What am I thankful for in 2010?

Inspired by Cerise at rainbowspiritgoddess…

1. I am thankful for my husband making it through the year in one piece. We’ve had some big ups and downs as far as his physical health goes, including three surgeries on his back, a concussion, and a fall down a flight of stairs. So if we can finish out the next two weeks without any major incident, I will be thrilled. (Today he posted on Facebook that he’s feeling the best he has felt all year, so that’s a good sign.)

2. I am thankful that we were able to be at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, and that we were able to go out to dinner with my family for my birthday and my mother’s, and that we’re going to dinner for my dad’s birthday Tuesday. We may not have been able to enjoy every special day this year, like our first wedding anniversary in August, but we’ve had a lot of bright spots too.

3. I am thankful for my wonderful family, friends, and coworkers who have lifted my spirits, and have let me vent. We have shared the ups and the downs… and Lord knows we have had both! I call this my Rollercoaster Year, and I hope 2011 is a bit more calm. And, yes, I would go so far as to say boring.

4. I am thankful for Goddess Leonie and her beautiful soul. Her meditations and e-courses and her blog have been such a wonderful refuge from the trials of the past year. I am eager to print and start filling out her 2011 Goddess Year workbook.

5. I am utterfly thankful for Goddess Leonie’s Goddess Circle! It was the support of my goddess sisters here that encouraged me to not only begin my mermaid painting, but to see it through to completion. The Circle is a haven where I can be vulnerable and get the healing I need, where I can extend my own healing wishes to others. I can practice creativity, and learn more and get feedback. I can see the images and read the words of other women, a global circle of women of many different ages and generations. In my favorite book, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, Zachariah tells Charlotte, “We are not so different, you and I.” I am learning that every day in this circle. Women around the world… we are not so different.

6. I am thankful for my job. I have used up all my time off for the year, personal days and sick days. But it took until December to do that. With all the time Mark has been in the hospital this year, I’m amazed that I lasted this long before I had a day off with no pay, and even then I still had a half sick day so I’m only taking no pay for half the day. That’s pretty sweet! And the benefits package is really good. Our health insurance has covered well over $100,000 in medical costs this year. If I didn’t have this job with these benefits, our finances could have been even more destroyed than they already are. (That’s an exaggeration, they are not destroyed. We just have a lot of debt and very very little savings left.)

7. I am thankful for the “Ninja” blender we got at Sam’s Club a couple months ago. The past two weeks I’ve been loading up the fridge with berries and making smoothies almost every day. Yum! I didn’t realize how bad my body felt eating junk until I made the conscious choice to try to eat better. I am not 100% healthy, but I’m trying to make more things “from scratch” instead of from a package. My husband likes to cook, but mostly frozen pre-made stuff and often using lots of olive oil. Last night I made pork chops with green beans (canned, but better than not having any vegetable), and bacon cheddar baked potatoes… but instead of a box of frozen baked potatoes, I made them myself. So they didn’t have a lot of toxic preservative junk. They actually turned out pretty good.

8. Oh! I am thankful for the post I saw online when I was looking at the website for the then-new U by Kotex feminine hygeine products, which mentioned the DivaCup. If you told me as a teen that one day I would swear off pads and tampons, switching instead to a menstrual cup and cloth pantiliners (I love my Lunapads!) I would never have believed you in a million years. But I will never go back. After that…

9. I am thankful for the book Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, which opened my eyes to the horrors of the personal care product industry. This led me to dumping almost all of my products in a cold-turkey switch to nontoxic, namely those made by companies who have signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics. This was not as hard as I thought it would be, and actually forced me to throw away a ton of expired products that I should have gotten rid of long ago anyway.

10. I am thankful for my Kindle, because it makes it so easy to read. I am stuck in that middle school/teenager mindset of, “I don’t want to read that book, it’s too long!” But with the Kindle I am reading longer books and loving them. I would have missed out on my new favorite author, Lauren Oliver, if I had looked at Before I Fall in the store – it clocks in at a whopping 480 pages! Delirium is 448. Even The Mermaid’s Mirror by L. K. Madigan is 320, and that was another great book. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (or page length), but subconsciously I do it anyway. With the Kindle, it takes the book’s weight out of the equation, which means I read faster, and more.

I am doing 10 things for 2010 because I am a dork. So there. 😛 Done.