Counting blessings….

Der Bingle and the kids from Our Gang

Years ago, Bing Crosby made a recording of a song that mentioned “Counting My Blessings.” I thought about this last week when we had our Thanksgiving celebration, and was reminded of it again this morning when I read June at Aging Gracefully http://aginggratefully.blogspot.com/.

Now I confess, I have a hard time doing what others are doing, but it seems to me that an attitude of gratitude works more often than not so I thought I would give it a whirl.  My only problem is I am too damn analytical. 

Immediately, I flip into “only seven?” I can think of hundreds of things.  Should they be large or small or inbetween?  Should I count people? Should I include pets?  What is most important?  Least important?  Oh dear, oh dear.   Can the list include negative things, such as the fall of some dispised leader?  Should they be personal things or involve others. Can the list include material things?  You see my dilemma.

Perhaps I should limit my list to only those things I have enjoyed in the past few days.  How about these:

1. Sunshine streaming through the back door and illuminating the bird cages.  I know my canary would put this at the top of his list.  He sings his heart out on sunny days.  He is so pleased with the sun he takes an exuberant bath splashing water everywhere.  Ditto Eddie the lovebird, only he bathes in his food and tosses pellets everywhere.  He is such a funny little guy. He makes David laugh.

2.  How about reading other people’s blogs and seeing their plans for decorating trees and home interiors.  Kay at Kay’s Musings has displayed a raft of beautiful ornaments she has collected over the years, and Mage at Postcards has assembled a tree to die for if you like blue, and I do.

Image via Wikipedia

3. How about people who make you laugh?  I shared my friend Sandy’s photo yesterday, Sandy makes me laugh.  Also Tilly Bud (is that her real name?) The Laughing Housewife usually has a chuckle up her sleeve in her joke of the day cartoons.

Image via Wikipedia

4. Oranges, how about that wonderful fruit that comes from Florida every year?  David bought 2 oranges from our local supermarket and they were hard as rocks and shipped from Nigeria.  I have nothing against Nigeria, but why would they think we want oranges that should be shipped to Europe or somewhere closer ro Nigeria?  In protest, I contacted Hale Groves in Florida and put myself on the 4-month orange plan.  I also ordered a box of tangelos for the parrots, and a fruit cake for David. The parrots really love those Florida oranges, and I eat the occasional segment too.  The other thing my parrots  and I love, are organic pomegrante, and papayas from Hawaii, although they are scarce this year.  If I could figure out how to peel a mango, we would all have mangos.  Otherwise, I buy the frozen mango slices which David likes on his ice cream.

5. Another neat thing I had in the past few days was a great cup of tea made by my granddaughter who works in a tea house. She has promised to buy some tea for me, but I think she will have to give me a tea-making lesson too.

6.  My thesis paper for my class.  I reread my paper this morning trying to distill the main points, but I loved it so much I was only able to shrink the 31-page paper to 29 pages of “notes.”  I know the first rule of good writing is don’t fall in love with what you have written or “murder your children” as one professor wrote, but gosh, can’t I just love this paper for a little while before I move on?  I can see I am in for trouble this evening with only 7 minutes to speak.  Oh well, it won’t be the first time I was yanked off the stage like those old vaudeville commedians who went on for too long.  Perhaps I should have selected a more boring topic, but murder is interesting.

7. Oh yes, warm fuzzy dogs are nice too.  I was very grateful that when my daughter, granddaughters and I gathered our nine dogs did not try to kill each other.  In fact, they mostly got along.  Of course, Connie had two of the dogs outside.  Daisy was outside because she had rolled in manure and was stinky, and Boz the range runner was outside because he likes to pick up small dogs and shake them until they are dead.  Rita’s giant puppy, Naomi, was inside, but she mostly ignored the newcomers (our dogs) until Johnny tried to lick the plate Rita gave her.   The “Old Man” did not give a toss who was there.  After wandering hungry and outcast for days and weeks, he was thankful for his new home.  He walked into the living room, took one look at Johnny, and flopped on the floor and went to sleep.  Now that’s thankfulness.