#365Gratitude Day 32:Carry on with my gratitude

This one's sort of a double-shot.

So last night at dinner, I'm telling Missy and my sister-in-law, MB, what a crazy bunch of days I have ahead of me.  First of all tonight I am going to get a much-needed sleep study, for which I need a small suitcase, because taking one of our really big ones would be silly.  Then tomorrow I'm driving down to North Carolina to visit Maya and Shokolada, and spend the weekend with them, going to a cool Phillip Glass concert, and just spending time.

This means I'm not going to be home for like 5 days.

MB volunteers a suitcase of hers, and goes downstairs to get it for me.  Supertotal nice!

She wishes me safe travels and to have fun down in NC.

After Missy and I have game night with Squee and the kids over the internet, we head off to sleep, and I promptly forget to bring the suitcase upstairs.  

This morning, Missy hugs me, we cuddle a bit, and have this sweet tender moment where she tells me to be safe, have a good time, and be a good boy while I'm away.  I get in the shower, feeling all schmoopy and good over it.

Then I remember that I need to pack, and that the suitcase is still downstairs in the kitchen.

Except it's not.  Missy went and got it for me and brought it upstairs while I was showering, to make it easier on me.

Did I mention that Missy's having trouble with her knee, and that going up and down the stairs doesn't particularly feel good for her just now?

These sorts of little things (that are in fact, not little things at all) are some of the best parts of my life.

I love that my family supports me, in who I am, and what I do.  I love that they're there for me, and get me.  I recognize that I'm kind of an odd duck, not quite like most folks, in so many ways.  But it feels so damn good when the people who I'm the closest to see it and support it.  It's so nice to have family who have my back.

#365Gratitude Day 31:Meatloaf

Yesterday I was at work, breaking my brain on this hard technical thing.  In the middle of the day we had this two hour long meeting that didn't help matters.  Around 5:30 Missy texts me, wanting to know what time I'm going to be home.

No, not this guy.

So I bang away at my tech problem for just a little while longer, then get in my car, and go home.  When I get there, the house is warm, and bright, the dinner table nicely set, and I find meatloaf for dinner.

Missy makes really, really good meatloaf.  It's delightful.  And coming home to a hot dinner made with love, and eating with my family was just what I needed after a long, rather frustrating day.

She takes really good care of me.  I really love her.

#365Gratitude Day 30:Something Something National Conversation

There's this ineffable thing I feel about social media political arguments, it's so hard to express.

It's meaningless barking.  It doesn't solve anything.  The very process of it just expends energy, air, time, and effort to get... nothing.

But that doesn't even cover how I really feel.

However, this ineffable feeling, well, it's done been effed, as it were.  By an artist named Mitchell F. Chan.  He created an "art installation" called Something Something National Conversation.

Here's a description of it from his website:

"In Something Something National Conversation (In 2 Characters Or Less), two clouds of water vapour emerge from holes in opposite gallery walls and float toward each other. They collide and dissipate into nothingness, a phenomenon that repeats in perpetuity. The artwork is simultaneously a spectacle, and an over-elaborate exercise in futility."

It is sublime, perfect.

See for yourself.

#365Gratitude Day 29:Palifornia

I've been friends with my pal Sarah Noel for a loooong time.  I first met her through my friend Cleo, back when she was in service to her.  Ages ago, she came down to visit me, and go with Missy and I to Six Flags, an amusement park outside of Washington DC.

I've know her through every incarnation, and she's had many.  She changed careers, went back to school, changed her identity d/s wise, all sorts of things.  Through it all, we've always been close.  One of my favorite memories of her is a time we just floated together in the pool at my apartment building, talking about our lives.

A few months ago, she moved very far away, to California.

We had a farewell lunch at my house.  It was bittersweet.

But the funny thing is, she and I have talked more often, more regularly since she moved than in the past several years she lived in the area.

We took for granted, both of us, how easily we could see and talk to one another, spend time with one another.

And now we don't.  Whenever we feel like it, which is often, we reach out to one another to talk about Very Big Things, or just How We Are Feeling.

It feels good.  I'm so grateful for my friendship with her.  Love you, Pal.

#365Gratitude Day 28:Things Change

I rarely get into politics on this blog, but I will about the events of yesterday.

President Trump signed an executive order this past week titled "Protection Of The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States."  The order indefinitely suspends admissions for Syrian refugees and limits the flow of other refugees into the United States by instituting what the President has called "extreme vetting" of immigrants. (From this article by CNN.) 

I think this thing is dreadful.  It involves border guards administering "religious tests."  On a wide scale it will lead to suffering, injustice, and death.  It's already caused a shit storm of trouble.  Last night, there was a massive protest at JFK airport.

I was one of the 80,000 people watching the protest over the internet, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the crowd chanted about an emergency hearing to be held in a Brooklyn, NY court house at 7:30 that night.

The hearing resulted in a temporary stay of the deportations.  The key word here is temporary. This is a band-aid not a solution.

But it gives me some hope.  

There's a verse in the Tao te Ching that speaks to this:

74

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut your hand.

What I take from that verse is that there's no permanence.  Things DO change.  And while we CAN push them in a certain direction, it often comes with pain and suffering.  

Yes, this is awful.

Yes, there is work to do.

But no, this isn't a forgone conclusion.  It's not a done deal.  There is no such thing.  No starting.  No stopping.  Only doing.

So grateful for that.