i am grateful for:
1) sunday birthdays: it’s a whole birthday weekend!
2) my speech going well. my speech being over.
3) all the amazing help i got with my public speaking nerves
4) presents!
5) going to coney island yesterday and seeing all the small purple shells in the sand, mixed with glass. not beach glass, but brooklyn glass. and the fake palm tree and the guy flying the giant inflatable devil.
6) the boardwalk still existing
7) a life that allows for hot tubs
8) going 31 days without sugar. and then having a brookie–the brownie/cookie magic from baked in red hook. only, i should have eaten half. the second half of a baked good–usually a bad good.
9) bc saying to me the other night: “why do you like that? because you never met a bad pun you didn’t like?” yesss! understood and it feels so good.
10) birthday eve scrabble–the apartment’s inaugural game
11) root vegetables
12) omelets with entire cloves of baked garlic tucked inside
13) being one year wiser? hopefully.
14) mookie, the liquor store dog in red hook
15) being friendly neighbors with random neighborhood dogs
16) so many things to be grateful for
17) that gay teens get to see gay teens make out on glee. i wonder if that kiss helped some kid in ashtabula feel sane and good.
18) sunshine
19) facebook birthday love
20) real life birthday love
21) brooklyn
22) trying to make a gratitude list as long as i am old
23) bok choy
24) the advice the cook we met this week gave us: “if you ever see a strange looking vegetable and don’t know what it is, buy it!” and this is why i am now the proud custodian of a celery knob. hoping google can help.
25) pending ethiopian food
26) poetry month
27) this, again: “The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing”
– from st. francis and the sow, by galway kinnell
28) that d. is feeling a bit better
29) daisies
30) friends having adventures: j. in mehico, other j. in india, e. in paree.
31) top chef: is it weird that i feel like i’m becoming a better cook by watching people make three course meals in 30 minutes?
32) being media-lite this last week or so. it’s calming to take a break–i was getting a little too obsessed, like with the lulu murder.
33) the number 3
34) making plans for june
35) coffee from grumpys. i want to change their name to smileys and turn their logo guy upside-down, but there is no fighting they have the best coffee in the nabe by a LOT
36) being close enough to 40 to touch it. i mean partially that is terrifying–how many times as a kid or twentysomething was i like, “god, i hope i’m not doing this when i’m 40” “or ew, there was this old guy there, he was like, 40”? and now, there she sits. angled and egg-like. 40. the four is legs in tree pose. the zero is my belly after a brookie. one is striving for balance. one is chill, complete, exactly as she is. it’s a combo i actually like.
37) opal massage, park slope
38) survival. thrival.
