As I woke up this Thanksgiving morning, with one cat on my bladder and one cat pawing my face because she was hungry, I started contemplating what all I had to be thankful for.
In no particular order of importance,...
I'm thankful that my precious fluffy baby girl has recovered from near death, potential liver failure, and a life of diabetes. She is one healthy fluffy baby and I praise God for the joy these four-footed critters have brought into my life in the past several years.
I'm thankful for my job. I do not enjoy having to work for a living, but then who does? :) But in this economy, not only do I have a well paying job, but a job working with people I like and respect -- for the most part, that is!
I'm thankful that I have a warm happy home to come home to every evening. Each morning on the way to work, I pass homeless-looking men wandering around downtown Evansville, and I am reminded how fortunate we are.
Speaking of our warm happy home, I'm so very thankful for the wonderful family and friends who have helped mom and me both move into our new condo and get the house in Wadesville prepared for sale. My sisters and parts of their familys have been down several weekends in the past couple of months to help pack, paint, clean, transport stuff, put stuff away (Holly, we're still looking for stuff!) and my aunt Chris and her family came up and painted, cleaned, and worked on the plumbing, and a whole crew of people from our church came out to the house at 4pm on a Friday, packed all the furniture, including a piano, 3 filing cabinets, 6 dressers, three beds and trekked it all out to the condo, caravan-style and then carted it all up to our second floor condo. I'm pretty sure the piano almost made a few of them lose their religion! :)
I'm thankful for mom. I come home from work each evening to her smiling face and, usually, a home-cooked meal. Having lived by myself for 14 years, I truly appreciate what she does for me. I probably take her for granted, but hopefully not too often. I know that someday I will live alone again, and I will miss her twice as much.
I'm thankful for my general good health. Yes, I'm too heavy and yes, I have high blood pressure and cholesterol, and I have this weird wooshing in my right ear, but generally, I'm pretty good. Or at least things could be worse. I'm also thankful that mom is in pretty good health. I worry about her, with her rhuematoid arthritis and she's almost 70, and she's exhausted herself throughout this whole move. But now that we've moved, she can just spend the winter in our lovely new home resting and taking care of herself.
I'm also very thankful for elevators. The elevator worked through the evening of the actual move, but pooped out the next day. Since then, we've had to cart boxes up the stairs, along with groceries and other stuff. Meanwhile, we've been collecting trash like no one's business, and we've been having to trek to all down. But praise God, the elevator man came and got the elevator working yesterday. This morning, we rode the trash downstairs in the elevator and mom was singing "Praise the Lord!" the entire trip!
I'm also thankful for hot chocolate with tiny marshmellows. This afternoon, mom and I went to the house in Wadeville to clean out the garage. Of course it was 40 degrees and pouring rain, but we did it. I forced mom to stay in the garage and just bring me things while I, wearing my bright yellow rain poncho from when we went to Disney World with Mickey Mouse on the back, drug all the trash over into the trash dumpster. We worked about an hour until we filled the dumpster - my clothes were soaked down to my undies, and my fingers and toes were frozen. When we got back home, I changed into my warm fuzzies, mom made hot cocoa, and I sat here on the couch with my big fluffy girl and drank my cocoa and we watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on HBO (for some reason we have it for free at the moment - but I figure the cable company will figure it out and turn it off soon, so...) We discussed turning on the fireplace, but we'd have had to move the stuff sitting on the hearth in front of it, so we ixnayed that idea.
Long story short, Rose has a lot to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day.
