I have been feeling kind of blue and stressed lately so I decided to cleanse my palate and make a short list of 7 things I am grateful for/love . . .
1. I love it when my dog dreams and barks in her sleep, those funny, squeaky, quiet woofs always make me smile. I also really love my dog, Lily, she is an American Bulldog and is quite smart, and I also think she may have a sense of humor. In addition to all that, Lily is a world class spooner.
2. I love it when my house mate, who is a total owl, randomly makes me breakfast in the morning. My day starts at 5:30 AM while his is just ending and to not have to navigate fire and appliances in my semi comatose pre tea state is lovely.
3. I love my car, yes it has cost me a lot of money in the last year what with a new engine and transmission BUT it is practically a new car now. I like the color- bronze, it is delightfully fast, handles wonderfully, and looks deceptively lady like. By the way, it is a Dodge Intrepid in case you were wondering.
4. I seriously love my job. Every day there is something fun or delightful I get to do, every day I get to make a difference in people’s lives, every day I feel respected, liked and valued. It is awesome. I have the pleasure of teaching something I am passionate about and find endlessly fascinating. I also get to write papers and articles as well as speak at seminars.
5. I enjoy being immersed in academia, I teach for a living and I attend school. I love the conversations, the reading, the research and even the paper writing and how it all meshes together with my career enriching the classes I take, and the classes I take enriching my career.
6. I love my house. I have a beautiful comfortable bed. I have finally discovered the joys of sheets with thread counts higher than 12 grit. I have 9 pillows of various qualities, a very firm mattress and cozy rug on the floor. My room is full of bookshelves with an embarrassment of riches of books as well as little oddments I have collected. I have a great vintage velvet couch and love seat in my living room and 3 large fish tanks with interesting creatures leading their fishy lives.
I have a kitchen that is easy to cook in and I have food in my fridge and pantry. My yard is huge and I have flowers growing, lizards creeping and hummingbirds humming.
7. Most important of all, I have people I love who love me back. Even though we are far apart we still are connected to each other and that is a wonderful thing.
Showing posts with label gratitude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gratitude. Show all posts
Friday, September 9, 2011
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Gratitude for frugality
I am feeling so grateful for the people in my life who have taught me and modeled for me frugality. When I was growing up we were rather poor and we were way ahead of the trendy recycle curve, I have been making do, reusing and recycling my whole life.
When I was a kid my grandma (who raised me) was not what one would call domestic and I eschewed all things I perceived as “woman’s work”, so learn cooking and meal planning at my grandma’ s frugal knee, I did not. My grandma’s version of home-made food was to recombine processed products into a new thing. Her best dish was to take minute steaks roll them around Stove Top stuffing and stick a tooth pick through them then cover the whole thing with cream of mushroom soup and bake. Quite tasty, but not exactly from scratch nor without sodium count to give a blue whale hypertension. She had a lot going on in her life and she tried her best but Julia Child she was not.
When I was 18 I went to live with my ex-fiancé’s brother and sister-in-law. Not only did they change my life simply by the way they lived truly Christ like lives but also Ellen taught me about meal planning, grocery shopping, and generally living within my means while still living well. To this day I use the lessons she taught me about stretching my food budget, household management and living well. I am so thankful to her for giving me that gift (plus she is the only other person I know besides me who reads in the shower). Thanks to the Internet I have been able to reconnect with Ellen and wonder of wonders she posts the recipes I remember from those halcyon days of my life that I have great nostalgia for. As a wonderful extra added value the recipes are completely within my food budget, whoo hoo!
I try to share frugal living tips with my students. Most of them are single moms with minuscule incomes. Whenever I am feeling constrained by my budget I think about them and their struggles. I have one student who has 2 children under 5 and lives on slightly more than minimum wage. When she finishes the program and gets her certification she will be able to make more than 3 times what she makes now. Many of my students are in the same boat. By passing along frugal tips I am hoping I can help them deal with the increase in their incomes and to help them pay off their student loans by living well within their means. Not only that but I think that by providing positive reinforcement for frugal living I help normalize it. Our culture is so consumption driven and people feel bad if they are not rolling in expensive crap, I am hoping that by my speaking about ways to live within one’s means it will make it seem not less than but a better alternative to the consumer culture. At least I can hope.
When I was a kid my grandma (who raised me) was not what one would call domestic and I eschewed all things I perceived as “woman’s work”, so learn cooking and meal planning at my grandma’ s frugal knee, I did not. My grandma’s version of home-made food was to recombine processed products into a new thing. Her best dish was to take minute steaks roll them around Stove Top stuffing and stick a tooth pick through them then cover the whole thing with cream of mushroom soup and bake. Quite tasty, but not exactly from scratch nor without sodium count to give a blue whale hypertension. She had a lot going on in her life and she tried her best but Julia Child she was not.
When I was 18 I went to live with my ex-fiancé’s brother and sister-in-law. Not only did they change my life simply by the way they lived truly Christ like lives but also Ellen taught me about meal planning, grocery shopping, and generally living within my means while still living well. To this day I use the lessons she taught me about stretching my food budget, household management and living well. I am so thankful to her for giving me that gift (plus she is the only other person I know besides me who reads in the shower). Thanks to the Internet I have been able to reconnect with Ellen and wonder of wonders she posts the recipes I remember from those halcyon days of my life that I have great nostalgia for. As a wonderful extra added value the recipes are completely within my food budget, whoo hoo!
I try to share frugal living tips with my students. Most of them are single moms with minuscule incomes. Whenever I am feeling constrained by my budget I think about them and their struggles. I have one student who has 2 children under 5 and lives on slightly more than minimum wage. When she finishes the program and gets her certification she will be able to make more than 3 times what she makes now. Many of my students are in the same boat. By passing along frugal tips I am hoping I can help them deal with the increase in their incomes and to help them pay off their student loans by living well within their means. Not only that but I think that by providing positive reinforcement for frugal living I help normalize it. Our culture is so consumption driven and people feel bad if they are not rolling in expensive crap, I am hoping that by my speaking about ways to live within one’s means it will make it seem not less than but a better alternative to the consumer culture. At least I can hope.
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