Thirty Days of Thanksgiving: Day 7, Ravelry

Today, as I sit here trying to put together my holiday knitting list, I am thankful for Ravelry.  Ravelry is where I go for patterns, pattern help, group discussions, and all other things knitting related.  It is social (if you want it to be) or not (if that's more your thing).  I spend more time on Ravelry than Facebook.  In fact, people have written about it.  I would know a whole lot less about knitting if there was no Ravelry.  To paraphrase Voltaire, if Ravelry didn't exist, we would have to invent it.

I also want to say that I am thankful for the outcome of the vote last night.  Although North Carolina didn't go quite the way I had hoped, I am very happy with the re-election of President Barack Obama.  I started crying when, at 11:12 p.m., MSNBC projected Obama the winner of Ohio and as such the national election.  I think this election will be historically important, and I am thankful and proud that I participated in it.

Thirty Days of Thanksgiving: Day 6, Voting

Today I am thankful for living somewhere that I can vote!

Fred would vote if he could!

Thirty Days of Thanksgiving: Day 5, the library

I love the library.  I have since I was young.  At my hometown library there was a Reading Tub that everyone used to fight over.  It was an antique cast iron bathtub that had been upholstered so you could just lean back and read.  I want one in my house right now.  I would put it in the middle of the living room and just relax while studying.

Which is how I ended up at the library today.  Studying.  This is how my coffee table looked this morning:

I really should clean the screen of that iPad.

I was all settled in for an afternoon of studying.  My Day of Thankfulness was going to be about spending a quiet afternoon with the dogs.  Because, you see, the dogs were doing this:

Brett lounging in the dining room.

Charlie hiding behind a chair.

Everything was peaceful.  And then, who knows.  A bird flew by.  A squirrel ran across the fence.  Maybe nothing.  But all the dogs started barking and I realized that I really should leave the house if I was going to get anything accomplished.

The base has a great library.  It has been renovated over the past couple of years and the chairs are really comfortable.  Mike and I often stop in there before going grocery shopping on the weekends.  They've really developed their teen/young adult section in the past year, too, which is great because I happen to think some very interesting fiction is being written for the YA set.  (And I'm not talking Twilight.  Don't even get me started on Twilight.  Blech.)

So I got some studying done.  Five hours of it to be exact.  And I picked up a couple of new books to read. Can't leave a library without picking up at least one book!  Yay for libraries!

Thirty Days of Thanksgiving: Day 4, My Sister

Today I am thankful for my sister.  I would not be the person I am if I didn't have siblings.  I would have hated to be an only child (although I suppose I wouldn't have known better, and I'm sure there were times growing up that I wished with all my heart that I was an only child) and I know that having a brother and a sister certainly helped shape the person I am today.

My sister and I have shared a room, shared a car, shared an apartment.  Not all of this was done gracefully, but we got through it.  We still have some inside jokes that have gone back years and years.  And the older I get the more important I think that is.  We share a history.  She is someone that I'll be able to say "remember when" and she will remember.  I have had some of the best most breath-catching laughs of my life with her.  And she frustrates me in a way that only a sister can do.  But I love her.

Look at my shoes.  I was all about shoes, even then.

Thirty Days of Thanksgiving: Day 3, Farm Fresh Eggs

The Incredible Edible Egg.  We eat a lot of eggs at our house, and I insisted those eggs be organic and hopefully free-range.  (Let's not talk about how "free-range" is not regulated and could mean a different thing to every large scale chicken farmer.)  I had a lot of criteria for buying eggs from the grocery store.  I preferred eggs in cardboard containers, and never bought them in Styrofoam.  Plastic, well I tried not buy but sometimes it was unavoidable.  Eggs were becoming difficult.

Which is why I was so excited to find Fothergill Farms through a friend of mine.  Three dollars for a dozen FARM FRESH eggs.  Literally from a farm about twenty miles from my house.  In fact, Mike drives withing miles of the farm on the way to work.  These are the definition of Local Food.  Not delivered in a semi truck, but in a silver Buick.  Once, they were even warm, since Karen Fothergill had grabbed them on her way to see me.  Oh my goodness!  Definitely free range, too.  If you visit the farm, you need to drive really slow so you don't hit a chicken crossing the road.  Seriously.

