#365Gratitude Day 209: Found money

I got this scary looking envelope in the mail today.  It looked like one of those "surprise, you got a parking ticket" type envelopes. 

It wasn't!  I drive a hybrid car. In Virginia there was, briefly, a hybrid car tax that got repealed, resulting in my getting 64 smackers of cold, hard cash back.  

I'm grateful for it, obviously. Now I'm trying to decide what to do with it. 

I'm thinking of taking Missy out for a really nice dinner.  Or maybe taking her, & my sister in law out to the movies and for burgers. 

I'm open to suggestions though. What would you do with a small amount of found money? 

#365Gratitude Day 208: A mid-hike log & a sense of adventure

The plan was to go running. Didn't quite work out that way. 

I'm glad. 

#365Gratitude Day 207: Being bookish

Missy and I both love books. 

We frequently lay together in bed, each with our nose in a book, our legs tangled around one another. 

We love some of the same books. We're both very fond of The Hunger Games books, for example.  

But we each like things of our own, too. I'm all over anything written by Alan Watts, she loves James Patterson mysteries.  

I think our being bookish is indicative of one of the great things about our marriage. We passionately love some of the same things, and also passionately love that we have things of our own.  

It's super healthy and good. And it sure seems to keep the cats happy. I'm grateful for that.  

#365Gratitude Day 206: Sexual fantasies

I kind of live in a world deep inside my head.  It's populated with memories, daydreams, stories about fictional characters I've created, and stories about people I know.

Image courtesy of http://childoftheflower.deviantart.com/art/Sexual-Tension-308072205

It's a little like being a cook.  I've always got a little something going on the brain oven. 

Often, these fantasies are me reliving arousing experiences, or dj-style cutting and remixing the memories into things which have not and might not come to pass.  

Yet other times, those other memories are the source for new stories I am writing. I'll remember watching a particular friend get spanked, or maybe aggressively masturbated at a play party, and roll those feelings into a story about Christina, one of my favorite characters from Concerning Littleton.  

That's exactly what happened to me on the train this morning.  I started working on a story about how she met her husband Adam, and realized how much she likes to laugh with him, and tease him, and then, much like a few people I know, be called to task with a nice firm spanking on her bare bottom. 

I love when this sort of synthesis happens to me, inside me. It brings the vast imaginary landscape in my head closer to the real world.  I'm grateful I get to do that.  

Daily Think: minimizing suffering

A big thing for me is my fairly constant drive to do as little harm as I can to other people. 

I recognise that pain and joy are both transient, and constant. They're a part of being alive.  

At some point, I'm bound to make someone else angry, frustrated, frightened, disappointed, or some other negative feeling. That's just human. 

Heck, I'm bound to do all those things to MYSELF, sometimes.  

So, I'm mindful. I'm careful and focused. Sometimes.

Some of the ways I consciously, directly try to minimize suffering include: 

- being soft spoken, and not raising my voice.  

- trying to listen to what others are saying, fully listen, without preparing a response ahead of time, adversarially. (Hard!) 

- responding to others when they reach out to me in need for solace and comfort.  

Do you try to minimize suffering too? Please leave me a comment about it, I'm curious to hear some of the conscious ways you do that.