Finding Things to be Thankful For

There is always something to be thankful for.  Even when you don’t feel very thankful.

This is Thanksgiving month.  Around the internet people are finding things every day to be thankful for.  I can’t commit to anything everyday beyond coffee, but I can find things today to be thankful for.

A year ago I lost my job and I was most definitely NOT thankful for that.  A year later, I am still unemployed, still looking for a job, but I have had an entire year to be a stay at home mom to my daughters.  I have been able to go to all of their school functions. I went to every football and basketball game they cheered.  I went on class field trips. I was able to cook real meals for them, and I have been able to be a hands on real part of their life for an entire year. That was something I haven’t been able to do at all since we moved here in 2007.  So, for that I am thankful I lost my job.

I am thankful for friends who believe in my talent behind a camera and have given me more than one opportunity to share that with their family.  Because of them, I have also been asked to do photos for other families. Through my daughter’s word of mouth at school, and me showing up at school functions with my camera, I am getting more opportunities to capture moments in people’s lives and make memories for them.

I am thankful for ex-husbands who are willing to work around school schedules and allow our daughters to enjoy and take part in school activities even when it means he has to give up some of him time with them.  I hope he understands that in giving up a little now, he is gaining so much more in the end, because the girls appreciate all he does for them.

I am thankful for our neighbor who, along with me, have made a safe little community between our apartments for the neighborhood kids to come and play and hang out and know that they have a same place to be.  We have opened our doors and our yards, and sometimes our kitchens to the kids before and after school.  Together we offer an alternative to being home along while parents work.

I am thankful for medications that keep me from going off the goofy-crap-o-meter.  They don’t always keep me from swinging from one end to the other, but they work to keep me pretty centered.  Without my medications it can get really ugly really quick before I even know it.  At least on my meds, the mood swings are a little slower, less dramatic and easier to catch earlier.

I am thankful for second chances. And third. And eleventy billion.  Especially when I don’t deserve them.  Especially when anyone else would wash their hands of me.

I am thankful that the election is Tuesday and we can get back to commercials that haven’t been approved by anyone, we can stop talking about everyone’s vagina Big Bird, bayonets, who said what and what they really meant as if we know better than the candidate knows what they meant. I am tired of people taking a phrase, out of context, and blowing it all the fuck up and out of proportion and making the candidate sound like a neanderthals or an idiot.  Vote. Then STFU.

What are you thankful this month?