Thankful Thursday

How appropriate that I finished my November newsletter, which was all about gratitude, just in time to send it out this morning… a Thursday! Researching and writing that newsletter has had me in total-gratitude-overdrive this month, and it has been so. very. good. I highly recommend dabbling in some gratitude work. As far as things that will rock your world, it’s a close second to a luscious glass of Pinot Grigio.

I’m just going to go ahead and warn you: the list got outrageously long this week. I usually jot things down in my phone’s notepad section all week when I think of things and with my brain turned towards THANKFUL, it seemed like I just kept adding and adding things. (And all these explanations… I am just rambling tonight, yall.) But there doesn’t seem to be anything I can edit it out…. so you’ve been warned.

Then again, do I ever write anything with brevity?

Onwards, to the list! Happy Things, Today/This Week:

• The most delicious post-rain fall air today. Would have been perfect running weather, if I was doing that kind of thing these days. As it was, it was pretty good walking to the car weather.
• MEETING RECRUITMENT GOALS! We started recruiting for our research study in October 2006. Our goal was to get 450 people by, roughly the end of November 2009. Today, we hit 454. We are DONE recruiting. You have no idea how incredible that feels.
• Four hours after celebrating our recruitment goal, the proposal for a new pilot study slid across my desk. It’s a research study on weight management. I might have wet my pants with excitement. I may or may not have printed off about 15 different journal PDFs to begin reading. It was a good day in my job-world.
• Health. I’m eating everything now, from oatmeal to salads to coffee. Believe me, it's been fun.
  
• My hubby. I can’t even believe that he just worked something like 40 straight hours. He didn’t even complain or whine or become unbearably annoying, as his better half most certainly would have. All he did was request a Mellow Mushroom pizza, of which I was happy to oblige.
• Family: I am really excited to spend time with all my wonderful families – Clines, Crowells, Claffeys – next week. I am so very thankful to have families who I love so much, and who I genuinely enjoy spending time with. The more I coach people who bring up family issues, the more I realize this isn’t always the case. I’m lucky to have been born into an incredible family, but I’m even more blessed to have married into one too.
• Homemade pear honey, molasses, candy corn and 6 pounds of shelled black walnuts. Not a new MegEats recipe, just the random and wonderful things that clients and participants have given me this week. (Related: does anyone own a nutcracker?)
• Time with girlfriends, both old and new. We had RSA Happy Hour this week at 6th + Vine, and I was equally thankful to meet some new lovely girls and for the time spent catching up with two of my favorite girls, Jamie + Donna.
• That quiet moment at night when I turn off the lights in the house and the Christmas lights over the fireplace and loft twinkle softly. (Yes we have them up already.) There is just so much peace in that one little moment.
• Heather. Those friendship where you each nudge each other to be a tiny bit better? We got one. Excited for her visit tomorrow and NEW MOON. (And I’m thankful for Edward, THERE I SAID IT.)
• My dad. I heard Pet Shop Boys on the radio the other day and it actually made me homesick. Way to pass on the absolute worst musical tastes ever, Daddy.
• Winos…. and the actual, OMG we’re really doing this planning that occurred this week in re: to our Wine Country Trip that we’ve been talking about for, oh, hmm, five years.
• Emails from my seester. They make me laugh/smile/miss her outrageously. Please consider a relocation back to Winston.
• Coaching. I am amazed and thankful that this dream I had seven years ago (gah! really?!) is becoming a reality.
• How beautiful WFU’s campus is. And that I’m still a part of the place I love so much. (My love would grow infinitely if we could do something about the Lake Ontario size puddle that forms outside my office door every time it rains. Which has been, ohhh, the entire month of November.)
• Rain. I’m gonna go ahead and say it: I like this rain, because we just seeded our lawn. Also, I am hopeful that rainy fall means snowy winter. And if you live in the South, you understand why I might hope for snow. Snow = life on hold. The mere mention of snow = life on hold. I. Love. Snow. Days.
• A coffee date with two “graduates” on Tuesday, and a lunch date with two “grads” today. (By the way, ya’ll don’t have to order salads just because you go out to lunch with me. I eat fries, too.)
• This moment right now: I am sitting on the couch writing this, my freshly bathed dog sleeps curled up in a noodle. My best bud sits next to me, charting. Jazz is on our xm station and the Christmas lights are twinkling. Our life is so very good.
  
• Buddy. An entire good week in the crate! Good boy! Biscuit!
  
• Keena (my intern.) Didn’t realize when I signed up to have an intern I was going to learn so much from her. (Philosophy major? Always has some cool thoughts.)
• A compliment I received twice this week from two different people that I am tossing over and over in my head like a kid with a new baseball. One from a lovely friend and one from a complete stranger, but the same message: “you should write.” (I am writing, but I understood what they meant, and I want to. Bless you both for adding some fuel to that dream too.)
• My mom. I could never, ever, ever, ever, ever grow tired of talking to my mom. I sure hope she feels the same way about me.
• Verizon In-Calling Minutes. See above.
• Passionate people. I’m really passionate about my things – weight loss/health, law of attraction, food – and I love reading other people’s blogs or talking to other people who get really jazzed about their thing.
  
• Krankie’s Market. I love what they are doing. Direct farmer to consumer, all local.
• The health of all my family members and friends. (Keep it that way, guys, mk?)
• Driving in the wee hours of the morning today, I look over at the stop light next to me. An old man in a tweed cap, looking straight ahead, his hand absent mindedly stroking the head of a happy looking Bassett on the passenger seat next to him. The absolute picture of contentment, both of them.

Your turn. What tops your grateful list?

A windy path in Moses Cone Park; Blowing Rock, NC