Thanksgiving Gratitudes

I have always said that Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I love that there's no gift giving tradition to leave us all in some variation of anxious and/or disappointed. I love that the food can be towards the healthy edge of the spectrum.

But most of all, I love a holiday that revolves around gratitude.

Let me now make a list of all the things for which I am most grateful in the past year:

--One of the things for which I am most grateful is the steady pace of getting the home repaired from Hurricane Irma.  On January 1, 2018, I wrote:  "Right now, the cottage needs a new AC/heat system and flooring, at the minimum. The big house needs to have all the floors replaced, a new wrinkle to our plans. We still need to have a remodeled kitchen, and I'm wondering if it would be wise to rip out the walls in the small laundry room that got soaked from hurricane damage aftereffects. We need a new fence and gates."

Wow--I'm amazed at what needed to be done, and what we've gotten done:  the cottage foundation shored up, the cottage AC/heat replaced, the floors of the big house replaced, new interior walls in the  laundry room with the outer wall repaired too, and new fence and gates.  We are in the process of the kitchen remodel, with steady progress--slow progress, but steady.  We will think about the other issues of the cottage once we get the kitchen remodel done.

--With my old school, the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale, closing this year, I am grateful that I made the move to a different job in 2016.  I continue to like my current job--another source of gratitude.

--I am grateful that my spouse still loves teaching Philosophy; it's wonderful to see him so engaged with a subject that we both still find so important.

--I am grateful that my family continues to enjoy spending time together. I had wondered if we might drift away from each other after the death of my grandmother, but we have not.

--I am grateful for my Fitbit which has helped me lose some weight.  More important, I'm getting more movement into my days.

--I am profoundly grateful that I can still fit creativity into my days.

Let me not get so lost in my gratitude that I forget those who haven't been as lucky this past year. Let me continue to yearn for and to work for a world where we all have enough to inspire gratitude.