See the blue one?  I love when I get a blue egg in my order.

They are the tastiest, eggiest eggs I have ever eaten.  The yolks are so yellow, and they are almost creamy.  I truly forgot eggs tasted this good.  (I used to buy farm fresh eggs when I lived in Petoskey, Michigan fifteen years ago.  They were a dollar a dozen, and not many people were buying them then.  Just the vegetarian hippies, like me and my friends.)

So today I am thankful for Karen Fothergill and her husband Tony, and the delicious eggs that her family farm provides to my family.  Thank you!

Thirty Days of Thanksgiving: Day 2, Home

After watching the news coverage all week of the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, I am so thankful to have a home.  We have four walls and a roof, and we are safe from the elements.  We have electricity.  To not have those things, with winter getting closer every day, well, I just can't imagine.  My heart goes out to all the people across the eastern seaboard that are affected by this storm.

Last year our little neighborhood saw both a tornado and a hurricane.  A house less than a half mile away had their roof ripped off by the tornado in the spring, only to have a tree fall on the new roof during the hurricane mere months later.  Another family down the road literally got out of their house minutes before the tornado ripped it to shreds.  They only had the clothes on their backs, their pets, and each other.

Does anything say 'home' like a candle on a mantel.

Thirty Days of Thanksgiving: Day 1

For the next thirty days-- the month of November-- I am going to post daily with something each day that I am thankful for.  I want to do this for several reasons.  First, Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday.  I like Christmas fine.  Halloween is really fun and the "Halloween Season" seems to be extending to the entire month of October and lots more people decorate their yards and homes, and I like seeing all that.  I usually put up some decorations, too.  New Year's Eve doesn't thrill me (too many years working in restaurants on that night) and I feel the same about Valentine's Day (for the same reason).   Easter is nice, but not everyone "celebrates" Easter.

But Thanksgiving?  I love Thanksgiving.  It is the beginning of the winter holiday season, and people are usually in a pretty good mood.  I love food and cooking, and love all the tradition around what we have at the table.  I love that for many of us, Thanksgiving is a family-centered meal, but many of us invite friends to the table with us.  (I think that it is often easier to do this at a non-gift centered holiday because there is no uncomfortable-ness about 'should we get Person X a token gift to open'.)  And, I truly think that I have so much to be thankful for.  So this year I'm not containing it to one day.

Second, I want to get in a more regular habit of writing and posting.  I compose so many posts in my head that never make it online, and having a schedule will (hopefully) help me direct my thoughts.  And like most things, with practice it will become a habit.

And third, October was a difficult month for me to get through for many reasons.  Nursing school is hard, and there were moments I questioned my choice.  Mike is driving to a base over an hour away from our home for work every day, and that means that we haven't had as much time together.  We had to update our homestudy, which means that it has been a year since the last one (two years with our agency) and that was stressful.  There were a couple more things, too, all of which separately would have been nothing much but all together seemed so overwhelming.  Among everything difficult that is going on, I also have so so much in my life that is wonderful.

These posts are not going to be in any particular order.  Day 12 will not necessarily be a more important thing than Day 24, but for this the first day, I am going to start with the most important thing, something I am thankful for every day.  My husband, Mike.

I mean, how many people would agree to an Elvis wedding?  But seriously, Mike is my rock, my safe place. He allows me to be me.  He is, in the words of Julia Child, "the butter to my bread, the breath to my life."

I read somewhere that part of being successful in life is to marry the right person.  Well, I knew right from the start that I was marrying the right person.  I only had one worry on my wedding day:  that our Elvis would be fat.  No worries about Mike what so ever.  We've had struggles.  Who hasn't?  Our first three years of marriage we were apart more than together (he deployed a week after our wedding).  I know in my heart that this is the person I want sitting next to me in my porch rocking chair when I am eighty, and sitting next to me at our dinner table tonight, and all the days in between.