Lesson I thought

I give thanks I'm sure I'll give thanks one day for the lessons I'm learning now. I'll be sure and let you know when I do...if I live that long, I'm still blogging and you're still reading what I write!

I give thanks for the smell of rose nag champa. There's been a new box unopened on my chest of drawers for days and still the fragrance, though faint, is in the air.

I give thanks for the Interlink driver tooting his horn and hearing it from several floors up and the other side of the building so I could go and collect medical supplies. For some forms I've been waiting for being at the post office at last.

I give thanks for increasingly discovering I've a lot less to be grateful for than I thought. Of course I liked the illusions and delusions, that's the point of them afterall is it not? But on the whole I'd rather accept I'm stuck in several sorts of big dark hole and stop believing in any ways out.

Meanwhile I give thanks to Mima for whisking me off for a quick car cream tea with a view. Although this spot is not far away it's been a while since I've been there and the memory of then was quite poignantly appropriate today...as it the nostalgic tint.

Pail blue

I give thanks to you for reading this! I try to limit communication when I'm stressed and depressed as almost everything I hear seems to make the feelings worse...including and especially all the negativity I spout myself of course. But though solitude and silence can keep its spread in check, you can't use a bad time as an excuse to take time off from writing a daily gratitude blog now can you? I apologise for all grumbling and groaning sneaking in and give thanks I'm trying my best.

I give thanks the cheese and onion potato pie was a great success, well apart from the potassium content of course...but hey, a girl's gotta live as well as die! A blue mood is not conducive to cordon bleu cookery but I'm aware I've not been nourishing myself as well as I might over the last couple of weeks so I give thanks for making more effort today.

I give thanks for surviving an energetic session of bailing out during the downpour last night, and being so sleepy afterwards I dropped off mid mental complaint about neighbourhood sounds - so that cloud certainly did have a silver lining, didn't it?

I've been tired and sore today and utterly disinterested in trying to get anything done except trying to get myself better. I give thanks for my bath and my bed, Earl grey and earplugs and a good book - precious balm as ever. For fragrant bubbles and clean sheets. For realising just as it's my blog, and thus can be however I want it to be...likewise my puzzles can be too. In crossword world there are many conventions and rules, practices expected and frowned upon, but I've found some pleasure today in working on one that has a whole mixture of clues - straight and twisted definitions, general knowledge, cryptic wordplay and puns. I give thanks I'm quite aware (and really don't care) it's a pretty pointless things to do...

(Not) going for a song

I give thanks for coming up with an idea that got me quite motivated for a while last night. There's a concert I want to go to, in a place that's hard to get to by public transport (and impossible to get back from late at night) and it dawned on me I could stay somewhere nearby, and thereby get a little break, and get to hear the music I would so like to. It turned out there wasn't any accommodation to be had within sensible distance of the venue, but I did enjoy the feeling that I could do something I wanted ...even though it didn't last.

I give thanks for coming up with an idea for another place to enquire about how to stop going round in legal circles. Every organisation I've contacted so far has said to talk to one of the others (if they have responded at all) so there again a little bit of optimism for a little while...before being referred back to the place I first started! I give thanks for some free advice about what to do as I can't get free advice anyway... And I give thanks the one bit of free legal help I have been able to get seems to have resulted in a copy of the service charge accounts at last. Well, I certainly have a copy of the accounts...it could just be a coincidence that after two years of asking they arrived after a solicitor stepped in, of course, but I don't think so, do you?

I give thanks for a bit less pain today so I could stop watching my inboxes (and clogging up other people's) and go and watch Mima shopping instead! For a pot of tea and a slice of Battenburg to share... For the rain because the growing things need it...and it renews my commitment to make it stop raining indoors. For it seeming likely there might cheese and onion potato pie for my tea...I've certainly made some but I'm learning not to hold on to any assumptions for too long these days!

More fool me

I give thanks for acupuncture softening the blues a little, and for a suggestion of something I might enjoy joining in with later in the year. I know we just have to live in what we're experiencing now, not yearn for the past or long for the future, but when the present feels like something you wish you hadn't unwrapped there's no harm in imagining a situation in which you might feel different again. I think...maybe...don't quote me on that!

I give thanks for the pretty little puffy clouds yesterday, for pasta with homemade pesto for tea, the washing up done for me and so much homemade gooseberry fool I'm having some today as well! For rubbing arnica gel into Rachel's sore back, and remembering how much I used to love giving massages and reflexology.

For more of the same for myself today, plus Actipatches and low grade analgesics to soften the experience of a little sciatica retrospective that seems to be visited upon me. I'd been racking my brains for somewhere I could go or something I could do while I felt physically stronger...so I'm grateful I'd not come up with a plan that had to be set aside. Today's little product malfunction was easier to deal with at home anyway, and as I always feel rather slapped down by the universe when they happen I give thanks I was feeling downhearted anyway.

