Late Gratitude Tuesday - the H's!!
Thank you again for all the wonderful comments and all the support and understanding with regard to this terribly hard decision about The German. I have my moments of extreme sadness, and my moments of confusion, and my moments of self-doubt and I haven't even done it yet - but know that these comments mean the world to me. Really!
And now, I need to get to bed! (Oh, and I haven't done an edit for spelling, grammar and missing words, so excuse any annoying errors!) So here now is my wonderful and happy (and late) list of things that I'm so grateful for that begin with the letter H:
Happiness - I am of course so grateful for happiness and all the wonderful and happy things in the world that can and do give me happiness! As I'm writing this, it just occurred to me - this big thing called "Happiness" seems to be our big, ultimate goal in life, to "find" happiness - but really, it's just all around us and really is much more a state of mind than anything else. There's not something to find, but just to be and feel. There, that's my little philosophical talk for today :)
Home - I love love love the feeling of home - to be home, to have a home, a place where I feel completely comfortable, completely me, and completely loved. I feel that way in my apartment - I just adore all the colors in here, and all my pictures (both the ones I've taken and the ones of my family and friends), and of course the most important thing that makes my apartment a real home: my little angels of happiness, James and Emma! I also have the wonderful feeling of home at my parents' house, the home that I grew up in from age three and on. I think anyplace where my parents live would feel like home to me because it's more about them being there, but I love my house there, too, and all the memories and familiarities that it contains.
Health - this is something that I often take completely for granted, but I am oh so grateful for my health. I'm grateful for my very healthy immune system, and grateful for not having any serious health problems. I admit that I have a sometimes neurosis about especially cancer, but also the possibility of heart disease and all those other things that can go wrong inside and kill you before you even know about it or when it's too late. If it were up to me, every six months I'd have a doctor give me a full-body x-ray and CAT scan and whatever other scans there are, just to make sure there are no tumors or blockages or any possible thing that shouldn't be there. But I know I shouldn't stress about these things or else they will probably happen to me - so I keep reminding myself that the probabilities are low because I'm still young (but in a whole new decade now with more worries - ahhh! This is supposed to be a grateful thing and not a freaking out thing, so I'm going to just take a step back and RELAX now!!!)
Hope - I think hope is one of the happiest and most positive things, and I am so grateful that there is always hope for absolutely anything. A world and life without any hope would be much, much more depressing.
Head - I'm very grateful for having a head as it holds my eyes to see, ears to hear, mouth to speak, tongue to taste, brain to think and feel and do everything else, and my overall face to communicate so much more. I like my head!
Heart - I'm very grateful for my heart and its steady beating (and hopefully complete health inside there where I can't see it!). And I'm also grateful for my heart in the sense that mine is full of love and joy.
Hands - I'm so grateful for my hands, because without them I wouldn't be able to do SO MANY THINGS. Seriously, we use our hands for almost EVERYTHING we DO! I'm incredibly, stupendously grateful for my hands!
Handwriting - I love how each person's handwriting is different and makes each of us special. And I love when I sometimes see some really cool handwriting!
Hair - I have to admit, I love my hair and am so grateful for it! It's long and it's strawberry blonde, and it's different from everyone else's hair and I love that. When I was really young I hated my hair, I hated having red hair and being different from everyone else, even though all the grown-ups would always comment on it. As a result of my hatred of everything red haired, I refused to get a strawberry shortcake doll, and I also refused to see the movie Annie. Which ended up having a very very traumatic effect.
The shortened story: I think I was maybe 5 when my mom said she was going to take me to my first "big girl" movie (non-cartoon) and she gave me the choice between Annie and E.T. As you know now, I refused to see Annie so we saw E.T., and I remember being terrified during the movie (I specifically remember seeing his body all white and horrifying) and when we got home I told my mom when I was going to the bathroom, when I was going to another room, etc. I also was too scared to go to sleep by myself so for over a month my mom let me go to sleep in the family room behind a chair, until my dad finally was in a mood one night and yelled at me. After that, I snuck back downstairs every night after they put me to bed, and I'd sit on the fourth step from the bottom all night until they came to bed, constantly looking back behind me and expecting to see E.T.'s sillouette at the top of the stairs. Eventually they had to move my bed into my little brother's room and turn my old bedroom into a play room for us, and we shared a room until I was nine and my parents lured me back to my own bedroom by getting me a whole new bedroom outfit, complete with canopy bed! (Okay, that wasn't the short version but a pretty long version instead - but I had fun recounting it - it was a very big event in my early life!!!) Anyway though, now I adore my red hair and while I still have no desire to see Annie, I wouldn't stay away from a movie anymore because the star has red hair! Oh, I didn't watch E.T. again until near the end of high school and it was sweet then but still brought back the trauma from when I was so young, and I don't think I've ever seen it again.
Healing - I'm so grateful for my body's ability to heal itself in so many ways, both big and small. It actually amazes me sometimes when I think of it - how muscle can grow back together when cut, how skin can grow back - how our brains somehow know exactly what's wrong and they send the correct stuff there to fix it all up. It's amazing! And so fabulous!!!
Hospitals - I'm very grateful for hospitals and all doctors' offices where I can go to get a checkup, get advice, get medicine, get tested, and have most anything done to make sure I'm in good health. And I'm so seriously grateful for all the medical advances that are constantly being made, and the new discoveries and new drugs and new tests and new everything. I so hope to live until I'm quite old (as long as I'm in good health) and I hope that there will be even so many more wonderful meds and tests and procedures by then.
