Ten Things of Thankful #78

Hello there and welcome to the weekend. Honestly, I could BURST with all the VeryGood things which I’ve been blessed with this week, and I’m SO happy I get the chance to share them with you here. I think I could write a far bigger list, but trying to re-name the hop as the ‘Considerably More Than Ten Things of Thankful’ would just be a pain in the ass.

SO I’ll limit myself, but know that in many ways*, this week kicked ASS!Indulge me – I refuse to stick to any kind of chronological order, just because I don’t want to.

My city is beautiful and I went on a teeny-tiny photo tour last week, while it was still a tiny bit frosty in the corners (even at midday) and there was just…ah!…such GLORIOUS blue skies and sunshine, and even though I was shivering as I cycled, I saw SO many gorgeous things, and discovered that I’m able to not crash whilst turning my face to the sun and grinning like a loon as I go along.

My arms are mostly healed from that one time when I was *really* stupid and gave myself chemical burns because I got lost in a book. Remember that? No? Fo SHO don’t miss out on this silliness! I took the ‘dork’ in ‘adorkable’ to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL, people!

Glitterbombs have been rocketing back and forth – two have come for me, (along with a terribly exciting ‘too big for your letterbox’ one I got a notice about, to go and pick up, which turned out to be a thing I had ordered, which wasn’t so exciting after all), and they both in their different ways, delighted my heart and made me incredibly happy to be friends with such generous people. Four have arrived (but as far as I know, only three have been opened). One was sent. Three more are being created. LIFE IS GOOD! GLITTER IS GOOD. BOMBS ARE…(waiiiiiit a second!)

Husby and I have done lots of laughing together – we’ve team-worked our way through the week, falling out and falling back, but mostly FOR one another and trying to make life nicer for the other person. But then he dreamed one night that I was being kidnapped and reached out (asleep,  but for real) and grabbed me very suddenly and surprisingly, shocking me from my sleep, whereupon I immediately jumped away from him, swizzled over and walloped his hands away from me. He also helped me (after lots of asking) by fixing MS Word on my laptop, and making it STOP pinging pop-ups about macros, which were sending me into a towering, sweary rage, each time they happened (every five seconds) making me slightly irritated and I wanted them to stop. He stopped them *phew*.

WE HAD A GUEST BARD AGAIN! Oh my days! It’s been such a LONG TIME! And what better or more wonderful way for her to rejoin us as one of the Ten Things of Thankful co-hosts, than to BARD for us. HUGE thanks to Lisa for sharing her poetry, and whilst we bid a fond farewell to Sandy**, and probably shed a few tears, they are tears with a smile, because LISA’S BACK.

I’m loving WhatsApp for keeping up with my friends in the Blogosphere – I honestly haven’t found anything better yet for making it as real as real can be, and that’s so special. I love it – especially being able to hear a friend’s voice, or receive a photo of them, right in that second. Love. It.

Lessons learned – (i) I learned that if you leave emails too late, explaining your alternative plans, people will start buying you Christmas presents already, in which case you need to be very careful not to offend. Sometimes that might mean that you end up cooking chocolate bark, because Anne Reardon said (in her gorrrgeous Aussie accent) that it was a good idea, and simple to do. FYI – it was GOOOOOOOOD but not simple.. (ii) finding out the expensive way that if you agree to be part of a thing, then because you were iffy about it in the beginning, you no longer feel like it, that you might lose out. But that actually the peace and quiet in your mind is worth it.

Book Swaps are COOL – especially when your fellow swapper is the homeless guy you made friends with because his dedication to books (he sits in the freezing, under a street lamp, so he can read) recommended him. We had chatted one night and then decided to swap books, because why not! So I found him three books (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (only okay – I read it to see what the fuss was about. Still not sure); The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai (really, really fascinating. SO glad I’ve read it, but it’s not one I’ll return to); and something which I can’t remember, but which was a wildcard anyway) and he gave me two (The Happy Isles of Oceana, by Paul Theroux, and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, by Brian Moore), neither of which I have read, and both of which look FABULOUS.

Hot showers are WONDERFUL – I’m one of these people who divides shower-time into a roughly 1:4 ratio. As in, it takes me usually four times longer to stand in the shower and think about getting out, than it does to actually get clean. And if I didn’t have a boiler and hot, clean water, and no way of having such a HUGELY luxurious experience, on a daily basis, no less, life would be a whole, WHOLE lot suckier. So please, this winter, remember those people for whom life sucks, and bung them a bit of cash, if you have it to spare – donating to charities which help the very poorest in society will ALWAYS get you ++AcceptableHuman points 🙂 Altruism is GREAT, y’all!

A clear line of nibbly inheritance – which I just learned about today, and it’s AWESOME, but actually I can’t do it justice here. So instead I’ll write about it another time, and be thankful for the people who are STILL bearing with me and supporting my #KickCancersAss initiative 🙂 Mandi, Roshni – you both are wonders, and I thank you for being so cool about my inexcusable tardiness with DOING anything for yiz.

So…that’s all, folks!

I hope you find your Ten as easily as I did.

*There was, of course, the usual gamut of negatives, just for equilibrium. But that can’t be helped.

**Who, by the way, is NOT gone from our lives – not by a LONG shot! And, by the way, her heart and her compassion for others are leading her to try new things to help. YOU can help her out by adding her on Twitter @NixHeart8

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