Tag Archives: popcorn

~thankful thursday~ everywhere and nowhere

Posted on by
1

11/18/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 18

Today I’m feeling grateful for all the little things, the popcorn and cranberries that grow into long garlands of gratitude if you string them one by one.

 

11/19/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 19

I am grateful for spontaneous dates to go outside and look at the moon. Rich handed me my jacket a little while ago and took me out on a moon date this evening. This photo is not from tonight, but from a moon date somewhere in New Mexico, waking up in a Rest Area and getting back on the road toward home.

 

11/20/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 20

I am grateful for good work bringing good food to good people. I am grateful for Saturday sun. I am grateful for my crew who sees to it that I take my break, eat my thermos full of chili, and hydrate. I am grateful for chocolate poblano peppers burnished past green to purple-brown and all the way to red. I am grateful for the architecture of each savoy cabbage leaf. I am grateful for roots.

 

11/21/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 21

I am grateful for a hike with Quinn, for frost pockets and cold creeks, for beaded webs and sunshine on son.

 

11/22/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 22

I am not taking this class for a grade so it’s fine if I cheat. November has some easy days of gratitude that I shamelessly capitalize on. November 6th is nachos. The 22nd is not the only day I dedicate to husband gratitude, but it’s a definite one each and every year. Every 22nd of every month is to be celebrated, whether we are celebrating our first date or our wedding day, and all the 22nds in between bear the title “dorkaversary” to keep things light. Today is the penultimate dorkaversary before we celebrate Ten Years Together on December 22nd.

This morning as we were wishing each other a happy dorkaversary, we recalled that ten Novembers ago, we were being helped along in our eventual romance by our yoga teacher, who decided it was high time for a partner yoga series! “Breathe with your partner,” she told us, as we sat back-to-back lengthening our spines and working out how to breathe at all, much less with our partner, oh my. “Now twist to the right and reach your right hand to hold onto your partner’s left thigh.” Do what now?! At this point in the narration Rich freely deviates from what actually happened. “That’s not my thigh you’re grabbing…”

He cannot behave. I will need more time to work on him! So grateful for the time we’ve spent together.

 

11/23/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 23

I am grateful for hope, which appears in this moment not as a thing with feathers, but with fur. A sea otter has been visiting our Oregon coast for several days! This is an event that for most people is probably cute and fun, but for me, it is a profound gift in a heavy time of loss.

I got into marine biology to save endangered species I loved. I became better informed about that over time, and I doubt very seriously that what I do is helping at all. What I do feels like a painstaking documentation of extinction. I know an awful lot about the very specific details of endangerment, how whole ecosystems have folded in on themselves, how our coastline here resembles what it was a century ago only on the very surface. I can take credit for saving nothing.

Sea otters were hunted down to about 1% of their historic population size. The last known individual sea otter swimming in Oregon waters was shot off Newport in 1907. Locally extinct ever since (a reintroduction attempt in the 70s did not succeed), they no longer exert control over sea urchins, which overgraze the kelp holding down the base of this ecosystem. Other species help in the role of maintaining kelp forests, though none to the extent that otters once did. Lately I lean over the edge of every far-out tidepool I visit, hoping and wishing to see a sunflower star, an important urchin predator in the absence of otters. But sunflower stars reached critically endangered status in December 2020, failing to make a comeback from the sea star wasting disease epidemic that began in 2013. Locally extinct now in the southern part of its range, sightings in Oregon are now vanishingly rare. I have not been able to find one.

I started writing gratitude posts as a way to pick myself up when the long shadows of the cold dark fall bring on familiar seasonal despair. But these last two years… despair has not been a seasonal condition. I have struggled with even wanting to bring it up this year, but my kid has still not come home to me, and this day, the 23rd, is his day the same way the 22nd is for Rich and I. I’ve been Quinn’s mom for fourteen years and nine months, and to only see him a few times a week on video and every other Sunday for a hike is… well, despair has been a steady state for this mama.

When he was little, Quinn would get into a cardboard box boat and bring a book in with him to read while he paddled, set crab traps, and coiled his ropes. One frequent book was A Lot of Otters. The premise: Mother Moon and her child become separated, her tears fall into the ocean and become stars, the otters play with the stars and draw her attention to the child by concentrating their light, and she and her child are reunited.

