There's Always Plenty, a Ten Things of Thankful Post

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It's been a bit quieter this week, but that doesn't mean i have less to be thankful for on Thankful Day.

Ms. G gave me a call Saturday morning while Sweetie and i were cleaning Grandma and Grandpa's house asking if i could swing by Sunday morning for critter care.  it seems she wanted to take an overnight trip to do something for her late brother's estate.  Not only was i thankful to be able to easily say yes, i'm thankful Saturday went so well we got home early.

The critter care went like clockwork thankfully so i was on time to tend to Becca on Sunday.  When i arrived, she asked her usual question:  "When's rEcess?"

Two Fridays from now, i told her, and anticipating her next question, i added, we're not sure yet what the menu will be.

"Crawfish?" she asked.

If anyone knows anything about crawfish, there's no way we can put on a crawfish boil at rEcess and buying enough for everyone would be above anyone's budget.  Serving would also be a problem.

Thinking fast, i suggested, how about we try for crawfish étouffée? 

"Yes!" she replied, and then, "Hug?" reaching out to hug me.  That's the first time she's done that, and i'm thankful as she is rather sparing of her hugs.

Ms. JAI  hadn't answered her phone or been home when i'd gone by, so i was very thankful to get a call and went to her place after i was done with Carl on Monday.  Her place never really needs that much cleaning, mostly what she needs is company and a listening ear.  Thankfully, when i leave, she has unloaded some of her worries and had her toilets scrubbed.

It was laundry day on Tuesday, when we hit the laundromat where the "laundromat library" is set up.  We're very thankful it is back in operation after being removed during the restrictions, and i brought a big bunch of books.  While there i was able to straighten out the display, and Mr. Dan, the owner of the laundromat, recopied the signs that had gotten rather worn so i could put up new ones.

Also, there was a book hidden behind some others in there that was totally inappropriate for what is supposed to be a display of children's books and i'm very thankful i found and disposed of it before some child found it.

That evening, i had a ladies' circle meeting, we were all thankful to be meeting again and it was excellent.

For the past several weeks, i've been doing extra volunteer duty for a shelter that had a paid employee out for surgery.  I'm thankful it went well, this was my last week.

Ms. G has, as usual, had more going on that anyone should in one lifetime.  What i had assumed was going to be a long day of getting stuff done turned out to be much shorter than anticipated.  Don't get me wrong, i covered all the basics, but that's all she had time for and i was thankful to be off a little early.

A while back, Bigger Girl told me her plans for the fall, which included moving from Oakland to Seattle and getting a new job.  Wednesday she texted with even more information about her plans, and they include a trip to Europe!  Not only am i excited for her, i'm thankful she has this opportunity.

She sent me a picture of her touring the redwood forests as she makes her way up to her new place, and i'm thankful for that, too.

Thursday afternoon, on a whim, i stopped at the grocery and found one of my favorite items on special at a price i hadn't seen in a long, long time.  I was thankful to be able to stock up.

Friday evening i arrived at the shelter and found two of my favorite volunteers  manning the desks.  It turned out the whole staff was at some kind of special shelter management training for the day, and they'd gotten these two to come in and run the place.  It had been a while since i'd seen either of them (their volunteer shifts are different from mine) and we were thankful to catch up.

While i was there, i was thankful to learn something new.  A gentleman came in to pick up a kitten he and his family had pre-adopted that was now ready to go home.  He asked us to give him some litter from that cat's litter box to bring home and sprinkle on top of its new box, just enough to put that cat's own odor there so it would know for sure where to "go".

This was something i'd never heard of doing, but he told me his wife, who has done volunteer trap/neuter/release programs has used this often and swears by it.  She had insisted he not come home without some of that litter, and the other two volunteers were a little perplexed by the request and how to fulfill it.  Thinking fast, i grabbed an empty prescription bottle that we use to send medicine home for foster cats and filled it from her littler box. 

Now that i think of it, it certainly does make sense as cats cannot stand a filthy, nasty box any more than we can but still want their box to smell a little bit like them, and it's a trick i'm going to remember and pass along.

We also had a wall-mounted hand sanitizer station go empty, and another volunteer asked for help finding and fitting in the refill bag.  Thankfully, the bags were where i remembered and i got it in the dispenser, but it wouldn't work.  Realizing this bag was from some older stock we'd had, i wondered if the nozzle was stopped up.

Of course, we give the cats inoculations under vet supervision as a shelter, so we have syringes and needles.  Using a needle unclogged it and it worked like a charm. 

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:  

Armed Forces Day -- South Korea

Bat Appreciation Month -- hooray for Bat Conservation International! 

Christmas Seal Campaign begins

Chuuk Constitution Day -- Chuuk, Micronesia

Cut Out Dissection Day -- let's find alternatives for school kids!

Fall Astronomy Day -- Bringing Astronomy to the People (local astronomical societies, planetariums, museums and observatories sponsor public viewings, presentation, workshops, etc., to increase public awareness of astronomy and our amazing universe)

     sponsored by The Astronomical League; find out what your local astronomy society is doing today, and go enjoy

Feast of St. Therese of Lisieux a/k/a Therese of the Child Jesus or The Little Flower of Jesus (Doctor of the Church; Patron of African missions, AIDS patients, air crews/aircraft pilots/aviators, florists/flower growers, missionaries, sick people, those who have lost parents, tuberculosis; Australia; France; Russia; several cities around the world; against bodily ills and tuberculosis)

Festival of Penha -- Rio de Janiero, Brazil (through the 31st; pilgrimages to the Church of Our Lady of Penha)

Firepup's® Birthday -- have fun learning fire safety from Firepup

Flattering Finals -- Fairy Calendar

Global Diversity Awareness Month begins -- to foster and further our understanding of the value of people of all races, genders, nationalities, ages, religions, sexual orientations, classes, and physical disabilities

Guoqing Jie -- China; Hong Kong; Macau (National Day/Founding of the Republic)

Homemade Cookies Day

Independence Day -- Cyprus(1960); Nigeria(1960); Palau(1994); Tuvalu(1976)

Inter-American Water Day -- begun in 1992 by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Inter-American Association of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering (AIDIS) and the Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA)

International Coffee Day

International Day of Older Persons -- UN

International Frugal Fun Day -- created by Shel Horowitz, author of The Penny-Pinching Hedonist; some of his ideas for how to celebrate are here     

International Music Day -- information from the International Music Council  

Investiture of the Captains Regent -- San Marino

Kalends of October -- Ancient Roman Calendar; also

     Day Sacred to Fides -- (goddess of faithfulness and keeping your word)

     Festival of Juno Sororia -- Ancient Roman Calendar (Juno the Sister, protector of young women at puberty)

Little Golden Books Day -- the first twelve were published on this day in 1942 (Baby's Book of Objects, Bedtime Stories, Mother Goose, Nursery Songs, Prayers for Children, The Alphabet from A to Z, The Animals of Farmer Jones, The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, The Little Red Hen, The Poky Little Puppy, This Little Piggy and Other Counting Rhymes, Three Little Kittens)

Month of Freethought -- inspired by Freethinkers who emigrated to the US in the 19th century

National Book It! Day -- teachers across the US can join together with Pizza Hut to encourage the love of reading each school year from today through March 31 

National Homemade Cookies Day 

National Lace Day -- US (a day for lace fanciers share their love of lacemaking!  there's no history of who started this day, and other dates are given on some websites) 

National Walk Your Dog Week begins -- a campaign to bring awareness of and fight the increasing problems in the US with canine obesity

O'qituvchi va Murabbiylar Kuni -- Uzebekistan (Day of Teachers and Instructors)

Popcorn and Tears Movie Appreciation Night -- go see a tear-jerker; if guys don't want to go, make them stay home and vacuum

Pudding Season begins (Time to preserve meat from slaughtering for the winter by making meat puddings.)

