Gratitude (Parts 4 & 5)

For the home alone against their will Sundays can be the longest day of the decade, especially sunny ones. I don't think I'll ever get the hang of wishing someone would wake up and think it would be good to see me today or thinking of the people I think it would be good to see! This one has not been all horrid though and I must think of what was good to make it better.

There was astonishing hour or so when I felt pretty well. This is my fourth gratitude for today...may there be more to come, but if not I'll savour the memory of this one for a while. Even more miraculously it coincided with a quiet time in the communal gardens so I put on shorts and made a flask of tea and baked myself for a while. I talked to a boy throwing a stick for a dog, I talked to the dog. I read a few pages of my book and marvelled at the delicious experience of not feeling a total invalid (both pronunciations and meanings ha, ha!) for a while. When I got back I still felt OK so had some lunch...salad and jacket potato with cottage cheese and chutney (yum, yum!) and did some knitting and watched tennis until I had to lie down and wimp out again.

And then after a couple of hours of feeling bad and sad, stuck on the sofa and stuck in my head I found a wonderful documentary I'd recorded about an Icelandic photographer full of amazing pictures and stories of the people he'd met and the places he'd loved there and am loving watching it and lost in awe and delight! Just paused to tell you, even though you're not here...finding this forms my fifth gratitude of the day...

Wonderful world

Today I give profound thanks first of all to the 'Day in pictures' on the BBC's website. We, forget sometimes the things around us, the buildings, the transport, the faces of the people and their clothes, their interests, concerns and celebrations are not the norm everywhere on this planet. For the armchair anthropologist confined to bed these photographs are a source of deep joy and wonder!

The second one is going to seem exceptionally mad even for me but hear me out (if you want to that is)...it's washing up! No, I'm not exceptionally keen on doing it either but when you think about it, having pots and pans and plates and cups and cutlery is pretty amazing anyway, let alone having hot water 'on tap' to wash them. And having had the financial and/or physical wherewithal to put things on or in them. That's something to be thankful for for everybody I reckon. But if you're on your own and not in the best of health then the fact you found energy and inclination to first of all to nourish yourself and secondly to clear up after is a minor miracle some days. And how much better do you feel going into a clean tidy kitchen than a messy one with jobs you haven't done? Well, not cured maybe, but marginally more upbeat and cared for, even if you did the caring yourself. So yes I am grateful indeed.

Do to yourself as you would have others do to you

Wish I knew how to make the time right on these...it's 22.35 really. just been watching Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Bit too sweet for me. The really good thing about being home alone is that I can watch whatever I like and wear whatever is comfy and eat what I feel like when I feel like it and not have to share the last of the chocolate..and it doesn't matter about getting fat and spotty any more either, or crying...if you're dying. Ha ha, see...loads of stuff to be pleased about!

Night night sweet lonely heart. Keep beating if you want to, stop if you prefer...