Lessons Learned from Thankfulness Lessons Learned from thankfulness

A few years ago I sat down and wrote down a list of all the things I was thankful for. I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but it’s a good thing to sit down and do from time to time. It’s also amazing to come back and look at the lessons learned from thankfulness and look back at what you were thankful for before.

Lessons learned from Thankfulness

This particular time, my husband was in surgery. It’s interesting to come back and read this list nine years later. Here are my lessons learned in thankfulness:

You can be thankful in all situations. My husband was in surgery, and yet I was still thankful. One of my best friends was
Just write what you think of. This list is weird, it’s very weird.
It’s good to go back and look at what you were thankful for in the past.

What I wrote almost 10 years ago

So, here I sit at Barnes and Noble as Jeff is going through surgery. I have a self-imposed time limit of 15 minutes more here before heading back to see if there’s any news from the doctor.

I’ve seen everyone putting up their Thanksgiving posts all month long, and I decided to put it all in one week with more than one thing a day. I’m going to put these in as I think of them, and not necessarily in order of what it means to me.

1. Free wi-fi at Barnes and Noble. Aww, heck let’s just say, Barnes and Noble. I spend way too much money here. I’m thankful for the train table at my local store which has allowed me to spend many a happy hour browsing through books as my kids happily play at the train table.

2. my faith. I’ve been so amazingly blessed to be raised in a Christian family and raised in a good strong church. They have blessed me so much and helped me through more things than I can easily count.

3. pressing ham. What is a pressing ham you ask? Only the most awesome pressing tool when you’re sewing. I use it every time I sew something beyond a quilt.

4. blue jeans. I practically live in them.

5. digital cameras that are nearly indestructible. Really, I think it has Superman’s powers.

6. On the subject of Superman. I’m thankful for Superman, that mischievous little sprite that he is. He’s well named. Honestly, there are times that I regret naming my kids the names I gave them. In most fantasy books and many religious traditions names have power, and I’m beginning to take it more seriously as my kids take on the characteristics of the people and characters behind the names we gave them……

7. Comic books. Yes, I still read them, and no I don’t think comics are just for kids. As a matter of fact some aren’t for kids. In case you’re wondering, Everything I need to know about homeschooling I learned from Batman.

8. library

9. comfortable chairs

10. HEB- seriously I love my grocery store. Maybe someday I’ll write an ode to HEB.

11. my lap-top. It’s small and little, and the keyboard is a bit too small, but it fits perfectly on my lap, and I’ve done so much lesson planning on this during car trips. And now I’m creating my AWESOME Christmas unit.

12. Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday. There’s music and decorations and PRESENTS!

13. Muppet Christmas Carol- I can probably sing word for word almost every song in that movie.

14. Dr Pepper. “It makes my mouth feel happy.”

15. Those old Budweiser frog commercials. I downloaded the sound from them onto my computer ages ago and so they randomly come up on my playlist. They make me laugh. And now with the wonders of YouTube you too can watch all of the ridiculous Bud Weiser Er commercials.

16. Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First” routine, love it. People have tried to repeat the magic but it isn’t quite the same.

17. Future Ticia here, this one is hard to read with what we now know about Bill Cosby, but I’m leaving it in because it is part of who I am, and why learning who he was was so painful for so many of us who grew up watching the Cosby Show. Bill Cosby Noah. Have you heard it? It’s pure genius, and now my kids listen to it and LAUGH! At this point that’s almost funnier than Bill Cosby. It totally cracks me up listening to my kids attempt to do the act not really understanding why it’s funny.

18. The Cosby Show- I loved that show and grew up on it.

19. Nick at Nite- you know the classic Nick at Nite from the 80s back before they had TVland when they’d show stuff like the Dick Van Dyke show and I Dream of Jeanie…..

20. Star Trek! Yes, I was that weird kid who went to Star Trek conventions, they’re so much fun.

21. Jeff- like I said this is a random list as I think of them. I can and have written whole posts on what I like about Jeff.

22. Music- after writing that last one, I got the song “What I like about you” stuck in my head.

23. My memory- I have a fairly good memory for random useless details and minutiae. This makes me very good at Trivial Pursuit for categories I have any interest in. Jeff finds it hilarious to play Star Trek trivia with my family. My brother and I know all the answers and my Mom who watched all of this with us sits there and looks somewhat confused.

24. Spellcheck- it catches the spelling errors I make.

25. Being a good speller. Hey, what do you know speller is actually a word. But that takes away my joke about making up a word.

26. My quirky sense of humor. I know, what sense of humor?

27. Google- that monolithic creature that it is and it’s amazing search engines that get me so much information for schooling my kids.

28. Being able to homeschool.

29. My sewing machine. Crazy workhorse that it is. Did you know it still worked despite my then 2-year-old boys stuffing about 20 pins into it? They still tell the story in the local Bernina store to this day.

30. My 4-H sewing teacher who put up with so much from a rather bratty middle schooler. It lets me make cool presents for my kids and have a blast making all sorts of weird stuff.

And with that, I’m back to the surgery center with a cool new pattern from a magazine to make a dress for myself in all my spare time. Oh, wait I don’t have spare time.