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Gratitudes 2018, Day 24

Time to eat! (I thought about writing “Dinner time!”, but why restrict myself to dinner when there are so many meals to be grateful for? Breakfast, lunch, snack, dessert, second breakfast…)

  1. Cupcakes. Light, fluffy cake topped with rich, sugary frosting. It’s like a party on top and… a party on the bottom. Just a big ol’ party that goes in mah mouth!
  2. Cake and frosting. Good luck making cupcakes without them.
  3. Cupcakes for breakfast. Because it’s never too early for a party. In mah mouth!
  4. Cupcakes for dessert. Okay, okay, okay… if that’s when you think they’re supposed to be eaten, save your party for later in the day. You can be grateful for cupcakes then, too.
  5. Adulting. If I’m an adult and I can’t choose to have cupcakes for any meal, then gimme my backpack and lunch box, I’m going back to grade school.
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Gratitudes 2018, Day 23

I was really dragging today at work and even started doing the tired head bob in the middle of the afternoon. Yeah, it was pretty bad. (Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as a production editor who got hired at the beginning of the summer and released three weeks later: he fell asleep at his desk on his third day. Yeah, that’s even worse. One of my coworkers likes to refer to him as “Sleepy McSleeperson”.) But even when I’m really tired, there are still things to be grateful for.

  1. Having two break rooms at work. There’s one right across the hall in the part of the building where I’m working, but when I’m nodding off, taking a walk to the one further away is a good way to help me wake up.
  2. Old prescription bottles. After so many years of picking up meds at the pharmacy, I’ve had a variety of different sizes. If I want to recycle the plastic, I can peel off my prescription information and toss them. Alternatively, I can use them to hold other stuff: vitamins… fish oil tablets… coins… that’s right, one style is almost the perfect size for carrying quarters, so I filled one with a bunch of spare change to use in vending machines in the break room.
  3. Vending machines. Sometimes, you’re hungry and need a snack. Sometimes, you need an excuse to go for a walk that doesn’t involve all of the stalls being occupied in the restroom.
  4. Multiple restrooms in the building. Because sometimes “Just wait until one of these is available” isn’t a viable option.
  5. Walking. Because sometimes “Just put on some roller skates and skate to the break room/restroom” isn’t a viable option. Most times. Probably all the time. The employee handbook doesn’t mention it specifically, but I’m guessing no roller skating in the halls is an unwritten rule.
  6. Legs. Because sometimes “Just walk/roller skate with your hands” isn’t a viable option.

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 22

Sorry, no pictures this time, but I’ve got another theme that I can use to put together my list of gratitudes today.

  1. Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota. When I was job hunting last spring, I felt inspired to look into volunteering for some kind of epilepsy-based organization. Maybe I’d get a job out of it, maybe I wouldn’t, but trust me on the sunscreen. Wait… that’s not right… Maybe yes, maybe no, but I wanted to try and volunteer. After all, it’s something that’s been close to my heart for a long time. And my head. Definitely close to my head.
  2. Tammy Sammon. When I looked at their website, I could choose up to three groups to potentially volunteer for, one of which was the creative arts program. Tammy is the coordinator for that group and… well, it took a while to connect. After waiting a while to hear back, I finally got a response. However, she was preparing for Camp Oz, a week-long camp for kids with epilepsy. Next, she was at Camp Oz. After that, she needed to recover from Camp Oz. So it might have been a couple months overall before I was finally able to start volunteering with EFMN.
  3. Camp Oz. I took two days off from work this summer to volunteer at the camp. I tagged along with a group of 11- and 12-year-olds as they went through their daily activities and even got to participate a few times. I helped gather wood for a fire so they could do some cooking, I offered suggestions as they prepared a skit for the campfire on Thursday night and I even got to do a little archery. I managed to hit the second yellow ring on the target with my second arrow (there are three yellow rings, the smallest of which is the bullseye). So I set a really high standard for myself that I was never able to match. Just ask the arrows that ended up in the ground in front of the target.
  4. Archery. We had a really small compound bow at home when I was a kid, which is why I knew I should prompt the camp counselor about having the odd-colored feather pointing to the outside instead of the inside (having it rub against the bow when you shoot would send the arrow… I’m not sure what direction it would go, but definitely not straight).
  5. The EFMN Adult Support Group. It meets once a month and the meeting was tonight. I usually go to provide support as opposed to needing it—I came to terms with having epilepsy many years ago, but being able to tell people about my experiences and making them feel more comfortable is a good feeling for me, too.
  6. Anti-seizure medications. I want to express a great deal of gratitude for the meds that kept me seizure-free for about 15 years. Sure, it’s unfortunate that I have to refer to them in the past tense, but even with the stuff I’m taking now, the fact that I can function well instead of being stuck having blackouts or major convulsions… I’m definitely grateful that they exist and that I’ve had access to effective ones.

