Showing posts with label gratitude.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gratitude.. Show all posts

Monday, September 7, 2009

Labor Day Monday

[This looked like a serious conversation...a melding of minds...] lol


The long weekend is over. Grandson back home and today in school. Sister and husband back on their way to Florida. Husband back to work. Me...breathing a sigh of relief at having my quiet home back. I have a few errands to run today and am thinking i should get them done this morning so I can sit back and enjoy the rest of the day. Patrick had 4 days off in a row....yikes. lol It was all good though.

I tried blogging here last night after I got home from the meeting, but the power went out and I lost the satellite signal. Never mind. I just turned it off and went to bed, where I proceeded to sleep soundly for about 7 and a half hours. And this morning I am refreshed and ready for a new day. I have juice to make and bread to bake, and a tiny bit of straightening to do around my house.

I feel so blessed these days. As my friend Mary said so succinctly, "Abundance is everywhere..." If I can shift my paradigms even the tiniest bit, I can find prosperity in everything I see. If I can move from the errant ideas that wealth is in bank accounts and new things and more, more, more. If I can open my heart to abundance instead of always looking thorough my eyes. When I can do this, I see a world full to the brim. The value of a simply lived life is astronomical for me. The lack of stress, the absence of constant competition, the loss of those feelings of never having enough. Because that's what they are--just feelings. Not facts. The facts are made plain by the removal of lots of extraneous clutter, whether it's in my life reality or in my mind. I am not hungry, like 2/3 of the world. I am not homeless, like so many are. I am not alone. I have an excess of clothing, baubles, books and pets. (lol) I may not have much deniros in the bank, but my needs are met. I have lived a lot of my life wallowing in excess...so I do know this terrain. I have also been blessed to have lived in some times of scarcity, so I know that terrain as well. Today I am somewhere in the middle. Poor by some standards, wealthy by others. Resting here, in the middle.

I am blessed to have been given the chance to live a sober life. Many never get this chance. Some days I wish I didn't get so much of the experience, but mostly I am blessed beyond measure. I witnessed a man about my age last night who got sober the same year as I did, but drank again after 7 years and has been coming in and out of sobriety ever since. Cannot find his way back to stay...just getting little snatches of peace every now and again, only to fall back off the path and be lost...again and again. It shook me. He looked so lost and so miserable. I remember being told in my early days that it wasn't rocket science...I just needed one thing. To want to be sober more than I wanted to be drunk. That it wasn't enough just try--I had to DO. It wasn't hard to stop, they told me--staying stopped was the tricky part. That I had to build a sober life that was better than anything I had ever known drunk. And I started out on that road of discovery, love and service back in the early 90's and haven't had to drink since. I feel relatively secure in sobriety today, even when I watch people with some time drink again. I'm not stupid about it though. I still do almost all the things they told me back then. And mostly, I NEVER forget what it used to be like, what happened and what it's like now. And I dig in, and I put my hand out one more time, no matter how tiresome it gets sometimes. And no matter how many times I watch them stumble back out there, I know that I stayed sober through it, and that's enough. I don't have to analyze, rationalize or justify my life today. I just have to live it. Fully.

For these things, I feel especially blessed.


Namaste.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Sunday in spring





Whew. It's been a crazy few days, and now I sit here with poison ivy all over me...poor me. Like a twat, I worked along the fence line pulling out vines and weeds so I could plant the tigerlilies...with no gloves. Because I'm superwoman! Because no ivy would dare tangle with me! Because I am a fookin IDIOT !!!!! And now I am suffering like crazy. I can barely use my hands, because I have the rash all between my fingers and the hands are swollen and tight. It's on my neck and crawling up past my jawline. It's on my arms, making me scratch like a junkie in need of breakfast. Sigh...If it doesn't calm down by tomorrow, I may go to the doctor for some kind of antihistamine shot. I'm having this fear of it getting into my eyes...

Anyways....lol. I have been in bed off and on today because I took Benadryl and it knocked me for a loop. I thought I had some allergy capsules, but cannot find them. Even one Benadryl (last night I took 2 before bed, like the box says, and it dropped me where I sat!) made me loopy and sleepy.

