Monday Gratitude

What I’m grateful for going into this week:

1. I’m starting the week with food prepped, thanks to my husband taking B out for a couple hours yesterday afternoon. My week always feels less hectic when my ability to eat healthy food doesn’t depend on finding the time to cook it while my toddler cries because I’m not drawing him pictures of stingrays and manta rays and spotted eagle rays.

2. My little backyard. It’s small, but it’s big enough for a few chairs, a few things for B to play with and a little bit of space for him to run around. We basically don’t step foot out there from November through March, so when spring comes around it’s like our house suddenly gets bigger – we have one more space we can occupy without actually going anywhere.

3. The number of playgrounds we can walk to. I grew up in a very small town and there were two playgrounds – one in the “downtown” park, and one at the elementary school. We live within reasonable walking distance of at least ten. The other day I drove to a nearby house to pick up something that someone was giving away, and saw yet another playground that I hadn’t even known was there, just a mile from our house.

4. The cardigan I’ve been crocheting since September is almost finished. It has been such a slog, has felt like it would never end, that my motivation to keep working on it has been basically nonexistent. But yesterday I finished the ribbing on one of the wrists, and today I should be able to finish the other wrist. That will leave the ribbing along the bottom, the front and the neck, and it’s the same technique as the wrists so I feel like I have it figured out now. I’m starting to think maybe I can finish it before our trip at the end of the month? Possibly? It’s a nice thought, anyway. It’ll keep me picking up that treacherous hook.

5. Spring flowers. There are so many beautiful flowering trees everywhere I look right now, and tulips have finally been opening this past week. It all feels so cheerful. I know these particular flowers will be short-lived, and then it will be irises and whatever else comes next, and those will be beautiful too, but the first flowers of spring are my absolute favorite because, in Seattle, they come after a stretch of cold, wet darkness so long it feels endless. Spring flowers feel like a beautiful sigh of relief. “You made it,” cherry blossoms say. “You didn’t throw yourself in front of the train this year,” daffodils say.