Too Busy to Think of a Clever Title, a Ten Things of Thankful Post

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Thankful Day starts this week with me saying i’ve been trying to write this post and sat down to do it several times, and i am thankful to finally be getting to it, or to part of it.

If i get interrupted again, i promise to keep trying, and being thankful.

This week, i learned to use a shopping app so i could just run to the store and they'd have it all picked out for me.  They put it in the trunk and i was good to go.

This week, GusGus die Fledermaus decided it was a great time for the dashboard to just go blank, making me thankful i was able to drop it off to Kevin and Lenny and just put the key through the key slot, no need for me to go into the shop.

Further, i am thankful that it was only a bit of corrosion and a shorted wire, an easy fix that was not too pricey.

Even further, i am thankful that #1 Son was able to give me a lift back over there to pick it up, they'd left the key in it and i simply called with my card number to pay for it.

This week, i am thankful for the great news that Little Girl's scholarship to nursing school that they'd been dinking around with came through.

Further, i am thankful the grant program agreed to buy her textbooks for nursing school.  All of them.  At once.  They called her to come get them and she brought over a pile of books that would form a stack taller than me (granted, i'm not that tall, but still).  Books are covered.

Even further, i am thankful that the VA money they'd promised is coming, too.  She's going to have everything she needs to finish school, what a blessing!

This week, i am thankful i was able to take #1 Son to his medical procedure.

Further, i am thankful it went well and showed none of the problems the doctors were concerned about.

This week, i am thankful that we've gotten to spend several evenings out on the porch, just me, Coda, Tripod SissyCat, and on occasion, Sweetie.

This week, i am thankful Ms. G has found some work for me to do, feeding the outdoor feral colony she is managing while she is out of town.  Some pay is better than no pay, and i am very glad for it.

This week, i am thankful for Sweetie's two trips to the ER, even though both were hectic and crazy and had me running even more than i would have if i'd been at work.

The first turned up the low sodium levels, and i'm thankful he now understands he has to drink the meal replacement shakes and electrolyte drinks i am giving him even if he doesn't like them much, since he has no appetite.

The second showed up his need for oxygen, and i'm thankful they were able to send him home from the ER with a portable compressor, steroids and an inhaler.

Further, i am thankful the doctor was able to give us a sample of the inhaler since our insurance will not pay for it.

Even further, i am thankful for the nice pharmacy staff that expedited his prescription and all of my regular prescriptions so that i only had to make one trip to pick up everything.

This week, i am thankful a light bulb in the kitchen burned out, as i now have the opportunity to replace it with an LED like i've been wanting to do anyway.

Best of all, i am thankful for the way friends, clients, and our church family have gathered around us.  One client/church member has paid me in spite of not being able to work, another paid for the car repair, and lots of church people are checking up on us over and over.

Finally, an update on my brother and his condition.  He is not out of the woods by any means, and things could still go south for him.  For the moment, though, his kidney function has returned to normal so he does not need dialysis, he has stopped bleeding, and even though he is still on the ventilator, he'd on 50% oxygen, down from 100%.  We are thankful for these small signs that he's fighting the virus and making progress.

Please write up your own list and link up to Ten Things of Thankful, where Dyanne and her co-hosts always have a warm welcome waiting.   

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Today is:

Andorra La Vella Festival -- Andorra (through Monday)

Assyrian Martyrs Day -- various Assyrian communities

Battle of Boyaca Day -- Colombia

Harvest Holiday -- Slavic Pagan Calendar (reaping ceases for a few hours in honor of Volos' beard; bread is eaten and offerings given to Mother Earth and Volos for a bountiful harvest)

Independence Day / National Day -- Cote d'Ivoire(1960)

International Hangover Day -- always the day after International Beer Day, which should tell you something, and sponsored by the same group that does International Beer Day, which should tell you something more!

National Lighthouse Day -- US (American Lighthouse Foundation) 

National Mustard Day -- US, sponsored by the National Mustard Museum 

National Raspberries in Cream Day

Particularly Preposterous Packaging Day -- sponsored by Wellcat Holidays, and especially the kind no one can open without a machete, what's with that!

Professional Speaker's Day  www.professionalspeakersday.com

Purple Heart Day -- US (originally instituted this day in 1782 by George Washington)

Say "Cheese" Day -- begun by ecard companies looking for something to celebrate; in my family, we do not say "Cheese", we say "Chicken Lips!" Try it some time when walking past tourists who are trying to get a good photo, and watch them smile genuine smiles and come up with a good picture.

Sea Serpent Day -- no one knows why today, just enjoy

Smartest Leprechaun Eisteddfod -- Fairy Calendar

St. Albert of Trapani's Day (Patron of Carmelite schools; Messina, Italy; Trapani, Italy)

St. Cajetan's Day (Patron of job seekers and the unemployed)

Take Last Winter's Snowballs Out of the Freezer and Have a Fight Day -- in the northern hemisphere, it's certainly hot enough

Birthdays Today:

Charlize Theron, 1975

Harold Parrineau, 1963

DeLane Matthews, 1961

David Duchovny, 1960

Alberto Salazar, 1957

John Glover, 1944

Garrison Keillor, 1942

B.J. Thomas, 1942

Abebe Bikila, 1932

"The Amazing" James Randi, 1928

Carl "Alfalfa" Switser, 1927

Stan Freberg, 1926

Ralph Johnson Bunche, 1903

Rudolf C. Ising, 1903

William Boyd McKechnie, 1886

Billie Burke, 1884

Mata Hari, 1876

Nathanael Greene, 1742

Today in History:

Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon, following the death of Alexander the Great, BC322

Construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore begins in Florence, 1420

Coup again the Tianshun Emperor by the Ming Dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin, 1461

Francis Drake's fleet returns to Plymouth, 1573

The first documented performance of Macbeth, at the Great Hall at Hampton Court, 1606

Sieur de La Salle's brigantine Le Griffon becomes the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes, 1679

Cherokee Indians take Ft. Loudon, Tennessee, 1760

George Washington creates the Order of the Purple Heart, 1782

Simon Bolivar triumphs over the Spanish at the Battle of Boyaca, 1819

The long simmering tension between the Hatfields and the McCoys on the Kentucky/West Virginia border erupts into full scale violence on election day, 1882

The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York, 1927

IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I), 1944

Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America, 1947

Explorer 6 transmits the first TV photo of Earth from space, 1959

The "artistic crime of the century" occurs when Philippe Petit of France, after months of planning and smuggling in materials, makes an illegal tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, 1974

Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars, 1976

The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication, 1981

Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts, 1985

Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks baseball great Hank Aaron's record by hitting his 756th home run, 2007

Australia's Sally Pearson sets a new Olympic record when she wins the 100 metres hurdles in 12.35 seconds at the 2012 Summer Olympics, 2012

The Mendocino Fire becomes the largest recorded fire in California's history, at 290,600 acres, overtaking The 2017 Thomas Fire, 2018