Hearing - although I always say I would easily choose to give up my hearing instead of my sight if I had to choose one, I am still so so so grateful for my ability to hear - to hear voices, music, the mews of my kittens, the sound of leaves blowing in the breeze, the sound of the ocean waves crashing on shore, the sound of birds and even of cars. It's so wonderful!
Holidays - I'm so grateful for holidays and the happiness they give us, and the excitement to look forward to, and the days off at work, and the gathering of family. Christmas is my favorite, and Thanksgiving is my second favorite (SUCH yummy food!!!)
Hobbies - I'm so grateful for our ability to have hobbies. I've been thinking about this lately - probably most of the people throughout history were so busy doing things to live (working, farming, washing, cooking, cleaning, sewing) that they probably didn't have time for hobbies. I'm so incredibly lucky that I can get my food at a store, do my laundry in the washer and dryer, buy my clothes at a store, and have to work only one job. I'm so lucky that I have so much time to satisify my need for laziness and still have time left for wonderful hobbies.
Humor - I love humor, it's such a wonderful addition to life and to almost every situation. I'm so grateful for humor and my ability to enjoy it and find the humor in many things.
Heat - I get cold so easily and I hate being cold, it's so terrible - so I am so eternally grateful for every single way that I can get warm, from socks for my cold feet, to wonderful soft blankets, to winter jackets, and of course, the heat that warms my apartment and warms all buildings. And because I'm not an engineer, I don't even understand exactly how these heating systems all work, and even thinking about all the pipes that need to go through buildings and all that stuff - well, it seems very complex and I just ADORE it!!!
Heating pads - when I initially made up my list of H words, it was last week Friday and I was laying on the couch with terrible cramps, going through my wonderful dictionary. I had taken more tylenol than I was allowed to take and the cramps were still terrible, so I busted out the heating pad and it really worked! So I made damn sure to put it on my list here!!
Help and Helping - I'm so grateful that so many people are willing to offer help to others, and I hope that I can learn to follow that example more (I care very much, and want to help people, but I often don't feel like I actually do very much).
Hugs - I have to admit that although I'm very affectionate with a guy who I love, I'm a little bit outside of my comfort zone with lots of other affection by others. Well, I do often greet and/or say bye to friends with hugs and I'm fine with that except for when the other person doesn't act completely natural with it. Hmmm, okay well I'm in the middle then. My mom told me that when I was a little girl I didn't accept a lot of affection and would only want to be held and hugged if she was reading to me. I still have this little worry in the back of my mind that there's something wrong with me and I'm cold and unaffectionate - because I was that way so young. But I'm not that way when I love someone. And I love giving affection to James and Emma. But I want my own children to be completely natural with affection, and hopefully they will be - and I'll hug and kiss them all the time so they grow up with it and it's just a part of their life.
History - I'm so grateful that there's so much written and taught about history now, so we can find out just about anything! I love just trying to imagine how people really lived at different times in history - what daily life was like, and I wonder what they would dream about and hope for, whether girls had lovely romantic dreams or whether they were too tired from all the work, etc.
Heredity - it's so cool how we're such products of our heredity - in appearance, personality, and health. I always love seeing pictures of my friends' parents so I can see who they look like and where they get certain features. And I'm also grateful for how much we can learn about ourselves based on our heredity.
Hormones - yes, they bring me to highs and lows sometimes but I still adore them, they make me who I am, they'll let me have a baby someday, and I even like the highs and lows!
Horniness - I couldn't do an H list and not include horniness! I'm grateful for that wonderful feeling, and all the desires and fantasies that it brings along with it!! Yum!!!
Hellos - I am so grateful for the little random "hellos" that I get now and then from total strangers, because they make me feel so good and so grateful to be living with all these other wonderful people!
Hamburgers and Hot dogs - yummmmmmmy!!!! I love them!!!! (Although I did just read an article about how the stuff in hot dogs (not the gross stuff, but the chemicals or something like that) may include toxins that possibly increase the chance for cancer (it's late and I honestly and for the life of me can't think of the word that means essentially "toxins that possibly increase the chance for cancer" but now you know that I really do know there's a word and you'll all forgive this little paragraph for sounding so borderline daft.)
Hats - when it's cold outside, I'm so so so grateful for hats!!! Oh and I also really love cowboy hats! :)
Heaven - even though the sort of accepted view of what heaven will be like - everyone singing and praising God and happy all the time - sounds so terribly boring to me, I'm still grateful that there's the promise of something after death. I couldn't imagine living and not having the hope for anything after this, that we would just die and disappear. That would be so awful! Also, I wasn't initally sure that I wanted to include this on my list, but I worried that if I didn't something bad would happen to me. I know, I'm a little crazy sometimes.
Honesty - I also debated putting this word on the list, because at first I was thinking in a terribly jaded way that there's not much honesty left in the world. But then I realized, upon thinking about it, that I try to be honest most of the time (except for little white lies which are harmless), and all the people who I count as wonderful friends are the same way, and I trust them and their honesty, and I'm so grateful for that! And it really sort of got me thinking more and I ended up completely the opposite from my original jaded point of view. Now I think that even if our administration isn't the best and is often arguably dishonest about things, and even if many people in power all around the world are arguably dishonest, I think it's the little people, all of us who are living life, that matter more to each other. I almost expect everyone in politics to be dishonest, but I expect my next door neighbor to be honest. As long as the people around me are overall honest, then I'm in a very happy place!
