Today, I’m grateful for how our youngest dog wakes me up in the morning to let him out. He puts his front paws on the edge of my bed and lays his head in my side or stomach and then looks at me with his great big brown eyes.
He doesn’t hop all the way on the bed and run up and down it (and on me) like his mother, nor does he bark continuously like his father. He just puts his head on me and gives me his best puppy eyes. It’s one of the best ways to wake up during the cold mornings.
Got to stop progression
And wait for things to come
The moment isn’t here yet
Evening hasn’t rung
Sometimes we have to slow down. We live in a world that wants instant gratification. Wants things now and not later. We want that, too. We don’t want to wait and sit still, don’t want to acknowledge that we can’t run when it’s hard to even just walk
We want to do things, we want to do them when we want to.
But sometimes we need to slow down and wait. Not because patience is a virtue, but because we need to move slowly so as not to hurt ourselves. You don’t expect something broken and just glued back together to be hardened and solid for a while, after all. We need to remember that about ourselves as well.
This was supposed to be a post on how I’m still grateful for child gates as we have to use one to keep the dogs away from a section of drywall we have to replace while renovating the kitchen. Then I got tired and distracted. Still, I am grateful for the gates not just for how I’ve needed to use them, but also for when something like this makes me think.
![IMG_20191205_110915786[1]](https://martha0stout.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/img_20191205_1109157861.jpg?w=288&h=216 "IMG_20191205_110915786[1]")
Today I am most grateful for being able to agree to disagree with family. It wasn’t always something we could do and it doesn’t always remain, but for the most part we can. It might seem like a small thing to be thankful for, but it really stands out for me today.
The irony is that I remember first learning about this from the book (and later movie) “The Phantom Tollbooth”. It’s ironic because we watched that movie for years, but it took a lot longer to realize that was a thing we could do in real life. I kind of miss watching it as the cassette it was on got lost in one of our moves. (But is likely still holding together and able to be used. Those cassettes were sturdy.)
But being able to agree to disagree and move onto something else is a wonderful thing when dealing with teenagers.
Today I’m grateful for the creation of child gates. I have used them for my nieces and nephews and for my nephew’s cat’s kittens and now I’m using several for that same nephew’s dog’s puppies.
They are truly a wondrous creation and I, for one, am highly grateful to whoever not only created them, but made them affordable. Because we only owned one last week and have to buy at least another this weekend in order to expand the pen as the pups grow larger. (The store was all out of the kits that made indoor pens for puppies and it’s too soon to have them outside. It snowed a lot yesterday and snowed some more today. Also, there was hale and I don’t want them hit by hale when they’re this small. It would be dangerous. And they can climb out of the kiddie pool we originally had them in.)
(Also, I’m grateful for tarps to protect my carpet and twine to hold the corners together.)
image: Helena and Vincent’s pups; from martha0stout’s phone
So around the New Year, my eldest nephew asked if we could hold weekly Dungeons and Dragons games as a family. He very rarely ever asks to do anything as a family even once every few months, let alone something that would be a weekly occurrence. My sister immediately agreed and so since then, each week my sister, her three teenagers and myself meet to play Dungeons and Dragons at our kitchen table. We have three players (my sister and her two sons) and two Dungeon Masters (my niece and myself).
Why have two DMs, you may ask?
Well, my niece isn’t fond of D&D when as a player, but didn’t want to be the normal DM. I love creating stories and adventures, but sometimes can’t talk for hours at a time or other difficulties pop up. So my niece is my assistant and we pretty much split the world we’re using. If it takes place in one of my countries, I’m main DM (barring physical difficulties). If it’s in one of my niece’s countries, she’s the main DM.
Regardless, we all still have to be at the table each week and take part in the game.
As a result, everyone’s gotten better at communicating throughout the week because we have to get along to a certain degree or the D&D session comes to a quick end no matter what.
So I’m thankful for my nephew’s idea of playing Dungeons and Dragons as a family, because we’re all learning how to communicate better and are closer as a family.
Pretty sure that this is life
And can’t seem to stop
Taking each day as it comes
Candles that blow out
Hoping to do better each time
Of all the things to be thankful for, I’m grateful the most for not only making mistakes, but being able to learn from them and (hopefully) not make them again.
Look at the people around you
One by one the strings pull tight
Viewing those connections
Even as it turns to night
Of all the things I’m grateful for this day, I’m grateful for the love of my family.
So a year or so ago (possibly longer, my brain isn’t working), our dishwasher finally died. We weren’t able to replace it at the time, but that was fine. We all know how to wash dishes by hand (most of us…I suspect the kids washed things badly so they wouldn’t have that job, but the joke was on them! We just made them wash those things again.) But then we decided to renovate the kitchen. It wasn’t supposed to take this long (each time we think we’ve caught all the problems, three more seemingly sprout out of nothingness) because we had all the things figured out and such.
I’m positive that if inanimate objects could laugh, all the parts of our kitchen would have died without being able to breathe.
It’s now been a month since we had to disconnect the kitchen sink and I have found that I didn’t appreciate it anywhere near what I used to. Washing things in a smaller tub placed inside of our regular bathroom tub is a royal pain.
You just don’t know what you had until it’s been gone for a month and counting.
This was an unusual thought for this kind of post, but I couldn’t seem to focus on anything else. (Still have that cold that messes with my head…)
Check out the original Thankful Thursday.
When you’re having a down day
I know what you need
A kitten running at speed
So Little Brother (the runt of my nephew’s cat’s litter who is the loudest kitten I have ever lived with. And that’s saying something) likes to go at breakneck speeds all over the house and tries to run through furniture instead of over or around it like his brothers. He almost made it through the chair I’m sitting on, but his back legs got caught and he just kind of hung there for a moment as if he couldn’t understand how this had happened.
It was hilarious.
(Don’t worry, he wasn’t hurt.)
So today I’m grateful for that silly little kitten.
Check out the original Thankful Thursday.
So, I mentioned that we got a new kitten (Locutis) and that he weighed less than our, at the time, 3-week old kittens. (He weighs more now, which is good and can eat more.)
What I haven’t mentioned is that a few days after we got Locutis, the tiny kittens’ mother went missing. Freya (mama cat) went out hunting, as she did at least three times a day now that the kittens didn’t need to eat every hour on the hour.
She did not come back and we haven’t seen her for two weeks and counting now. She was a very attentive mother and has never run away before. We do live out in cattle country and there have been problems with raccoons, skunks, foxes, and coyotes in our valley.
It has also happened in the past that some cats get picked up by this lovely lady who takes them to get fixed and then tries to find them homes. Freya liked people and other animals and is a good size for people who want a cat, but not a big cat. We’re hoping that this is what happened to her, but the point is, she is gone and not likely to come home. (Doesn’t mean we aren’t keeping an eye out for her…)
Locutis has decided that the kittens that are much younger than him are his. He taught them how to drink our goat milk. He’s teaching them how to use the litter box. He taught them how to eat the kitten food we got for them all. He plays with them. He even pins them and cleans them. I got to watch him do all of this today while I was getting ready for my day.
I am grateful for this little orange tabby that decided he liked our little kittens and that they were his. I’m not entirely sure what my days would be like without him.
Check out the original Thankful Thursday.
Breathing In 