Well, as seems to happen every year—the days start to zoom by once Fall arrives. It's crazy that we're already at the final Wednesday of September!
Here are a few things I'm grateful for this month:
My husband. September is our anniversary month. I always appreciate my husband Brad, but I appreciate him more in September. And I feel very lucky that he loves me despite the fact that I have a lot of trouble remembering what day our anniversary is. I really think it's on the 26th, but it's on the 28th. (I actually asked him to confirm this last week.) This year, he gets extra husband/father points because he took our daughter and her two friends to a three-day music festival in Las Vegas.
Leaves that turn orange. I find nature mesmerizing. I am not someone who just loves being outside all the time. And if there is such a thing as having a "black thumb" (or a person who kills plants when they are trying to keep them alive), then I have one. Pretty much every plant I've ever owned has died a rather pathetic underwatered or overwatered death.
And maybe because I clearly don't understand how to keep plant life alive, I love seeing flowers and trees. When I'm jogging, I am always amazed by the beauty of the flowers and their colors, or plants and their delicate leaf patterns. I love seeing the sunlight filtered through tree branches. I have thousands of pictures of flowers, plants, trees, and leaves on my phone's camera roll. And in the Fall, seeing the bright orange leaves appear on the trees (even if we don't have that many trees that change with the seasons in southern California) always makes my heart flutter. It feels like magic to me.
Dustpans with long handles. This is an appreciation out of desperation. I don't have any great love of dustpans.
We call our cat, Demetrius, "The Lizard Slayer." He kills lizards. He also kills rats. And he doesn't just kill them; he likes to leave them for us on our back porch. And it's not usually the whole animal he leaves for us, it's usually the bits and pieces he decides he doesn't want to eat. It's pretty much a horror show. And for the past year, I've tried to dispose of Demetrius' poor victims in a variety of ways, all of which have brought me perilously close to having to come closer to the remains than I want to.
So I have purchased a long handled dustpan. They're very popular in Japan. Recently, I saw one at the Asian food market and it occurred to me that it might be the solution to how I can clean up what I have dubbed "the killing grounds." I haven't actually had to use it yet, but I feel better knowing it's out there, ready for the next time Demetrius decides to leave us a "present."
Toni here, with three things I've been grateful for in September:
Tom, the handyman. My reason is simple: he fixed the leak that no one else could fix, not even the person I paid $700 to fix it. Our side door has been leaking for years. Every year, I think we've got it fixed...and it leaks again. I hope I'm not speaking too soon here since the rains have yet to arrive, but I'm 99% sure that the rotting door frame (not visible to the eye because it was at the bottom of the door) was the culprit.
Discovering audible + a new use for my iPhone + ear buds. I'm embarrassed to say that at the beginning of September, I was still listening to audiobooks using my old cassette player. Because new books aren't available on cassette anymore, this means I've been listening to the same books over and over again for years. This hasn't been a bad thing—after all, we listen to music we love over and over. But a couple of weeks ago, after listening to Howard's End for the fifth or sixth time, I could not find book on my cassette shelf that I wanted to "read."
My husband came to my rescue (which he's been trying to do for years on this very issue) and got me set up with an audible account in which I can download audiobooks to my iPhone and listen through my new ear buds. (How odd this delay on my part is since all three of my published books are available from audible!)
"The Flinger" aka Chuck-it. We call that ball throwing device "the flinger" and always have. It enables me to exercise the dog in the backyard without exercising myself, the latter being something I can't do much of. I do take the opportunity to walk around a bit and sometimes even prance (prancing coming under the category of weight-bearing exercise that helps prevent osteoporosis). Perhaps I should add a fourth item to my gratitude list: I can still prance!
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