#365Gratitude Day 301:Farting & Litter Boxes

Ok, so I'm sure your very first reaction is:

How the hell can you possibly be grateful for either of those things?

Well, because they're more than what they smell like.

My friend Moliére called me up this morning to ask me a sort of silly question.  He's a cat person, as am I.  Not like we have tails and pointy ears and chase little balls around, we just both have cats and really, really love them.

So, his question: "When you're cleaning the litter box does it ever feel like you're working in a zen rock garden?"

Know peace.  Or pieces.. of poop

I laughed.  That shit is funny.  (womp womp)  

But then I got into a big conversation with him about how actually, there really is a kind of zen there, one which I've talked about for years with my brother Spacey.  I even call it "cat poop zen". When you're a cat person, you love all the cutesy funny things they do.  The way they chase the laser pointer, or want to attack your shoelaces, the derpy faces they make when they sit on your chest and look lovingly in your face.  You also take the bad with the good.  My cat Yang likes to claw the steps.  Yin forgets how sharp her claws are and is always trying to lovingly stroke me with her paws when I'm in bed.  Sometimes I sleep naked.  You do the math.  Sometimes Yang overeats (because Yang), and then proceeds to throw up in gobs like a t-shirt cannon at a sporting event.  Yin makes an AWFUL sound in the middle of the night that when translated into english comes out as "HEY WAKE UP... I'M ABOUT TO LEAVE A HAIRBALL FOR YOU... SOMEWHERE."

And of course, there's the litter box.

But I love my cats.  They're like my children.  And while in the moment all those things kind of suck, they also really don't suck.  Because they're part of the package deal.

"Thanks for being such a good friend!"

Farts are like this too.  In my entire romantic, dating history, I've always known a relationship really was going to be successful when the person I was dating was able to fart in front of me, and vice versa.  Farting is like the gross universal connector amongst humanity.  Everybody farts.  And nobody looks like a rockstar when they do it.  Some time in the recent past Queen Elizabeth farted.  Somewhere in the White House, our commander-in-chief has cut the presidential cheese, and will do so again.  It makes us human.

I certainly do it.  Fairly often.  Around Missy plenty, too.  It helps me know I'm just a fragile, imperfect person, like everybody else.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a littler box to go scoop.

#365Gratitude Day 300:Good luck around 2:30

My wife Missy has been going through a series of what you might euphemistically call "dental misadventures."  It's been one bad thing after another. ​

This most recent thing turned into a painfulnd expensive procedure she has to have, which was due in large part to a mistake the dentist made.  I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty specifics for many reasons, but the whole situation has been awful. 

But this morning, it got better, much better. The practice got in touch with her, agreed to pay entirely for a related procedure, and allow us to pay our part in pieces.  

Missy texted me about it just as I got to work, and her relief over the whole situation was palpable .  I'm so glad she can get to the end of all this awfulness quickly, and that the dentist showed us compassion. 

#365Gratitude Day 299:Using what I got is my bag

Literally even.  

This is my work bag.  You can tell because there it is sitting on my work desk. Which is at... work, right.  

I got this bag from my last job when I worked for about a year for one of the absolute shittiest conpanies I've ever worked for. They had mostly subpar benefits, as well as policies that always and without exception favored the company over the employee. 

Yay. 

However, the job itself was good, very good. It's where I learned my current technology I work with.  And they gave me this bag. 

It's not a perfect bag. The inside pocket where a laptop is supposed to go is structured awkwardly. But it turns out to work well for an iPad, a Bluetooth keyboard, and a legal pad.  It does have a very nifty outside pocket that is the PERFECT place to put a badge and lanyard.  

I started using it when my trusty LL Bean messenger bag began to give up the ghost.  

It struck me today as I was fishing my badge out from said niftypocket (sure it's a word now), that deciding to use my bag from HyperMegaCrapGoons Worldwide and figuring out how to make it work for me was a certain kind of mindfulness, an adaptive strategy that serves me well, and one which I, without noticing, employ often. 

You know, it's my bag.  

#365Gratitude Day 297:One more

So there's this thing I've been doing since I was 13 years old. One morning, in the middle of the summer, when I woke up I felt the sunlight on my face, and the very first thing I thought to myself was this:

"Oh good, another one."

