APPRECIATION #67: A CONSTANTLY UPDATED LIST OF THINGS TO APPRECIATE

The topics stack up. I appreciate books and conversations and sermons and relatives and all kinds of small things that have crossed my sensory pathways. Trying to photograph squirrels to send to my sister, and also having the Silly Putty stuck at the bottom of my daughter’s hair and not the top.

Sentence fragments. New words. The last weeks of summer. LEGO creations and monster truck sounds from son. Chiropractors, car shows, parades, parodies, and sharing ice cream sandwiches from ice cream trucks. Cookies split into fourths from coffee shops, chicken with pineapple, green papaya salads, new pens, and consolidating notes from one notebook to another.

I appreciate the realization that I don’t have library fines, and the reminders that people love me. Good advice, successful pull-ups, jogging without throwing up, walking on docks, picking up rocks and finding crawfish, river trails, and not having traffic as an everyday struggle.

I appreciate the stories of cougars in the city park and other reminders that we live in a wild world. Foraging plums, blackberries, and understanding the differences between perfectionism and healthy striving; between research and procrastination.

I appreciate purpose and passion and hope and faith and love and language and clean kitchens and help and honesty and sleep and finally being able to touch my toes. Documentaries, jokes, podcasts, newspapers, schools, churches, parks, bicycles, and jogging home from the pull-up bar and finding a free typewriter in the last few minutes of a garage sale.