And this is why I will never achieve any type of greatness in my field. I cannot separate this entire bundle of emotion and sadness and longing and grief and tenderness and hope from this one tiny furry being. Somehow, now, this otter is carrying on its belly, not just a tasty meal of sea urchin, but a whole load of other baggage I need it to carry for me. It is too much for one otter to fix a whole broken ecosystem, a whole broken society, a teen’s anxiety, a mama’s broken heart.

I got to see the otter for about thirty seconds yesterday. I stood there for a lot longer than thirty seconds. Waiting. Watching. My hands took a while to recover from the cold after I left, but I saw the otter. I am so grateful I got to see the otter.

This morning Rich asked, already knowing the answer, whether I would go back again today to check on the otter. I did not see the otter today. But when I heard a rumor that there was also an orca sighted in the area this morning, I knew I would stand there for a long time again. I did not see the orca either. I hope to see orcas someday. (Yes, I am crossing my fingers the orca did not see the otter…)

Maybe why I like marine mammals is that there is no guarantee of seeing them. Someone said aloud what I always think to myself about that gaze you get into when looking for mammals: that you look everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

It makes me think of one quote Joseph Campbell used about God, “an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”

The seeking is the thing. The waves are rough and the mammals are hiding, I’m standing there, looking at the whole wide circle of ocean, looking everywhere and nowhere. Looking for hope.

 

11/24/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 24

I am grateful for this sound.

~thankful thursday~ popcorn seeds

Posted on by
Reply

11/26/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 26

I am grateful to still be feeling the considerable benefits of this gratitude practice, nearing the end of year five! This year more than any other, it is clear to me that I don’t have to feel great to feel grateful… but purposely cultivating gratitude does help me feel better. I think I will still close out this year’s 30 day challenge feeling like the bedraggled flower I was when I began, but I will also have set aside a good stash of seeds for next season. As for today specifically, I’m grateful for a yummy nourishing meal, a daylight walk in the woods with Rich, some good music, and a piece of pecan pie waiting for me.

 

11/27/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 27

I am grateful for good men. It is a gratefulness saturated with grief today. I am listening to the good man I am married to talking to his Aunt on the phone to let her know her brother, his father, passed away today. My father-in-law was the wonderful man responsible for raising the wonderful man I love. I am so sad, and wanted to let tonight be a moment of silence, but I decided to google gratitude and grief… and here is what Brené Brown says:

“Gratitude is vulnerability. I’ve had the honor of sitting across from people who have survived tremendous things. No matter what the trauma was, they said: “when those around me are grateful for what they have, I know they understand the magnitude of what I’ve lost”. So often we’re afraid to be grateful for what we have because we think it’s insensitive to those who have lost. However I think gratitude, in some ways, is healing for people.”

I always loved to be the one to make Bob a cup of coffee or pop open a beer for him, on the extremely rare occasions he’d indulge in either one. Tonight we toasted him using the glasses he gave us, and I imagine some popcorn will be popped in his honor in the next couple of days. (Yet another divine thing he is responsible for teaching my husband.) I’m posting one of my favorite photos of our dads from our wedding. I am so very grateful for the memories we get to carry forward with us, of this good man.

 

11/28/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 28

I am grateful for the solace of our backyard.

 

11/29/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 29

I am grateful for light. Back to church we went today, and this time the sun crested like a wave over the ridge, poured itself through great cylindrical columns into the coral reef of fungus arrayed across the layers of ancient trees, and sublimed in droplets from tiny jellyfish mushrooms swimming up a tree limb.

 

11/30/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 30

I can tell that the gratitude challenge has had its intended effect on me again this year, because day 30 whizzed right by me without even thinking about writing a post, but was still a day in which grateful thoughts crossed my mind numerous times. I have tried to make a point over the last few years to remind myself that gratitude is not a class I’m taking for a grade, but I really feel that not showing up on the last day of class proves that I’m absorbing this lesson.

