Gratitudinously yours

Available on etsy.

I like the annual November trend where people spend time reflecting on the gifts in their lives each day in November, a nod to Thanksgiving. But I’m pretty bad about sticking to a schedule (you may have noticed I haven’t updated this blog in 8,000 months), so I’m going after this in one fell swoop and I’ll just trust that you believe me when I say I try to practice gratitude on a daily basis. If you don’t believe me, I can probably live with that, too.

1. Waking up every day as part of my imperfect family. I’m grateful that my little family is healthy, even if we include a hardiness that allows for my boys’ very healthy full-throttled screaming on a near-daily basis. I’m thankful for the Super Nanny, who taught me the proper time-out technique that keeps us all a (relatively) safe distance from the brink of insanity. I’m especially thankful that I am number one on my kid’s top ten list of most beautiful women in the world, including Princess Leia and all of his grandmothers and even his aunt and two of my best friends, Jo and Melinda.

I’m also grateful for a husband who gets me, who loves us in both word and deed, and who is uncommonly patient about irksome quirks. For example, people who have a really hard time sitting in the passenger’s seat and not completely freaking out. I have heard about people like that, and he’s really understanding.

I also count my blessings when it comes to extended family. We are way more than lucky to live a life surrounded by supportive people, who are not only interesting, smart, and loving, but on whom we could call, and have called, for help in even the most asinine situation.

2. Friends, i.e. sounding boards, support systems, hilarious companionship, sources of baked goods and fruity adult beverages. People who care about you, not in spite of your various flaws or just because you always feed the meter when you go downtown together, but just because you are you.

3. The Intangibles. No, not that movie about Al Capone. I’m talking about those often unnoticed bits of human interaction that do more to keep the world turning than anything we could actually measure. Interpret as you will, but I want it noted for the record that I’m grateful for these moments:

That time when I allowed someone else to be gracious and kind instead of commandeering the situation and trying to save face.

That time a stranger stopped by our table at a restaurant, told us we have a beautiful family, and then paid for our meal before she left.

That time we paid it forward.

That time my 6-year-old made my gravely ill grandpa well up with tears when he shook his hand after losing the peg game.

That time my dog visited that same grandpa and just laid her head on his lap the entire time, as opposed to doing her usual routine of leaping around the house knocking things off tables with her perpetually happy tail.

That time my baby boy told me he wasn’t a baby anymore but that he would pretend to be one if it made me feel better. It did.

The sound of crunchy leaves.

The way the hills pop up around my city whenever I return from out of town, from every direction.

Snort-laughing.

The unexpected gifts that grief brings.

Being a big sister, a future aunt, a granddaughter, a daughter, a mother, and more, and recognizing that despite the days when it doesn’t quite feel like it, that I’m a part of something more than this.

But also, I’m grateful that I’ll never have this all figured out, and that I have so much more to see. I’ll never really grasp how tiny our lives are in the grand scheme of the universe, or how fleeting the existence of the human race really is. Astronomy totally freaks me out. I’m also grateful to have grown up in the ‘80s, because phrases like “totally freaks me out” come out so easily.

Really, though, I’m just grateful to be here with you.

I've got your April Fool right here, foo

Your baby will fool everybody with this brilliant and hilarious disguise.

Maybe I missed a memo, but I'm pretty sure whoever dreamed up April Fool's Day didn't mean to imply that getting pelted with Matchbox cars or told the same "secret" (the secret is "poop") 85 times in a row, would count as acceptable April Fool's Day pranks. I thought I'd been raising these people better than that. Motherhood is a zero sum game on the best days. For every proud moment, like when they actually say "please" in front of another living soul, there is another, less proud moment, like when they sob continuously for an hour at a birthday party because they lost the robot race (sorry, Harry - later, he said it was the best party ever). ;)

I've never really been into this whole April Fool's scenario, at least not on the giving end. I've fallen prey to many an elaborate and not-so-elaborate prank, staring mouth agape at my 54-year-old friend as she describes with tears in her eyes, the sordid affair that resulted in her current, shameful pregnant state. Yes, yes of course I'd sit with her in the waiting room at the OB's office. No, no I didn't judge her. Things happen! Like miraculous pregnancies...hey wait, BAH, screw you, etc. I vacillate between incredible naivety and extreme paranoia. Depending on the day, I'll buy any bridge you're selling or I'm googling the email address you had 10 years ago on suspicion that you're involved in an internet money laundering scheme because you asked me to spot you for lunch.

I digress. Well, that should probably be the name of this blog. Sarah Digresses. Sarah's Digressions? That sounds too close to a dysentery kind of condition. Have I mentioned that a dysentery kind of condition is sweeping through our community? No fools, I promise. It's horrible and disgusting. I guess it's a noro-virus like the kind you get when you unwittingly board a cruise ship with 2,000 other pudgy Midwesterners to sit around in the same tepid swimming pool water (that just happens to be teeming with vacation-destroying germs and 40-year-old men who never left the frat, mentally). I actually like the tacky, cattle herding experience of a cruise, so don't send me mean emails, please. I've just btdt, though thankfully I didn't come away with a "I went on a cut rate cruise and all I got was the opportunity to vomit over the side of the ship until I passed out" t-shirt.

Anyway (I digress), that shit is everywhere. Pun intended, I'm sad to report. Although again, thankfully not here. Knock on wood.

I think the biggest prank that's been played on me so far today has to do with the fact that Kurt is still sleeping, whereas I've been awake since 6:45, shivering in bed under 4 covers in the 64-degree house (this is why you don't let Kurt mess with the thermostat), silently crying as my children race through the house screaming about bugs that aren't really there (April Fool's mommy ahahahaahahaah). All I know is that if any of these people has messed with my coffee, they will be celebrating without me next year because I will be in mommy prison.

I wonder if it will be quiet there.