1. I am grateful that I only have a little head cold.
2. I’m grateful that a coworker invited me to a knitting circle (even though I don’t knit – yet). It’ll be nice to get out and meet some other women; I don’t have nearly enough female friends.
3. I’m grateful for tea. I can make a travel mug full before I leave home and it doesn’t make me tired like coffee (even decaf!) does.
4. I’m grateful that my friend J went to see TMNT with me. It wasn’t great, but it was fun and reminded me of being ten. Also I haven’t spent nearly enough time with him recently.
5. I’m grateful that I don’t have a high-stress job. I can have a head cold and just work a little more slowly than usual, and it’s not a huge deal.
6. I’m grateful to have seen some family members this weekend who I haven’t seen in years, and I’m grateful that they had a chance to meet my husband (even if he wasn’t being particularly social).
7. I’m grateful for friends who don’t mind watching our cat while we’re away.
8. I’m grateful that I had a chance to spend a small amount of time at the ocean while I was in Maine. The shore is one of the few places that I feel truly renewed, and while the time this weekend was much too short to do lots of good, it did a little bit. If nothing else I have fresher memories to visit in my daydreams.

From 43T:

I could excercise more.  I have been very sluggish about this - I am not athletic by nature, and have a hard time finding things I enjoy, as well as motivation to continue with them.  It's always so much easier to just curl up with a book.

But I have made strides in other areas of my health. I have worked on changing my eating habits to healthier ones over the last year or two, and I have recently started a meditation practice.  I intend to begin taking yoga classes again sometime soon.  Also now that it is starting to get warmer outside, I hope to walk more. Before I had a car I was in much better shape because I walked everywhere - often several miles a day.  Now I have less opportunity to walk because of where I live, but I can certainly work around that.

Cross-posted from 43 Things:

Today…

I’m grateful for the warm weather. What a treat to walk outside comfortably in only a sweater! (And pants and shoes and socks, of course.)

I’m grateful for the return of frog-song. The chirping of the frogs is one of my favorite sounds in the world. Although there is a Native American myth which cautions against being joyful about the peeping of frogs, so I try to always be properly respectful in case it is a song of sorrow for them, and not one of happiness.

I’m grateful that the baked avocados came out wonderfully!

I’m grateful that I meditated for my full 20 minutes this morning, until the timer went off. It definitely took some force of will near the end, when my thoughts started getting really impatient. Took all I could do to shut them up long enough to finish the session.

I’m grateful that my grandmother, who will celebrate her 90th birthday this weekend, is still in good health. It will be nice to visit with her and the rest of my family this weekend.

I’m grateful that my husband will have the chance to meet more of my extended family this weekend, and vice versa. And I’m grateful that I’ll have the chance to see them – it’s been years!

(cross posted from the Dharma pod)

from Daily Zen:

Overnight At a Mountain Monastery

Massed peaks pierce
The sky’s cold colors;
Here, the trail junctions
With the temple path.
Shooting stars pass
Into sparse-branched trees;
The moon travels one way,
Clouds the other.
Few people come
To this mountaintop;
Cranes do not flock
In the tall pines.
One Buddhist monk,
Eighty years old,
Has never heard
Of the world’s affairs.

- Chia Tao (779-843)

I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to have “never heard of the world's affairs.” Is it ignorant to not care about the affairs of the world, or wise? Most people would say ignorant, and selfish too.  But I'm not so sure anymore. Those few fleeting moments each morning where I can get my mind to shut up long enough in zazen to just be with my breath… well, they're probably the best moments of my day, until my mind throws in its two sense and starts getting impatient again.

I am usually reading at least two books.  A friend and I read aloud to one another on Sunday mornings, and then I have whatever book I'm reading on my own at the time.  For Sunday reading, we just finished The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco.  I never would have been able to get through the whole thing on my own, so it made perfect material for group reading. I'm a little bit sad that it's done, but mostly I'm just glad - it was a long book!! It feels like we've been reading it for months (we probably have been).

On my own, I'm actually reading two books right now.  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein, is my daytime reading.  But it's too political for bedtime reading, so the other night I started Alphabet of Thorn, a fantasy novel by Patricia McKillip, to help soothe myself to sleep.  It reminds me of all those nights I stayed awake with a pile of library books as a kid, listening for any movement near the stairs so I could turn off the light and pretend to be asleep.

1. I'm grateful that dal is so easy and inexpensive to make, and so yummy!  I can't believe I didn't learn to make it sooner.

2. I'm grateful for the microwave.  I don't really like to use it, but it makes warming leftovers so easy, and while I usually prefer to heat tea water in a kettle, a microwave is much quicker.

3. I'm grateful for refrigerators, and the leftovers that they keep cold.  I can't imagine living in an age with no leftovers.

4. I'm grateful that my cat isn't always as misbehaved as he's being right now....

5. I'm grateful that my fruit tart came out well.  It was well worth the time and effort - although I certainly won't be making them often!  Four hours is a lot of time to spend on a no-special-occasion dessert.

6. I'm grateful for the vegetarian cookbook my mother gave me.  It is turning out to be a wonderful wealth of information.  This week I plan to try the lentil burgers and the baked stuffed avocado (mmmm... avocado...).

1. Register for and take the GRE.

2. Finish toilet training the cat.  This may take a bit longer than originally hoped for, but it will definitely be done by the end of the summer, if I have anything to say about it.  (I may not - it'll depend on how beligerent our cat decides to be.)

3. Gain some library experience - if not by getting a job in a library, then by volunteering at one of our local libraries.

4. Find a hobby I can stick with that will take me out of the apartment more often.  This will probably be either a writing group I feel comfortable with, a group to play board games with, or.. um.. something else entirely.

5. Keep up with my zazen, and actually meditate daily for the 20 minutes I set myself, rather than giving up when I get frustrated after 16 (like I do now more often than not).

6. Publish something better than the piece of tripe I sold for $4 on Associated Content the other day.

7. Win NaNoWriMo '07.  I did it in '06 and I'll do it again in '07.  If I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I might even find a subject that has a hope of making it further than a first, horrid draft.

8. Find my "bliss", or at least make significant steps in that direction.  I've felt stagnant and listless most of my adult life so far; I'd like to do something about that.

9. Attend a meditation retreat.  This one may be stretching it, but hell, this isn't a list of "musts", it's a list of goals.  I should have plenty of opportunities, and it's just a matter of sucking it up, pushing aside my fear, and just doing it.  ...After I get some more practice sitting on the cushions for long periods of time, that is.  I think a whole day or weekend of it at this point would just about kill me.

10. Write. Work writing back into my daily routine. Finish those short personal narratives I was working on.  Crank out miserable poetry.  Write horrible haiku.  I need to stop making excuses and just do it.  I'll never improve if I keep putting it off for when I "feel like it".

11. (Bonus) Related to #10, I would like to write in my journal daily (or close to daily).  There was a time when I turned to my journal for everything, and now I write in it, on average, less than once a month.  Pathetic!  It was a good habit to be in, and I'm going to do my best to continue it.

12. (Bonus #2) Stop being quite so neurotic and avoidant.  This actually relates to most of the above goals, so it's more a clarification than a separate goal.  I want to stop letting fear and anxiety rule my life.  This isn't something that I can accomplish in a year, or maybe even a lifetime, but it's something I can work on, make progress on.