If I had a theme this year it might be the seeds of gratitude planted in the gratitude garden, and how they are an investment in my future nourishment. Whenever I notice and appreciate the snuggly kitty on my lap, the warmth emanating from the wood stove, or my hardworking husband coming home from work, it’s another seed in the seed bank. These dormant spirals of potential, storing an idea for next year, waiting it out through the harsh conditions of winter. So many adaptations to fly, float, cling, catapult, shake, or shatter, to make sure they deliver on the promise of future abundance. Many kinds of seeds require a little hardship to germinate when conditions become hospitable for growth; a freeze, some scarring, a soak in some acid, a trip through an animal gut, smoke exposure, or even trial by fire.

Somehow this fire-tested emblem of tiny, vulnerable faith, whispering its wisdom of diversity, became the mascot of gratitude 2020 and that’s just how this magic seems to work.

All of that to say, today I am grateful for nachos for dinner. Thanks for joining me y’all!

~thankful thursday~ gratitude garland

Posted on by
1

 

11/29/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 29

At noon today, Rich and I were standing in the frosty back yard again, noticing how incredibly low the sun was in the sky at the apex of its climb for the day. This is routinely a thing which I lament; my fear, dread, and dislike of cold darkness have been foregone conclusions for all the years of my life. But without winter, would the sunlight linger at such acute angles to the ground on which I stand? Would it illuminate the webs, and then the frost, with such iridescent rainbow vividness?

Developing the gratitude gaze is a little bit like getting in the beachcombing zone. Once you learn how to see the fossil, agate, or shell you’re looking for, even if you go longer stretches between seeing them, you have your eyes focused just the right way to eventually see the next one. Once I started seeing rainbow spider webs, I knew how to see them, and started seeing more of them. Once I started to seek out the blessings in my life to start stringing them on my strand of popcorn and cranberries, I kept seeing more and more of them, and the strand just grew and grew.

I feel less like I need to rush through winter and cling to the coming of spring to keep me from succumbing to the darkness. The buds of spring give way to butterflies, the bursting blooms of summer give way to webs which give way to frosty fallen leaves. At all of these moments, there are qualities to admire and beauty to savor. This gratitude practice has helped me start to trust in it.

True, the angle of the sun this time of year increases the length of the shadows. But it also means there are afternoon sun rays beamed at just the right angle to produce a rainbow in the spider web, something that would not be the case in the height of summer. It means the morning sun creeps up gently enough to set the frosty grass aglow.

Looking into the long shadows is not always a deep dive into darkness. I am grateful for back yard walks with my husband today, and grateful that so many stories about shadows end up being stories about light.

11/30/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 30

The hummingbirds were nestled all snug in their hummingbird-down sleeping bags. It was cold in the Land of Gratitude.

Inside the dragon house, the wood stove had been stoked by the husband person, the kitties were snuggled on laps, naps had been taken, and we had eaten another Thanksgiving meal that couldn’t be beat (and I don’t mean nachos!).

shadows and light

Tying off the end of this strand of my gratitude garland across my corner of the web, I looked back to try to see where the other end was knotted, but it reached out so far behind me that all I could feel was a little tug on my soul.

please

As I simmered in my slow cooker, I could feel my molecules starting to align into a new arrangement, just the first hint of the influence of a month-long Quest causing the molecules in solution to align with an almost magnetic inner compass bearing calibrated to a true north called gratitude.

thank you

It’s full of shadows here in my slow cooker, but I am doing my best caterpillar soup meltdown meditation, spending the dark season doing the building and gleaning and restoring in anticipation of the promise of soaring in sunshine among bountiful blooms in seasons to come. This chrysalis of mine got its name from the Greek word for gold, and although that name might refer to the droplets of gold meticulously painted onto the outside of the monarch’s container of transformation, I think maybe it could also have something to do with what’s developing within, waiting to emerge and unfurl its wings with the daffodils and cherry blossoms, come spring.

I am grateful I don’t need to tie up every metaphor I used this month into one cohesive final chapter. I am grateful that I do not need to get an A in gratitude. B is for Butterflies, after all.

 

12/2/19

~30 days of gratitude~ Epilogue

Rich cried himself to sleep last night because, “nothing to read.” As I climbed into bed, I handed him a blue shop towel, and told him a story about how the Gratitude fairy will come back next November, even though she needs to hibernate for the winter now.

