Thursday was.... well... full.

Ok, first: what I'm grateful for. I read this article that said you'll be happier if you cultivate a grateful heart -- so even if you don't feel it at first, to practice thinking about things you're grateful for each day. So here goes:

1. It only took me an hour to get the computers back online this morning after the router mysteriously went to sleep overnight.
2. I got all the way caught up on today's projects by the end of the day, after starting out way behind (see #1 for reason why)
3. It didn't rain (much) today.
4. It was choir day. Which always makes me feel better even when it's hard.

Thursdays are complicated though. It's a truncated day -- I have a standing appointment that eats into the afternoon and it seems it's always just at the time when someone is waiting for me to e-mail them a piece of finished writing. Hurrying just makes me tense & unable to finish sentences clearly. And for sure, if I try to squeeze out an extra 15 minutes (which I did today), the traffic is backed up and moving at a snail's pace. So here's gratitude thing number 5:

I did take an extra 15 minutes, and other than the freeway entrance being clogged up, we sailed across the bridges and got where we were going with 3 minutes to spare. For Seattle, where the traffic gets more congested by the day, that's saying something.

A whole new year

It takes me a few days to dip my toes in the pond of a big new scary year. I don't want to fall into the humdrum group of new year's resolutioners, with the "going to lose 25 pounds" or "going to cook a healthy dinner from scratch every day" entries in my journal. Yet I do feel a certain lift in my spirits contemplating a blank calendar, starting a new diary, and yes, cooking two healthy meals from scratch all in a row.

It could just be that after days of torrential rain storms, the sun came out today.