Showin' Some Appreciation

“Well I sought gold and diamond rings
My own drug to ease the pain that living brings
Walked from the mountain to the valley floor
Searching for my beautiful reward
Searching for my beautiful reward…”

                                             “My Beautiful Reward” – Bruce Springsteen

            My cousin, Maria, is a wonderful writer, photographer, and blogger—among other wonderful things. She also has many blogger friends, and one has issued an “Appreciation Challenge.”  This entails finding 10 things in each of our days to appreciate.  I, who am so attracted to the dark, need to lighten up.  I am taking the challenge.  I have, as we all have at one time or another, sought “my beautiful reward” in things, uncommonly high standards of work and achievement, obsessively seeking to fix the world—little things like that.  Today, I’m just gonna go with it, not do research, not get worked up, just flow—with an emphasis on 10 things I appreciate today.

1.  L’il Kim is showing his tits, but no bombs dropped today.

2.  A Gun Bill will be brought before the Senate…the bipartisan effort was just sealed.

3.  I took my most beautiful daughter-doggie, Emmie, for a walk today.  (This really should be #1…more than a year ago, Emmie turned almost completely deaf, and a little blind.  When we tried to take her for walks, she quaked and cried, pulling us back to the house.  I, already depressed, became clinically so.  Adjusting to her aging was difficult for me, BUT I now see that just having her here to see this stage is a BLESSING, A GIFT…like no other.)

4.  Emmie REALLY enjoyed her walk:  she peed AND pooped!!!  (This really should be #2)

5.  I brushed Emmie’s teeth.

6.  I found a great new protein bar: NuGo Vanilla Yogurt.

7.  I did not wear a coat today.

8.  I had a great conversation with a colleague, told her about Mahdi—one of my students whom I blogged about—and she cried.

9.  After the gift of talking to an intelligent, sensitive woman, I no longer felt the weighing loneliness I feel daily, being in a one-teacher site, stuck in the back of the library, in a very small, glass-enclosed room that has two steam radiators going at all times.

10.  I work in the library!!!

And, one extra, for good measure:

11.  I took this challenge and ENJOYED it!!!

...I guess, from a hill a sacred light does shine, Bruce, especially if you turn your back to the dark...