I am grateful for laughter and love.

I am writing this epilogue just to declare that there is no way in the world that I would be able to write four years of daily November gratitude posts without this guy’s support and encouragement. There is no way. I asked him last night if he ever felt I revealed too much about our life on the internet, and he just chuckled and said, “well, that ship has sailed.” He never gave me so much as a disapproving look or held me back in any way. Instead, when I talked about something else besides him during the first week of the first year, I remember him lamenting, “I was a one-hit wonder!” He makes me laugh and keep writing.

It is early morning and I am sitting on the couch, having been invited here by my son who is up extra early on Monday morning after a well-rested long weekend. He is reading his book and we are snuggled under fuzzy blankets by the wood stove. The page has turned, and it is December, though I’m still feeling grateful, my garland of popcorn and cranberries strung in a prominent place in my heart to remind me how.

I am turning to writing other writings that have been on the back burner for the month. If anyone wants to read more of my writing throughout the year, and not just in November, I have a blog that I post on roughly once a week, though the subject is not limited to gratitude. A lot of times I end up posting photo rainbows or updates about Quinn for his Grammy, the origin story for many a mommy blog; it is definitely not a food blog, though nachos do get mentioned occasionally. Oh, and the November gratitude posts are all archived there as well, for easy binge-reading when next November seems like a long time to wait. A few years ago I started a facebook page for my blog, and have been posting there consistently so that people who prefer to follow along that way (vs. the three of us who still use blog feed readers) can do so. If you have any trouble finding where to like/follow it, let me know and I will send you an invite.

A final thank you to all of you lovelies who have joined in and encouraged this crazy habit of mine. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

~thankful thursday~ butterfly effect

Posted on by
3

 

11/21/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 21

When the frost covering my windshield called for me to dig up my ice scraper this morning, Quinn said, “Ooh! Can I help?” And I felt so grateful sitting in the driver’s seat, sipping my coffee, while he did his detail-oriented scraping.

Riding on a school bus full of seventh graders headed East on Highway 20 this morning, I felt grateful (I realize that sounds far-fetched, but it’s true). Quinn and his friend played chopsticks, coconuts, and I Spy, requiring nothing more than their hands and voices to be entertained indefinitely. The tree-filtered sunlight projected the smiley faces drawn on the frosty bus windows across the gray seat backs, and they danced and smiled and stretched larger as we drove along.

A Newport grad gave us a campus tour, and then we watched the women’s basketball team be amazing. Quinn’s sound sensory overload in the basketball arena quickly dissipated when I distracted him with my Sudoku app. Watching his awesome teachers handle everything so capably, I felt very grateful. I feel especially grateful for teachers like the one who shared with Quinn her own story of growing up in two households, and how jazzed she was when she got to her college dorm and had all of her things in one place at long last. He is with others more and more, and with me less and less, so it makes me feel good that others care enough to relate to him on such a meaningful level. The boy, all the kids, the teachers, the grad, the team, all made me feel optimistic about the future.

After my day of chaperoning, I was grateful to check a very big item off the to-do list, and Quinn now has a passport application pending. A swim lesson and a karate class later (grateful for these instructors as well), and now we have eaten our nachos and are toasting with kitties by the wood stove. We have eaten nachos an undisclosed number of other times this week already, and I am grateful that my dudes never complain about having them no matter how November it gets around here.

 

11/22/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 22

One of the best things that ever happened to me happened during the cold, frosty, dark part of the year. I was a single mama having just debuted a schedule including two father-son overnights per week. One of those nights of the week featured a yoga class to which I signed up, and there was a handsome man in the yoga class, and we went on our first date on the shortest day of that year, seven years and eleven months ago.

Now his name pops up in my phone as “Rich husband person” with a picture of us being wind-whipped on Agate beach in our wedding attire, the day after we got married, two years and four months ago, and laughing our faces off.

This morning as we wished each other a happy dorkaversary (as we do on the 22nd of any month) he teased that I had probably already run my background check on him by this point in the year, but as you may have noticed, I write things down. According to my documentation, my trusted background checker had not yet reported back on his worthiness as a crush. Soon, she would give me two thumbs up, and our yoga teacher (who would end up officiating our wedding) would pair us up as partners and start assigning us some partner poses that made it somewhat difficult to focus on the breath.