Qatar Prix L'arc de Triomphe -- Longchamp Race-course, Paris, France (one of the world's greatest horse races, first run in 1920; celebrations and events through tomorrow)

Ram Mating Ceremony -- various towns and villages in Turkey (through the 20th, each village setting its own date; after being separated from the females for two months, the rams are returned with ceremonies to ensure good luck and lots of babies next spring)

Right-Brainers Rule Month begins (because left handers / right brainers are in their "right" minds)

Ruler's Birthday -- SBH, Malaysia

St. Remigius of Rheims' Day (Patrn of France; Rheims, France; against epidemics, fever, plague, religious indifference, snakes, and throat pain)

St. Romanos the Melodist's Day (hymn writer of the early 6th Century whose surviving works are still sung)

Unification Day -- Cameroon

US Fiscal Year begins 

World Bullying Prevention Month™   

World Card Making Day -- Paper Crafts Magazine started it all in 2006 and suggests you have fun and make a card or two or three on the first Saturday of October each year

World Vegetarian Day

Anniversaries Today:

EPCOT opens, 1981 (Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow, or, if you work there, the insider title, Every Person Comes Out Tired)

Walt Disney World opens, 1971

Johnny Carson marries Joan Morrill Wolcott, 1949

Stanford University opens, 1891

Yosemite National Park and Yellowstone National Park are founded, 1890

South African College is founded, 1829 (Now University of Cape Town)

Birthdays Today:

Zach Galifianakis, 1969

Mark McGwire, 1963

Esai Morales, 1962

Grete Waltz, 1953

Randy Quaid, 1950

Stephen Collins, 1947

Tim O'Brien, 1946

Rod Carew, 1945

Stella Stevens, 1936

Julie Andrews, 1935

Albert Collins, 1932

Richard Harris, 1932

George Peppard, 1928

Tom Bosley, 1927

Jimmy Carter, 1924

William Rehnquist, 1924

James Whitmore, 1921

Walter Matthau, 1920

Bonnie Parker, 1910

Vladimir Horowitz, 1903

James Lawrence, 1781

Richard Stockton, 1730

Henry III, King of England, 1207

Debuting/Premiering Today:

Compact Discs, 1982 (Billy Joel's 52nd Street)

"Remington Steele"(TV), 1982

"Kung Fu"(TV), 1972

Night of the Living Dead(Film), 1968

"The Merv Griffin Show"(TV), 1962

"The Honeymooners"(TV), 1955

"This is Your Life"(TV), 1952

"Tom Corbett, Space Cadet"(TV), 1950

"Best Foot Forward"(Musical), 1941

Ford's Model T, 1908

World Series Baseball, 1903 (the Boston Americans beat the Pittsburgh Pirates)

Postal Special Delivery, 1885 (USPS began special delivery services)

Postcards, 1869 (in Vienna, Austria)

Today in History:

Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia, BC331

The Russian Parliament accepts the annexation of the Ukraine, 1653

First session of the new French legislative assembly is held, 1791

Spain cedes Louisiana to France in a secret treaty, 1800

The first steamboat to sail the Mississippi River arrives in New Orléans, Louisiana, 1811

Maria Mitchell discovers a non-naked-eye comet, 1847

A cyclone strikes Calcutta, India, killing 70,000, 1864

Karl Marx' "Das Kapital" is published, 1867

The world's first postcards are issued, in Vienna, Austria, 1869

John Philip Sousa becomes the new director of the USMC Band, 1880

Thomas Edison opens the first electric lamp factory, 1880

The USPS begins special delivery mail service, 1885

Jews are expelled from major Russian cities, 1898

Arab forces under T.E. Lawrence, a/k/a Lawrence of Arabia, capture Damascus, 1918

An oil field accident cost aviator Wiley Post his left eye, but he used the settlement money to buy his first aircraft, 1926

The Pennsylvania Turnpike, often considered the first superhighway in the United States, opens, 1940

Mensa International is founded in the United Kingdom, 1946

First broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, 1962

The Concorde supersonic transport plane breaks the sound barrier for the first time, 1969

Walt Disney World opens near Orlando, Florida, United States, 1971

The United States returns sovereignty of the Panama canal to Panama, 1979

EPCOT Center opens at Walt Disney World, 1982

William Gibson's groundbreaking novel Neuromancer is published, introducing the word "cyberspace" to the English language, 1984

Denmark introduces the world's first legal modern same-sex civil union, 1989

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom takes over the judicial functions of the House of Lords, 2009

A dedicated 3D TV channel, Sky 3D, launches in the UK, 2010

The NY Yankees record the 10,000th win in their illustrious history, 2015

A new trade deal to replace NAFTA is agreed upon by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, 2018

Peru's President Martín Vizcarra dissolves Congress over its refusal to support his anti-corruption reforms, sparking a political crisis, 2019