40 Days of Gratitude: Day 05: The Weekly Hodgepodge

Want to join the party?  Go on over to From This Side of the Pond  for the Hodgepodge link-up!

 

Besides U.S. Thanksgiving, it's also National Game and Puzzle Week...what game have you played most recently, and who were you with? Have you worked a puzzle of any kind in the past week?

I play Words With Friends with several of my friends and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? with computer opponents on Facebook.  I think the new crochet pattern I'm working on would be considered a puzzle.  Any pattern that is 38 pages long and produces a piece smaller than 1500 square feet is a puzzle.  I'll post a pic if I ever finish it.  :)

What is one place you were thankful for this year?

My new living quarters in Weaver.  So happy to be out of JackVegas' government housing.

Take a nap, watch football, go for an after dinner walk, or hit the stores...which ONE is on your must-do list for Thanksgiving day? For those of you playing along who aren't in the US, answer as it relates to any big holiday meal.

Taking an after dinner walk. Well, actually, getting in any kind of workout if possible.  I don't get a break from recovery just because it's a holiday. 

Besides Thanksgiving, what's your favorite home cooked meal?

Any kind of dinner on the grounds at church.  Although the fellowship should be the most important part, the food is always great.  With the diversity of a congregation comes a plethora of various dishes.  Now that many congregations are finally trying to get healthy, there are more healthy options to choose from.  Praise the Lord and pass the hummus.

What product from an infomercial would you most like to own?

The Snuggie.  I saw a hound's tooth one I wanted, Roll Tide.  Yeah, I know they look stupid, but they also look WARM.

Christmas shopping? Have you begun? Finished? Will you shop on Black Friday? How do you feel about stores opening on Thanksgiving Day? What percentage of your Christmas shopping is done online?

Unfortunately, this looks like yet another year where there is no budget for any Christmas shopping.  Maybe next year.

What are you most grateful for that adds beauty to your everyday life?

The art God allows to create every day.  It's still a wonder to me that I should be so blessed. 

Insert your own random thought here.

Today started out like yesterday, only worse.  The good news is that I didn't use food to compensate.  The bad news is that as I sat in my craft room working on a project, I vacillated between crying and wanting to go back to bed and stay there.


It's not just the time change that's eating at me.  Like the question asked above, another year has gone by and I'm not able to be the blessing to others I should be.  Also, I'm in the beginning stages of a new Bible devotional.  Like the last couple of books and devotionals I've studied,  finding issues I need to deal with and answers to some of my problems should have brought me peace, but it hasn't.  I am, however, thankful that God is using these studies to change my thinking and to continue to take more responsibility for my past and present rather than blame others--in other words, putting the anger and tears in the right place.

JackVegas Wal-Mart

I'm very grateful for yarn therapy.  I picked up a skein for a project today and noticed Wal-Mart has added some new colors and brought back some of my favorite ones.  A therapist is expensive; yarn is cheap.

I took my roommate to a doctor's appointment.  Along with the out-of-date Sports Illustrated  magazines on the huge coffee table were multiple copies of Diabetes magazines.  I tend to avoid this stuff like the plague, but I picked it up and read it.  Now I know I was right to avoid it.  Instead of being an encouraging guide to conquer the disease, it glorified it.  Just look at the cover:  "Diabetes saved my life"?  Do what?  No, Diabetes endangers your life.  Look, if you have Diabetes, please don't be offended.  But, part of my health journey is to get as far away from this ailment as possible.  It (and cigarettes) took my dad's life.  Now it is starting to run rampant among members of my family who are making it an acceptable part of life--holding it up like a rite's passage of blackness or something.  If trying to get healthy makes me look "too white," then so be it.  Nobody cares what color you are when you're in a casket before your time.  So I will be thankful that this is not a part of my life.  Hopefully, I can keep it that way.

Making a couple of pit stops on the way home allowed me to take pictures of more of God's beautiful landscape paintings:

At the Mapco in front of the J'ville Wal-Mart

At the Dollar General in Weaver.  Caught this one just in time.