Gratitude

29 November 2008

Thursday was a wonderful, self-indulgent day for me. I don’t take part in the cooking or prepping part of Thanksgiving, just the eating and drinking. We eat every year at the home of dear friends, and my husband does all the cooking for our contribution. We didn’t go to dinner until 5:00. So while Barry worked in the kitchen, I got to sit in front of the TV and knit. Guilt free. It was wonderful. (I watched two movies on cable, The Sting which I’m seen at least 20 times and love every time, and Charlotte Gray the wonderful Cate Blanchett/Billy Crudup WWII movie, which I actually saw in the theater.)

I was going to put together a post about the importance of gratitude and the fact I’ve started keeping a gratitude journal (though I just realized that I forgot to do that last night…it’s clearly not a habit yet). And I was thinking about listing the many things I’m grateful for, like I did last year. I’m still grateful for those things so that list is still valid.

But I think instead, I’ll just brighten my blog with a photo I love of my sweet poodle, Pip. This photo was taken a few months after she came to live with us, back in 2001. She was three years old and had been abandoned at a boarding kennel in Utah. I found her on Petfinder and once the adoption was approved I flew to Utah and drove her home. My fabulous friend Shannon Wilkinson flew from Portland to Salt Lake City, drove with Pip and me back to St. Louis, then flew home. It was an adventure: it was December and the Rocky Mountains were involved.

We’re approaching the seventh anniversary of that big trip, which started on December 4, 2001. So in honor of that, here’s Pip: