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Gratitudes 2018, Day 47

Since I mentioned Berkley and Sophie yesterday (Berkley’s the one in front), I decided to write some gratitudes about them. Thus, the Berkley and Sophie Edition:

  1. Berkley’s anxiety. I know, an odd thing to be grateful for. It’s not like we enjoy seeing him shaking in the kennel when we’re leaving the house, but Teresa thought that a companion would help keep him more relaxed. Thus, Sophie joined our family.

  2. Doggie diapers. Berkley and Sophie are rescues. When we got Sophie almost a year ago, she wasn’t housebroken. Not at all. After the first few accidents, we started investing in doggie diapers to keep her from marking the entire house as her territory.

  3. Our Bissell ProHeat 2X Revolution. It was advertised as a pet carpet cleaner. That’s why we bought it. It’s been good for cleaning up lots of stains, especially stains caused by pets.

  4. The dogs’ kennel. Their combined weight is about 35 pounds, so they can both fit into a kennel that we keep on the lower level of the house. They can stay in there while we’re at work instead of putting them in daycare every day and we haven’t needed to put a pee pad in the kennel (for either dog) for months.

  5. Pee pads. The kennel floor is made of hard plastic, so pet carpet cleaners don’t work well there. The vacuum is actually a pretty recent purchase—before then, everything got cleaned by hand. (Berkley sometimes needed a pee pad when he’d be in there for a really long workday, but neither dog has had an accident for a very long time.)

  6. They love their mama. That can make it difficult for me to take them outside to pee—they’d rather stay inside with Teresa, so I sometimes have to carry that 35 pounds to the entryway to put their harnesses on. That’s a bummer for me, but the fact that they’ve found someone who loves them and they love her back… it’s pretty awesome.

  7. Berkley loves his mama. That’s a potty-based gratitude. When Teresa takes him out, “Yay, I get to walk with Mom! It’ll last longer if I don’t pee!” When I take him out while she’s home, “I better pee fast so I can get back inside to Mom!”

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 46

It’s late, time for a quickie! (That’s what she said…)

  1. My grandma. She’ll be turning 101 later this month and I cherish her deeply.

  2. Grandma’s birthday party. It was about a week and a half early, but when you’re trying to get a lot of extended family members together at the same time, sometimes the date needs to be a little flexible. But there was good food, good fellowship and good fun. And cake. That was good, too.

  3. Birthday cake. Because it’s cake.

  4. Crazy Uncle Jon. There are plenty of reasons he’s earned that nickname, but in this case, I’m really glad that he organized the party.

  5. Berkley and Sophie. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned them before, but I’m grateful for them this time because Grandma loves them. Her vision is terrible and getting worse, but she can see that they have such big, brown eyes… The place she lives now is pet-friendly, so they joined us for the party, behaved extremely well and put a smile on Grandma’s face.

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 45

GOOOOOOOOOAAALLLLLLL!!!!

  1. Soccer. Football. Futbol. The beautiful game. I remember once saying that when I die, I want “soccer” to be on my gravestone. I’ve backed away from that idea since then, but I can still picture my body in a wooden boat, people pushing it out into the water, shooting it with flaming arrows and then it’s just me and my soccer gear floating together toward the abyss.

  2. Dick’s Sporting Goods. Some of my soccer gear is old and worn out and needed to be replaced, so that’s where I’ve bought all my new stuff.

  3. My new soccer ball. I chose it in part because it was on discount and in part because Adidas made a bunch of new soccer balls for the 2018 World Cup. They were all themed for different countries, so there was one that had “Brazil” printed on it, one that had “Germany” on it… I bought a “United States” ball. You know, the country that failed to qualify to play in the Cup this year? So yeah, the ball was on discount.

  4. My soccer ball holder with the elastic cord. I have no idea if there’s a technical term to describe it: it’s got some velcro straps that wrap around the soccer ball, which then connects to a long elastic cord with a loop at the end that I can hold. Viola! No more damaging the side of the house or the garage door to practice passing and shooting now!