With so many intentions up in the air, or already crash landed, even taking things one day at a time seems over ambitious just now, and I give thanks for aiming for smaller increments, living hour by hour or, when I can manage it, moment by moment, trying to be mindful and meditate. There's been a lot of waiting to find out about stuff today...Will the recycling bins be emptied this time? Will I hear news about the roof, or where to get some legal advice that won't send expenditure through it? Will it ever stop raining in Eastbourne? See if you can guess the answers, eh? I give thanks for patience...and email communication as I'm still waiting to see if BT can sort out the billing mix up and am even more loath than usual to use the phone.

I think not

I give thanks for liberal doses of my favourite available drugs for home medication - books and TV to stop me thinking about things I'd rather not.

For a serious bout of thinking to double check I was applying all available wisdom and courage to trying to move home... And deciding I was, and just need to find a tad more serenity...

For thinking long and hard about how to forget myself and get some outdoors, some soul stirring place I could get to, some physical activity accessible to me...before remembering there was stuff to be done in town and, as I couldn't face the bus or a cab, carrying stuff to and fro would have to do for today. I give thanks my mind says that's not enough, though my body tends to disagree...

I give thanks for sitting on the seafront watching a man not in the first flush of youth take a kayak lesson. I've wanted to try kayaking for years and now understand it's probably a good thing I've not! For getting excited seeing you can now play table tennis on the seafront (something I used to very much enjoy) before realising I probably wouldn't be any good at it now...and certainly not without a partner!

I give thanks for spotting small pink and white striped convolvulus flowers blooming on a shorn grassy bank. To Ann for sending me a parcel of fresh reading material and little treats. I give thanks Rachel is coming to make my tea and give me some acupuncture tonight...I think a spot of nurturing might be good for me...

This sporting strife

I give thanks I went to the party...I met some nice people and ate some nice food (with some to bring home too!) though, as usually happens when I mingle in new circles, I came home feeling a bit of a failure, well a lot of a failure in fact. So I give thanks, when waking up sad about that this morning, I remembered the line about triumph and disaster in Rudyard Kipling's If, and finding the poem to read again. For reminding myself though they are the bits that show, material and social success aren't the only things that matter in the world and indeed, unseen, others may also believe they are not doing as well as they could or should.

I give thanks I turned down the opportunity to look round some local gardens. Being low is very tiring and my envy levels are already way too high!

I give thanks for trying a self help book though it didn't help at all. For realising what I most wanted of all wanted to do today (out of the small range of feasible possibilities I could come up with) was compose and create some music... and for filling in a few hours wandering round the internet trying to find some software to make that happen without a small orchestra in my employ. Though failing to find any way of playing so much as a single note, I give thanks for a fine idea...and that by the time I'd given up it was time to watch the afternoon's sporting strife instead. I give thanks for managing to coax the TV aerial into co-operation (most of the time) again, firing up the headphones in case the neighbours got too loud...and not needing them (yet).

I give thanks for an excellent Queen's singles final to distract me from my distresses, followed by catching up on probably the most eventful F1 race ever. I give thanks for proud parents watching, it always moves me knowing they're there and they care whatever the outcome, even though (or maybe because?) I've no idea what it's like to be a cherished adult child.

I give thanks for folk sharing pictures of the good things they've been doing, great places they have been...and espeially those who take the time to spare a kind word or two. I give thanks for a day off trying to make things better...and for quite a lot of it managing not to think about how bad they seem.

Best thing for it

I give thanks for the mercy of sleep. Whatever ails you in body or soul, if you can sleep you can escape for a while... Though your troubles might invade your dreams of course. I give thanks one of my dreams contained nothing obviously relevant to anything bothering me at all!

I give thanks for writing one more letter to one more organisation about one of the things that bothers me that should not be going on. I give thanks I can express myself...and that sometimes people listen...

I give thanks for still having HD tennis on my TV...and for rain pausing play here and there so I could knock up a batch of feta pastries and preen myself. I've not used the main oven much on my new cooker yet and am still in awe of the fact you can just close the door and it shuts! Such luxuries...there'll be a man coming round with a tower of Ferrero Rocher at this rate, just you wait and see!

I give thanks for wearing my posh frock. Well obviously it's not that posh because a) I'm wearing it and b) I made it... but as I made it last year for occasions of a slightly smart and summery nature and there haven't been any since then, it still feels nice to slip it on. Unfortunately I'm wearing it to go to a party, and although of course I'm grateful (if somewhat astonished) to be invited to one, going on my own to a gathering where I know virtually no one is not anywhere on any list of stuff I like to do. Oh well, I give thanks for working out some years ago that one good thing about my lack of social skills is it makes everyone else in the room feel they are in comparison full of grace and charm! So I perform a vital service really, don't I, in my discomfort and dismay? As well as providing pastries...

I give thanks I've a bottle of advocaat in the fridge from which to take a swig of Dutch courage!