beachfront property

I’ve found myself lately going through the day, gathering up all the bad things that happen, and thinking what a failure each day has been on their account. Yesterday, instead, I wrote down each good thing that happened on my kitchen white board as it happened. And what a wonder! By the end of the day I had a tidy little list, which, upon review, cast an entirely different light on the day. Probably an old idea, but discovering old ideas and making them our own is called growth.

So here’s my list from yesterday:

1) The lid to my wheat mill came off on the first try. It’s got a sticky seal and usually I’m banging it with a heavy measuring cup to try to open it. Yesterday it just came off.

2) After putting the bread in the oven, I coaxed the children to come upstairs with me and clean their two rooms. We worked for probably an hour putting away toys, cleaning out dirty laundry, and vacuuming those two rooms thoroughly. All the while the bread was sending stomach-gnawing delicious smells all through the house. We had a great time cleaning, finished and dragged all our tools back downstairs, and attacked the bread when it came out of the oven. We all stood there, tired from working, and ate thick slabs of hot bread smeared down with butter and honey. Shared work, shared reward, and we were good friends.

3) My chunky-sweet Gabriel started to fall asleep in my lap while I was working on something else. I laid him back in my arm and just enjoyed holding him and sticking my nose in his hair and smelling him. He’s as delicious a baby as he can possibly be.

4) I came into the living room and found Katie and Thomas with the doll house set up. They had taken construction paper and laid out a yellow strip right in front of the house, then blue strips behind them. I asked what that all was, and they told me, “This house is on the beach!”

5) The box of fabric I ordered shipped yesterday. It’s been a sick, long, busy month, and I haven’t had the time, energy, or money to order fabric to work on my book. The book is keeping me sane through the vicissitudes of life with a young family. I should get that nice, new, folded-up starchy-smelling stack of fabric today. I just love to run my finger down the stack of folds…

6) While I made dinner, I put a CD with Beethoven’s sonatas on the kitchen stereo. I certainly enjoy having a kitchen stereo. I know that Beethoven’s music is old. It’s probably overplayed. But it’s still achingly beautiful. Lovely to listen to while you make plain old dinner.

There’s the list. Oddly enough, I don’t remember the difficult things that happened yesterday, but by writing down the good ones, I remember to cherish them. What a discovery!