  5. Soccer training videos. If I’m gonna fall down the YouTube rabbit hole, I might as well learn something productive while I’m at it. Well, okay, maybe just one more cat video first…

  6. Mad Dogs. Nope, not talking about Berkley and Sophie starting a rumble. Cities Sports Connection runs year-round recreational leagues for a bunch of sports, including soccer. I played with Mad Dogs for a lot of years and I’m very grateful for all of that time. I also looked at the CSC website and they’re listed in the standings, so who knows? Maybe they’ll accept me back on the team when the fall season starts in a few weeks. Just as long as it doesn’t interfere with my watching cat videos…

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 44

Today provided an excellent reminder of why I’m grateful to work in Pubs. Sure, there’s some general satisfaction in doing good work, but it’s even better when I get a message from an editor saying:

  1. “Good catch.” When I find a mistake that other people missed, knowing it can be corrected and thus prevent thousands of kids in Mississippi from being more confused than they already were while taking a math test… that’s a good feeling.

  2. “Nice shot.” That wasn’t an editor, that’s what my grandfather would say to me while playing pool. It didn’t matter if I sunk a ball or completely missed everything: “Nice shot.”

  3. “Will you marry me?” Also not an editor. I’m very grateful that I asked Teresa that question and I’m looking forward to her following through with it in January.

  4. “We’d love to join you.” My parents live fairly close, so when Teresa and I were talking about what to do for dinner tonight, I suggested that we call and invite them to join us. Yay for having dinner with Mom and Dad!

  5. “We’ll pay for it.” … Yay for having dinner with Mom and Dad!

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 43

So what happens when you find the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything… and then keep going? Throw in the towel?! I think not!

  1. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A fun five-book trilogy that ultimately resulted in the terrible joke above. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, please tip your waitstaff, I’ll be here for at least another 42 days. Unless the world explodes, in which case [insert towel joke here].

  2. Douglas Adams, author of said five-book trilogy. Thanks for being such an enabler of terrible jokes, Mr. Adams. And for providing me with an easy way to cull the number of “friends” I have on Facebook: a lot of them unfriended me after reading those terrible jokes above.

  3. Replacement office chairs. There were three of us contractors who worked in ADel over the whole summer, one of whom missed work when we came back to Pubs on Tuesday. When she came back, a lot of stuff had been taken by various people, including all of the good chairs: the only ones left… let’s just say they were bad. So she and I took a walk back to ADel, where they have a surplus of chairs just sitting against a wall. Well, we accosted the chair she’d been using the last few months, I rolled one of the chairs that was against the wall into its place, then we rolled the chair all the way across the building so she could use it in Pubs.

  4. The supply room at work. They sometimes run out of stuff in high demand like boxes of tissues, but the room was fully stocked this morning. Need an extra pad of paper? Check! Post-It notes? Check! Four different colors of pens? Check! A small Guatemalan child? … Nope, still out of those.

  5. Cheese-curd brats. Every other Thursday, work has a food truck parked in the back lot for lunch. Some days, the food options don’t seem very appetizing. Today, I wanted to try a brat that had Ellsworth cheese curds cooked into it. Yummy.

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Gratitudes 2018, Day 42

Today might have some repeats, but when you spend over an hour and a half talking to your wedding photographer and checking out the results of your engagement photo shoot, those things get bumped up to the top of the list of gratitudes pretty quick.

  1. Pictures from the engagement photo shoot. We finally got to see them today. Joe had about 20 different filters on his computer to use as he was editing the photos, so we’ve got picture in color, sepia, and black and white with a variety of visual effects.

  2. Visual filters. Because regular pictures in regular color are just so… blah. (That’s completely untrue, of course, but it’s pretty neat to see how different one picture can look when different filters are applied.)

  3. Anti-reflective lenses. Or at least the left one on my glasses. The right one apparently managed to reflect his camera’s flash in almost every shot, but if the reflection was over my right eye, he could copy and paste my left iris and pupil in there instead.

  4. Copying and pasting. Because sometimes the reflection off my glasses are as cooperative as the dogs. Try and get them in a certain place and then suddenly they’re right in front of your face. (The dogs actually did pretty well in the pictures, but getting them both to look at the camera at the same time… yeah, that apparently was a bit of a challenge.)

  5. Joe Conely. He’s a great photographer who did some amazing work and I’m so grateful that he’ll be taking pictures at our wedding, too.