Every day for over two years, I’ve journaled three things for which I’m grateful. Okay, so I have occasionally missed a day here and there. Some days, I can find it hard to be grateful. Those days, I’m lucky if I can think of three things, but I struggle with it because I feel like those days, it’s probably more important than ever. Those days, things like ice cream, new socks and hair products make up my top three.

I do try to remember to be grateful. I hate it when it’s reflected to me that I’m not and I’m sorry to admit that the most recent time I received that reflection was about two weeks ago. The quick fire of defence I felt in reaction to the comment told me it was well deserved. And it was: The arrow hit the mark, because it was true. In my constant striving to get somewhere, I often forget to be thankful for things like my job, my condo, my car or, really, just about anything that I have that makes me incredibly fortunate and a part of an awfully slim segment of humanity that doesn’t have to struggle much for my basic needs.

With that in mind, and because it’s Thanksgiving Weekend (my favourite holiday after Christmas!), here are a list of things for which I’ve recently felt grateful:

• Hot showers: Seriously? I cannot even imagine life before modern plumbing. Imagine living one hundred years ago. Five hundred years ago. People would NOT have smelled good.
  Also, how fortunate am I to live in a country where clean hot water is plentiful and readily available. Very, very fortunate.
• Our car: It may not be splashy and it may be, ahem, streamlined on the passenger side panel (fun fact: when it comes down to a Chevrolet Cavalier and a concrete parkade pillar, the car will lose), but our car gives us mobility and freedom. We can go wherever we need, whenever we need to, and we can take whatever we need to transport with us when we hit the road.
• Shoes: Come on. You’re not even surprised.
• Pets: We have enough resources to take care of ourselves and can take care of animals too. Even Maui, who I caught in the act of pooping on the floor today and had to think of something about her to be grateful for: I came up with “she’s very pretty.”
• Baking: Obviously, I enjoy cookies. And pie. But seriously, do you realize how many resources we have available to us that enable us to make food we don’t actually require? Food that we make just to enjoy? We just have these ingredients readily available (imagine life before sugar or baking powder—cake would’ve been pretty bland. You’d have been blowing the candles out on bread.). And don’t get me started on yeast again…
• Electricity: I don’t know much about how things work, but I do know that a lot of what I’m grateful for requires power to work.

There are about a zillion other things I’m grateful for right now, but that’s a start.

What are you grateful for right now?