle to breathe in water that is too warm. I am grateful to use my dimensional analysis skills hard won in freshman Chemistry class, to still keep trying to save the planet.

11/25/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 25

Today I am grateful that on my way to put my fish through its paces, I arrived on the scene of a rainbow shining brightly over the ocean.