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Gratitude 2018, Day 21

Join me now as we take a quick trip of gratitude that led to the other item I had framed recently:

  1. Hollywood. Technically, this should probably be L.A., but the location is close enough. Plus “Hollywood” is my nickname as an adult at summer camp. Has a nice ring to it, right?
  2. Paul Jensen. I met him at the Mensa booth at the State Fair back in 2004 and we worked there together for about three hours. He’d heard about a local casting call for some kind of smart person game show and if he hadn’t contacted the casting agency and told them to call me… so insert lots of gratitude here.
  3. Beauty and the Geek. Yes, that’s a gigantic, overarching number of things to be grateful for squished into just four words, but if I started going into detail, this definitely wouldn’t be done by the end of Day 21. So I’m just gonna stick with that: the reality TV show “Beauty and the Geek.”
  4. Television. Without TV, I’d be stuck being grateful for plain old reality in #3 and that’s just ridiculous.
  5. USA Today. They carried a full-page ad for Beauty and the Geek on June 8th, 2005. It used quotes from reviews in TV Guide, the LA Times, and… USA Today. So what’s wrong with a little self-promotion? (Says the guy whose website is shawnbakken.net…)
  6. Whichever neighbor left the full-page ad in our mailbox. We don’t get USA Today, but one day, we opened up the mailbox and there it was. No name, no nothing, just that one page. You’d think someone knew I was on the show or something.
  7. Lamination. It’s basically putting thin sheets of plastic on the front and back of a sheet of paper, then melting the outside edges. It protects paper from the elements, wear and tear, browning with age and it’s probably the only reason why this page of newspaper was still in good enough condition to put in a frame 13 years later. (It’s also the reason why you can see some wrinkles behind the glass, but paper typically doesn’t age gracefully, so there ya go.)
FYI, this ad is old enough to be in junior high this year.
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Gratitudes 2018, Day 20

Join me now as we take a quick trip of gratitude that led to the painting I had framed recently:

  1. Thailand. The painting’s native country.
  2. IOGT. More officially, “International Organization of Good Templars”. (No relation to Knights Templar, thanks very much.) It’s an organization with roots in the United States, but has expanded globally. Their World Congress in 2014 took place in Thailand, so Mom and I decided to attend and then spend a little more time touring the country before flying home.
  3. Planes. Because flying home from Asia is faster than swimming.
  4. Maetaeng Elephant Park. One of the sites we visited was an elephant park, where they have a few elephants capable of holding a paintbrush with their trunks.
  5. Elephants. Because elephant parks aren’t nearly as interesting without them.
  6. Paint. Because paintbrushes aren’t nearly as interesting without it.
  7. Elephant paintings. Add all of those gratitudes together and you can buy one of these to frame and put up on your wall. (Minus the blue stuff on the right side of the picture that’s actually the sky reflecting through the window…)
The elephants can paint better than I can!
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Gratitudes 2018, Day 19

I’m writing this on my laptop today, so putting a blog post together can be a lot faster. To celebrate, this is going to be a deluxe version of Gratitudes: I’m gonna try to break stuff down into smaller details instead of just describing five big things. (I may end up duplicating some I’ve already written this way and I may end up reusing some in the future, we’ll see what happens.)

I was at work this afternoon (having a job, Questar Assessments, my mad proofreading skillz) when my cell phone rang (my cell phone, electricity, magical beams of energy that transfer sound waves from someone’s mouth into my ear across vast distances). I didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t answer (caller ID, voicemail, being able to turn off the phone’s ringer). When I checked the message, it was from Michael’s, the art and craft supplies store (Michael’s, crafts, art, commerce). More specifically, from the Aaron Brothers custom framing department (Aaron Brothers, picture frames, the employee who called to let me know my order was ready). Teresa and I drove there after dinner (Teresa, my car, food), then we walked up to the counter (our legs, our shoes, our hands… yes, we hold hands—stop saying “Ewwwwww…”).

I’d go on, but I’m actually kinda stalling. The problem is that I thought about taking pictures of said order when we picked it up, but I forgot. Had I done so, I could have gone with five big things like usual, maybe something like Michael’s, Aaron Brothers, framed pictures and then the two items in the order. Since I didn’t do so, everyone gets to wait until I take the pics and can post them online. But hopefully, reading almost two dozen gratitudes in one simple paragraph… well, simple if you ignore the stuff I’m grateful for that’s in parentheses… but I hope it’ll keep you all content for the time being.