That is, another day to be alive.  Another day that I don't know how things are going to work out.  Maybe it'll be an amazing day, filled with joy and passion.  Maybe it will be a terrible day, that I'll be glad to see behind me when it's done.

I didn't have any remote idea just what sort of day it was going to be. But I was sure ready to find out.

The next day, I woke up. Same deal. And literally every single one after that.

I'm really not even sure why it started.  I can't even tell you the exact date. For my own convenience, and because I love my sister, I have set the date at her birthday, July 9th.

Going by that...

From and including: Monday, July 9, 1984

To and including: Sunday, October 23, 2016

Result: 11,795 days

It is 11,795 days from the start date to the end date, end date included

Or 32 years, 3 months, 15 days including the end date

It is, without exception the single longest enduring intentional practice of my life.

Of those 11,795 days some have been truly awful. There were days I was convinced that I wasn't going to be seeing the next day. There were days I didn't WANT to see it.

But each morning even after those sorts of days, I woke up feeling differently, feeling glad for the gift that is being alive.

Recently, my friend Matti has adopted the same practice. It's got me paying attention again to the value and power of this simple little thing I do.  We've been discussing it a lot, he and I, and I told him that maybe I'd make a hashtag out of it, start intentionally spreading it to others, encouraging folks to adopt the practice.

I can't decide between #ohgoodanotherone or maybe the more pithy and mysterious #OGAO.

(That last one reminds me of Oni Hartstein's #FDAU.  Go on, you ask her about it.)

What I do know is that I'm grateful for today. I'm grateful to be here. I'm grateful you read this, and that you're around too.

Time to go see exactly what this day has for me.

#365Gratitude Day 294:It's not about me

I was talking with Squee and Moliére this morning on my morning workout walk/run/aardvark/whatever, and for some reason we got talking about modes of cognition, and the ability to take someone else's perspective.

My brother Spacey told me about this story he uses to assess his own child's perspective taking abilities.  In the story, Kid A (not the radiohead album) has a favorite quarter in a piggy bank, that he shows to Kid B, then leaves the room for some reason.  While Kid A is off someplace (maybe talking to Thom Yorke on the phone), Kid B takes the quarter and puts it in his pocket.

Here's where the cognitive development test comes in.  In the story Kid A comes back in the room, and shakes the piggy bank, it's empty.  This is the part where Spacey asks his kid where Kid A thinks the coin is.  If his kiddo says "It's in B's pocket", then they don't have perspective taking skills yet.  If they say "He doesn't know." then they can see things from Kid A's perspective.

At least, I think that's how that thing goes.  I know he reads these, so if I got it wrong, he'll let me know.

Anyhow, I'm telling Squee & Moliére about this (and just noticed that they're collectively S&M, which is really pretty funny), and it brings up this old memory of mine, from when I was five, and didn't have great perspective taking skills yet.

I was watching Romper Room, which I loved.  My mom called me for lunch.  Being the good kid I was, I obediently switched off the television, and went and had my lunch.

As soon as I was done, I rushed back to switch the television on, excited to get back to what I had been watching, to pick up right where I had left off.

Keep in mind, this was 1976.  (Yep, I'm that old.)  TV didn't do that back then.  So when I turned it back on, of course something else was on.  I want to say it was Louis Rukeyser's  Wall Street Week, or something equally horrifying, but that's maybe just me painting a terrible picture.  I was disgusted and outraged to find out that television kept on going, even when I had to pause for a sandwich.

I laugh about this memory now, but I was really upset back then, in the way that only very young children can get upset about things.  The very big lesson there, a lesson that I've been learning since is that I am not the center of the universe.  

While I was busy eating my PB&J with the crusts cut off, all sorts of other things were happening in the world, which had nothing to do with me directly.

It's still like that.  While I'm writing this post, people all over the place are eating breakfast, making coffee, calling their children to breakfast, tying shoelaces, getting cash from ATM's, fantasizing about having telekinetic powers (ok, I'm doing that one too, now.), and singing that awful Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen song under their breath.  (Sorry.)

The thing I'm grateful for about this is the perspective and peace it brings me.  With all this stuff going on, when things happen directly to me, whether good or bad, I know not to take it personally, because it's not really about me.