Don't look down

I'm grateful that Rachel often comes here to give me acupuncture as by 'eck it's a trek there and back to get it at her clinic...

I'm grateful for the chance to look down on people - from the top of a bus it's all right! I like to practice smiling at them and beaming metta meditation, and am grateful I'm aware how much better I am at compassion when the object's further away or at least muted by music from headphones.

I'm grateful for the moving marbling of cloud shade on the fields, and the vast blue meadow of the sea, the poignancy of pets and gardens as humans attempt to find meaning and expression through other living things.

I'm grateful to Jenny for cleaning while I was out, including the lowest panes of the high up windows so that I can enjoy looking out again. I'm grateful for the soothing sound of wind in the trees and neighbourhood pm peace to enable a long sleep...

I'm grateful for remembering scones in the freezer, the thought of which warmed and topped with sweet creaminess finally got me upright again!

In my own head

I give thanks failing to turn my brain off and sleep for ages but then having a fascinating bunch of dreams with a variety of elements including realising I was sixteen and could leave school, realising there were lots of beautiful clothes in my wardrobe I'd forgotten I had and seeing an image that I was lucid enough to think I might like to recreate though maybe not with words...

I give thanks for a lift to and fro the knitting group from Jenny, a lift up and down the stairs with the tea things there from Linda and milk and some of those lovely Biscoff biscuits from me. I give thanks for an excessively long natter even by our standards, as it's a long time since the three of us have been together and had some catching up and commenting to do. I give thanks for meeting a new lady who on hearing my name asked 'Is that by name and by nature?' which is the joke I always myself so went down well with me!

I give thanks the intention at this stage in the evening is to go to choir, though I've talked more over the last couple of days than I often do in a fortnight, have to go out to travel to Rachel's clinic to get my treatment tomorrow morning and am getting decidedly dozy after my tea so this aim may result in being no more than that. I give thanks I have been singing a bit around the flat lately anyway, and the neighbours are probably glad it's just a line or a phrase here and there where the song inadvertently bursts out of my head. I'm grateful for the novel I'm reading where the narrator and her husband live in adjoining flats...and that my most neighbours don't read this blog or they might get the wrong idea from that indeed.

Really free

I give thanks it's Sunday evening - sometimes weekends can be hard work. I give thanks for understanding it's my perceptions and preferences and desire to understand things make it so, and even the desire to be free from even the desire!

I give thanks for watching the film Samsara yet again. It touches something inside me not normally reached.

I give thanks for a conversation so long I had to climb up a ladder to fetch a replacement phone and down on my hands and knees to plug it in as the battery on the first one couldn't cope. I'm not used to talking (and listening) to such an extent and am not unequivocally converted to the practice but it makes a change from talking to myself... and I'm always grateful for the experience to be equanimous about change.

I give thanks for giving up trying to describe this image and taking a picture to send instead

I give thanks for a sight of a feather riding a thermal all on its own

I give thanks for remembering John Otway and Wild Willy Barratt...

Read and return

Still feeling out of sorts, I gave thanks for a long lavender bath with a book yesterday evening to precede an early night...and that when I got out of the water I felt so much better I stayed up quite late instead. I was grateful immediate neighbours were out or quiet and I was quiet too, even my tinnitus shut up so I could hear the waves breaking on the shore through my open window...

I give thanks for feeling I could have done more with today...surely that's better than feeling you should have done less?

I give thanks for getting some household chores done, watching some tennis and Breaking Bad. I had a longing to do something else which I couldn't so I give thanks for making a shrunk dress longer instead...

I give thanks for hearing someone out in the garden who I saw taken off in an ambulance a couple of days ago and clearly must be OK

I give thanks for a Norwegian phone box library

Half and half

It's been a day of feeling half OK and half not. I think my body's still dealing with this persistent little bug that seems to be going round. A friend is grateful I've got it as she has too and, as she's been camping, was beginning to imagine she might have contracted Lyme disease. Understandably I'm grateful she's got it as if I don't feel well for more than a day or two I can fall foul of all kinds of dire health imaginings...

I'm grateful for some jaw dropping, jump up and down (not literally) and shout at the telly (literally) tennis - a men's match last night and (very unusual for me to get excited about this) a women's match this evening. I give thanks for the way the Wimbledon crowd are always at least half on the side of the underdog no matter how great the favourite on the other side of the net, more so if they have some unusual characteristics like inspired shots or being British of course.

I give thanks for the big beautiful yellow moon last night and for a freezing cold wind today making it easy to come home and rest after blood tests and so on. I give thanks for a chuckle with a cab driver I've not seen for a while.

I give thanks for these rather amusing and clever images each made from two photos...
http://twistedsifter.com/2015/07/stephen-mcmennamy-splits-photos-in-half-combines-results/

Memory foam

I give thanks for another pretty sky last night - sunset painted clouds on one side and on the other a full yellow moon rising through the darkening blue reflected on the sea. What were the skies like when were you were old? Wonder full...

I give thanks for finding my phone and tablet after a puzzled half hour. Then I remembered I'd stopped for a lie down while changing the bedding and yep...after patting the clean stretched fitted sheet I found them tucked underneath!

I give thanks for the aroma of bergamot when opening a fresh pack of Earl Grey

I give thanks for the deep soothing of Tiger Balm on a stiff sore neck and shoulders

I give thanks for Dustin Brown's dreads replayed in slow motion. Like a dark wave breaking wave they are...

Cloud's illusions

After my tea last night my body suddenly seemed to twig quite how much it had done over the last few days and flatly refused to do anymore except allow me to marvel at the pretty evening sky. I gave thanks for the little puffball clouds highlighted in bright rose gold until the sun finally slipped behind the hill. Then they became just dark grey blobs on light grey but when I looked up and saw them seeming white against the darker sky overhead I gave thanks for the fascinating way the contrast gradually changed to a virtual opposite as well.

I gave thanks for paracetamol, a lavender bath and an early night - didn't make a ha'porth of difference to the stiffness, sleepiness and pain but it was another illusion to be grateful for that I had some sort of control... I'm grateful for all the mugginess, as it makes moving little and snoozing loads seem quite normal too.

I'm grateful for all the things I'd done in the last few days when I felt comparatively well - particularly for the advance cooking meaning there's been things ready to heat and eat. Oh and for ice cream in the freezer to cool down!

I'm grateful the BBC red button on Sky is working for Wimbledon....some years you have to do all kinds of strange things to get access to the coverage on different courts. I'm grateful that though there's been some good matches, play has largely been quite subdued due to the weather as I've not felt up to sitting on the edge of my seat.