Recently we went on a date to the play Tiny Beautiful Things, an amazing performance we both thoroughly enjoyed, though I basically sobbed my way through it. The play (and the book it is based on) peer into the shadows, much the way I have spent this November, but ultimately the story shines such a warm light out to the world. As we settled into our seats before the show, the woman next to me joked, “I only brought enough tissues for myself.” I reassured her that I had brought some for me, then turned to Rich. “Honey, I hope you brought something.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue shop towel! Of course. Industrial strength.

I’m grateful for his steady, stable presence. So big and strong, yet very flexible – as evidenced by the way he is wrapped right around the pinkies of three granddaughters. We’re a great team, through thick and thin, and even internet swooning.

 

11/23/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 23

Because religious dogma and personified male deities are subjects I have grappled with in my life, I have taken a long time to embrace the application of the action verb to pray to my personal noun, but when I look at the way I relate to the spirit and energy in the universe, I find that there are a few one-word messages I say to it that are prayers.

Each day as Quinn leans towards me, letting me kiss the top of his head before he lugs his giant red backpack off to middle school, I inhale his cinnamon scalp, then exhale a prayer for his safety as I pull away from the curb. Please.

When I kiss my husband as he goes off to build metal fuel tanks out of fire aboard floating grease tubs: Please.

Each time I think of Mom awaiting the results of her most recent round of medical tests: Please.

I utter many prayers of Please. Prayers of Thanks? I think I spend November intentionally focusing on these, because the scale is usually tipped well over to the Please side of the balance the rest of the year.

My intriguing son. Thank you. My loving husband. Thank you. Mom, Dad, kitties, wood stove fires, library books, coffee, veggies, nachos. Thank you. The way my fairy dog is snuggled under the blanket on my lap, her soul string knotted securely to my heart. Thank you.

It doesn’t seem to matter that my prayers of Thanks are repetitive. Threading gratitude onto a string like popcorn and cranberries, I tend to alternate Rich, Quinn, Rich, Quinn, with some other nuts and berries and cinnamon sticks mixed in at intervals, This still results in a long, festive strand of gratitude garland with which to decorate my dark December interior. November is spent running my fingers over each of these nuggets, like rosary beads, breathing each one in, breathing out like a prayer. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

11/24/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 24

Today I am grateful for sleeping in, sunshine, and a breakfast date.

For dog snuggles, for making our home cleaner together, and for a nice chat with Mom.

Mom and I both feel like November has rushed by. When November begins, at least for the past four Novembers, I feel this daunting sense of “30 whole days?!” when I’m committing to doing this gratitude challenge. Then suddenly, it’s day 24! Blink, it’s December.

I told her I still feel like this gratitude thing is good for me, especially at this time of year. It has become my way of intentionally setting the tone for my hardest season, of dwelling on the good of the present moment.  A small change in the initial conditions of my winter might be enough to determine a very different set of outcomes for me, by the time I make it to next spring.

I think someone has already called that the Butterfly Effect…

 

11/25/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 25

I am grateful for good news and good signs today.

I am grateful for natural beauty that makes me pull over the car and get out to look at it, with my mouth hanging open.

I am grateful for dinners leading up to thanksgiving that I like to think of as “gathering together ghetto”, in which parsnip fries and roasted kalettes are sides to… hot dogs! We’re not trying to create too many leftovers in the early part of this week, after all. Another gathering together ghetto dinner I like is to top Papa Murphy’s faves with fresh organic veggies from the farm! Now you see why I’m not a food blogger.

I am grateful for time to get my turkey and cranberry shopping done today.

I am grateful for karate kid movie nights with my rainbow love.

Popcorn and cranberries, repeat.

11/26/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 26

I am thankful for my brothers, one of whom is celebrating a birthday today. I feel particularly grateful for their positive role model position in my son’s life. They both take him under their wing for various areas of expertise when they get around him (one for chess and computer stuff, the other for drums). But it’s more that they are nice, caring men being themselves in his general vicinity that I really love. Neither one of them is afraid to be who they are, not afraid of hugs or babies or rolling out a pie crust. Both are wonderful fathers and the most excellent uncles.

