Hidden Blessings

So, I was going to talk about how annoyed I was at our neighbors for turning their bass on so high. (As in music, not fish.)
You can't always really hear their music, per se, but their bass is always turned on so that I can feel the room vibrating, and I get a headache even from the other side of the room. The times I've gathered the courage to go knock on their door, I hear them come to the peep hole and look at me, then they go turn it down without ever coming out to talk. Same thing when Joseph goes over there. Yeah, they know its too loud.

However, by the time I updated my blog to the new 'special' version of blogger, they had turned it off, and I'm not so annoyed anymore. Good thing, since its December, and you're supposed to write nice things in December, right?

Elora and I are enjoying a nice evening at home on a Friday night....as we always do, for my husband works until 11:30 every weekday. But I'm going to take a cue from my friend Julie, and perhaps try to see some of the blessings in my life that I always take for granted.

For instance....
1.Hey, Joseph doesn't ever work weekends! Yay! That means I don't ever have to go to church by myself, and we can always spend Saturday doing whatever we want together. Of course, usually the most exciting thing we do is grocery shopping, but that can be fun, right?

2.Elora has a funny personality. Sometimes, this is rather irritating. I'm trying to get her to close her eyes for bed time but she's making funny faces, pretending to burp, or roaring at me when she's supposed to be drifting blissfully off to sleep. Yet even when she's starting to make me angry, somehow I always end up laughing at her. She'll give me a big fake grin, and keep moving her face closer and closer to mine until I smile back. What other one-year- old already has such a personality? She must get it from her dad.

3.I love my apartment. Compared to the dwellings of most of our friends it is rather small, and compared to those in my hometown we pay a ridiculous price for 813 square feet. But its great! What do I love? We have huge windows, and the living room is not square. Our last apartment was one big rectangle, with two tiny windows at the end of the living room. It was like living in a cave. Here, the living room window is almost as tall as me, and at least as wide as I am tall. Then just a few feet away is a sliding glass door. To top it all off, our view is of a big grassy quad with trees and a basketball court. All the other apartments around here look out onto blacktop. HA HA! My apartment rules.

4. I have so many amenities I take for granted. My sister and her husband own a small home in Texas, which is great for them. But as they are just starting out, they have tons of problems. Their home has little or no insulation in most rooms; their bedroom has especially thin walls and extra doors to outside that cause a freezing draft. Their heaters were all broken except for in one room for a time, and their oven hasn't worked the whole time they've lived there! My sister makes cookies nine at a time in her toaster oven. She and her baby are bundled up all day during cold spells. Wow....I've got heat, and maintenance people who fixed my oven and fridge for free! Talk about a blessing.

5.I like my family. Sure, I talk to some of them more than others, and relationships with individuals are always evolving, but its good. I know so many families who have feuds, backbite, disown each other, or worse. Each of my family members is unique, and maybe thats why we get along. I can talk to one brother about tv and movies, one about art and photography, another about religion. My sister got married two months before me and had her daughter three months after me, so we always have something to talk about. My mom and I talk on the phone almost everyday, while my dad emails everyday. I never would have thought that would happen when I was still in high school. Its amazing how time (and distance) can make things better:-)


6. I've always lived in beautiful places. True, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But I've lived close enough to Zion that my art class went regularly to Kolob Canyon to do plein air pastel paintings. I lived on an island for a year and took a ferry to work across the Puget Sound, which was once voted the best work commute in the country. The building where I worked was right on the bay. In Seattle, I lived only a few blocks from a large arboretum that was bursting with blossoms in the Spring. And even where I am now, we live minutes away from half a dozen beaches, idyllic farming communities, the mountains, or the lights of the city. I know wherever we move from here will be just as beautiful.

I know there are many more things that I have been blessed with, but for now this is the list of those that are probably the most dear.
The End