But I got lots of yard work done the past couple of days. Even got the mud room cleaned out and organized. That's one of those areas that is a catch-all for everything all winter long. It's disgusting. And it's the size of a small bedroom, so---more room=more crap. sigh...But now it's all orderly and swept out. I have 2 large garbage containers to put out tomorrow. The garbage man will go into shock! We usually can barely get 2 tall kitchen garbage bags a week...lol

Friday night I had a spiritual experience as a huge buck sailed over the top of my car as I was driving into a small dip. I saw him on the bank and started slowing down, thinking he was going to come down the side of the hill and go across the road. Instead, I see him kick his back legs and jump from one embankment to the other!!! I was yelling and didn't know whether to speed up or slow down. He couldn't have been more than 12 inches from my windshield. Hubby and I just stared at each other, and started laughing. It was quite the experience!

I was thinking again about how blessed I am to be alive, right here, right now. How grateful I am to be living one day at a time. And sober enough to think about it.

All the people walking through my life teach me, time and again, that this is NOT a dress rehearsal, that I need to live life to the fullest, and not ever take anything for granted. To be grateful for everything and everyone around me...even the ones who seem to be here to teach me how NOT to be.

Next month I will celebrate (God willing) my 19th year of sobriety. I will celebrate with another friend from Floriduh who has the same day as me, with a group of cyberfamily and local people who have all helped me, over and over again, to stay on this path. That the hand of AA is always out for me to grab, all I have to do is make the first move. I'm grateful to be having all these people in my life and at my home the weekend of June 12th. If anyone here is interested, drop me an email and I'll snd you an Evite.

It's always fun to gather with kin. And that's the coolest part: AA is my family. They took me in when I was desperate and sick and ugly, and they loved me back to some semblance of health. They showed me a better way to live. They said that I never had to drink again if I didn't want to. And they showed me how they did it, one day at a time.

And today, I am one grateful drunk, one dopeless hope fiend.

Thanks, guys.


Namaste.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Settle down, it's Saturday!

[The late, great Augie...aka Octavio Augustus]
Just a quick post to say that I'm feeling pretty darn blessed today. All the stars were in alignment and all the little synchronicities fell into place. Made for a very pleasant and comfortable day.
Someone said once, "It's impossible to be hateful and grateful at the same time, so I choose grateful." I loved that. Took it to heart, in fact. The more grateful I am, the better I act. The more grateful I am, the more I have to be grateful for.
Today I am grateful:
*For my family
*For my animals
*For my home
*For my blogging community
*For friends
*For NaNoWriMo buddies
*For friends in general
*Most especially, for my husband, who loves me unconditionally
Life is good.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Sunday's Surrender

[A cannon at Gettysburg]

I thought the cannon picture from our vacation one year would make for a great intro into a blog on surrender. lol That must have been 2003?? We took a trip from NC to the Poconos, to meet up with a bunch of sober folks who get together annually at least, and that year it was up in the beautiful mountains of Pennsylvania. We got to travel the Cumberland Gap, Shenandoah Valley, Lancaster,PA where the Amish are, Gettysburg (hubby was so happy he nearly died--Civil War freak that he is), Woodstock (visited dear dear friends in Bainbridge NY, and they took us on a day trip to Woodstock and through the Alleghenies. It was a delightful trip. First time I'd ever been to New York or Pennsylvania. Bainbridge, BTW, is the home of Elmer's Glue. lol It's their claim to fame.

Sunday is winding down. My gratitude list goes lilke this:

*Grateful that you can't be hateful and grateful at the same time.
*Grateful to have had the LP for 4 days.
*Grateful he went home today.
*Grateful for sober friends.
*Grateful for AA birthdays.
*Grateful for the role models who show me what to do and what not to do.
*Grateful for the opportunity to be a grandma.
*Grateful for apples and hickory nuts.
*Grateful that tonight I am going to bed early.

Goodnight!!!!!