None of these are very recent photos, but they are all special ones that I was looking through this evening, feeling the sibling gratitude.

11/27/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 27

Speaking of rolling out pie crust… I am thankful for a reliable family pie crust recipe. I am grateful for the threats from Rich to wake up in the middle of the night and start eating the chocolate bourbon pecan one that is cooling on the table. Luckily the threats are empty, because I would sleep right through that. I am also thankful I know what to make for dinner when I’ve been in the kitchen long enough for one evening already. It starts with the same letter as November.

I am very grateful that Quinn comes home tomorrow. There is a special kind of gratitude to be felt watching a boy who is growing at an obscenely fast rate eat plate after plate of food, so tomorrow will be the perfect homecoming during which I can heap abundance upon his growth spurt.

I’m not usually grateful for cold hands, but I certainly tend to have them this time of year, and I’ve heard they are useful in making pie. “Cold hands, warm heart,” the saying goes. Last night as I made grilled cheese (it’s still non-leftover meal week!) I thought of how my mom began a tradition of “putting the love in” the sandwiches when we were kids that my brothers and I do for our sons. I like to think of the food I feed to my guys as a love language, and foods like pie, where each molecule of buttery dough is held in my hands before being filled with sweetness, seem like especially good vehicles for conveying food love.

 

11/28/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 28

Happy Thanksgiving! It’s been a day full of abundance here at the dragon house. Abundant sleeping in, abundant good food, abundant wood heat, and abundant love.

Today I am feeling very grateful for our parents. Rich got to talk to his Oklahoma Mom and Dad today, and it is nice to hear their updates filtered through him, as well as hear his side of the conversation. He says such nice things about me when he talks to other people, and I really like that about him. I found out that Bob (of the legendary popcorn) has been ninja-reading my gratitude posts. We are very grateful to hear that they are both in good health.

I am also grateful for Rich’s Oregon Mom, to whom I refer as my outlaw-mother, who came and saved me from having to carve the turkey. She is our one local parent of our five parents, and we feel lucky and grateful to get to celebrate holidays with her. I particularly enjoyed watching Quinn sit side by side with her as they laughed hysterically at YouTube videos this evening.

One of the first things that I learned about Rich, even before our first date, was that he has two moms, and that he loves them both very much. I knew he was going to be a good one, from that moment. You want a guy who loves his Mom. And this guy loves both of his!

My Mom and Dad… well, I talk about them a lot already, but I’ll always be very grateful for them. My appreciation for them grows all the time. I don’t know why I was thinking of this today, maybe because Rich and I took a walk through the frosty back yard and walked right by the spot where we gave our wedding toast, but one of the main things Rich and I agreed on wanting to mention during that toast was our parents. For their love, their support, and the wonderful example they have set for us. I’d like to honor them by dedicating this Thanksgiving Day gratitude post to our five wonderful parents!

~thankful thursday~wonder woman and spider webs

Posted on by
1

11/14/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 14

I’m feeling very grateful for my gainful employment tonight as I sign Quinn up for another big traveling adventure. It is a lot of fun to watch him becoming more and more himself, to find out what he loves and what experiences he asks for, and this travel buff situation is really a fun thing to learn about him. I’m so excited for how these trips will broaden his horizons. The photos are from our trip to New York in August (when he asked if we would be passing through O’Hare and its C terminal dinosaur – see it?) and his time in the painted hills this summer at paleontology camp (taken by his instructor, I wasn’t there). He is basically the most interesting person in the world, so I’m feeling pretty grateful to get to be his mama.

11/15/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 15

I’m so grateful I don’t need to get an A in gratitude. I’m not taking this class for a grade! Happy Friday, friends.

 

11/16/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 16

I am grateful for the comforts of home after a day of hustle and bustle at farmer’s market. Nachos, a hot bath, a wood stove fire, a kitty curled up in a round basket, and another one stretched luxuriously on a cushion. A long session was held for brainstorming creatures originating from various permutations of elements for the video game Quinn is designing on graph paper. Some of the ideas popped into mind without effort: water-air-magic was obviously a rainbow, while fire-air-magic was immediately a dragon. Fire-water-nature took us a few minutes to think of, until we thought of hydrothermal vents. Sometimes we thought of the being (a phoenix must be included!) before we placed it in its elemental category (fire-air-magic-nature). I think it’s going to be a cool game, including angler fish (fire-water), salmon (water-nature), flying fish (air-water-fire-nature), geysers (water-fire-air-magic), narwhals (water-nature-magic), and the northern lights (air-nature-magic). I can’t wait to see how a sandstorm (fire-air-nature), a hot air balloon (fire-air-magic), a giant squid (water-fire-magic-nature), and a lily pad (air-water-nature) will interact.

A little air-nature-magic being told me that unstructured time with loved ones is a grateful way to spend a Saturday.

11/17/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 17

If there is a rainbow connection, I think gratitude might be a key element of its composition. I know that writing these gratitude posts brings the lovers and dreamers out to visit, and four years in, I love how it starts to feel like a little reunion of kindreds. The sweetest people tell me my gratitude posts are their favorite thing to read in November, that they make them both laugh and cry; this makes me cry, too, and we all laugh, and feel grateful in groups. I am grateful for these connections.

I’ve been weaving a web to intentionally capture gratitude and it’s working. Each year I remark on the way gratitude creates feedback loops of even more things to be grateful for and begets more gratitude. Even on days when I’m having trouble accessing gratitude, a Memory pops up and shows me a younger Quinn, or my handsome fire-builder, or a post about my parents’ farm, where I might already be lingering in spirit on that day, and this whisper of oxygen onto the smoldering coals rekindles the gratitude fire. The Ghost of Gratitude Past is a comforting companion, carrying a time capsule full of love letters to the world mailed to my future self, reverberating forward through time in ever widening ripples.

My own linear experience is like a bead of dew sliding along one strand of the web, and doesn’t even take into consideration the vast array of intersections in the rest of the web. As I obsessively took photos of spider webs this fall, I noticed how my clip art concept of a spider web really differed from the actual evolution and artistry of real spider webs. I walked outside each sunny afternoon for weeks with my camera and positioned myself to look closely, to see incremental changes in details of the webs. Sometimes evidence of a projectile clobbering one section could be seen in the form of a hole; sometimes the repair work to shore up such a hole could be seen the next day. Sometimes the tension would change so that some strands moved closer together, while other strands moved farther apart, creating more space between them. Some sections contained regular rectangles of repetition, while others carried more whimsical triangles and hexagons and trapezoids. Some looked like cat whiskers, areas where strands had become joined in criss-crossing unions so that it was no longer possible to follow one strand on its own without following the strand of its partner, their stories now intertwined. The strands separated and converged. They were brand new and taut, or having experienced more storms, would swing a saggy sway. They all connected back to center one way or another, from where the spiral originated. Sometimes a foundational support strand got taken out, and the whole web wobbled to one side, re-stabilizing in a whole new orientation. Sometimes this meant the sunlight could bounce off the strands at a new angle and the strands bent the light into a rainbow.

11/18/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 18

Today I am feeling grateful for the convenience of a grocery store two minutes from home where I rarely shop unless I am one ingredient short for the meal I want to make. Lately I am finding myself there more frequently, what with my giant gangly son eating an average of three dinners per night. Tonight it was five dinners. (Send casseroles!) I needed more tortillas and some ricotta cheese for the lasagna. He also ate pasta, a sandwich, and some pancakes, in addition to the lasagna and two burritos. I am grateful that he has now taken on the role of silverware put-away-er, since that job was never going to get done by me, and he apparently started to care that there were never forks in the drawer, only in the drainer. He also does a fine job baking, and I am looking forward to baking pies with him soon. Thankful for the kid in my kitchen.

 

11/19/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 19

I had a stressful day. I came home tonight to my Wonder Woman bucket full of the very best popcorn in the world, made by Rich. It probably looks like he acts this way during November just so he gets swooned over on the internet, but he is actually this wonderful all year round and I’m just so grateful for him.

 

11/20/19

~30 days of gratitude~ day 20

Today I am grateful for clear skies, sunlight and starlight; for fresh starts; and for sandwich hugs.