Grateful

With Thanksgiving approaching everyone is posting things they are grateful for having, doing, being etc. I added this to my 43 Things list some time ago - when I realized I was being needlessly cranky about, well, everything. Owning a home alone, dealing with construction, working full-time, not getting a raise and going to school will do that to you. (Or it did to me.)

I'm grateful/thankful for many things...some good, some bad, some both simultaneously. This week I'll post some of the things I'm grateful for here:

1) For the 4am wake up snuggles from the kittens. Bee Bop will wake up and jump over me all to sleep on my pillow while facing me. The sound of his soft purring is sweet.

2) For all the “NO” responses I’ve gotten in my life.
I hear them and in that moment and sometimes, years later even, that “NO” hurts. But then your “NO” always leads me to a better and happier life.
I’m thinking of a particularly unprofessional professor I had years ago who said I couldn’t pass statistics (in the summer nonetheless) and that I’d probably never make it to graduate school. I got the only “A” in statistics that summer and IN YOUR FACE! I’m in graduate school with my eye on a PhD.

3) For all the people who helped make me who I am today, flawed, impatient, independent, giving, temperamental and most of all loving.

4) For shrimp and crabs. (Hey, I am from New Orleans. I can’t help it.)