All Around Week, All Around Thankful, a Ten Things of Thankful Post

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It's Thankful Day and the results are in.  It was a week for being thankful (as I believe it always is).

First and foremost, my post from last Friday got reinstated.   

It is my firm belief Blogger is training AI to spot spam comments and inappropriate post/content, and has been doing so for quite a while.  It would explain why some people who comment on my blog every single day get thrown in the spam box every single day.  AI can be smart, but not wise, and there's a huge difference.

My post included the cats Dansig the Round and Link Linker the Stinker play fighting and somehow their AI (or whatever they use to scan for such things) though it was real fighting and therefore "graphic content" which needed to be put behind a warning.

I appealed, and the warning was removed, and i am thankful there's a way to ask for review when it is warranted.

This Sunday was so rainy Mr. Cal and Becca and i didn't get to go on our walk, but Mr. Cal is thankful he got his "good boy" treats anyway.

(And a further thankful, just now typing this reminded me to go put more treats in my bag.)

For several days in a row we had rain, and we are thankful.  The rain and accompanying lightening didn't knock out our power, and we are thankful.  It has now stopped for a few days so we can dry out and get our grass mowed, and we are thankful.

I'm also thankful Ms. S, on Monday, when it looked as though rain was imminent, ran out to my car to make sure my windows were rolled up as she was concerned.  (She knows there's no A/C in my car so i roll down windows.)

It was up, but i'm thankful my boss cared enough to go outside and check and save me from having to get up off the shower floor where i was scrubbing grout and go out there myself.

My sometimes sort of day off Tuesday had something on the docket, part one of my annual physical.  That means nothing by mouth but water after 8pm the day before and i get to do all the blood draws and whiz quiz and EKG and all the other tests.

I'm thankful to live in a place and time where such medical things are available and that with insurance, i can afford them.

While i was doing all that, Sweetie, for the second day in a row, was working for The Big Boss.  The Big Boss was giving two eulogies last week and planning a third for a cousin in her last days in hospice care, and Sweetie ran around town for two days like crazy getting stuff done the Big Boss just didn't have time to do for himself or Mrs. Boss (especially stuff for her).

The Big Boss was so pleased with all that got done, he not only paid Sweetie but told him to use the credit card and treat me to lunch at our favorite sushi and fusion restaurant.  All-you-care-to-eat vegetable sushi is a huge thankful.

On the way home from lunch as we drove past Ms. D's house, four houses up from us, i noticed her sitting in her car, the door open and her feet on the ground, looking a bit dejected.  Making Sweetie stop and let me out, i ran over and asked what was wrong.

Her right eye was totally bloodshot and looked as if it had a tiny bruise under it.  She told me she'd awakened the night before to a headache, and had put an ice pack on her eye and side of her head where the pain was, and when she woke her eye looked like that.  She'd taken herself to Urgent Care, but they wanted her to go to the ER and she didn't want to go.

I offered to drive her but she said no, she'd take herself this time, she felt fine and didn't know why they were making such a big deal out of it.  I made her promise to call if they decided to check her in or told her she couldn't drive herself home and Sweetie and i would get her and her car back to the house if needed.

She agreed to that and went to the ER, but left because they were so busy and simply followed up with her own eye doc, who said it's not an emergency but is checking her for a possible eye tumor.

We're thankful it wasn't a terrible and immediate emergency, thankful her eye doctor is on top of it, and would be thankful for prayers and good wished from all.

Now we're up to Wednesday, right?  Hold on, it gets better.  I arrived at the shelter to clean and couldn't get in the building.  They'd changed the door codes again and forgotten to tell me.

I texted Bree but she doesn't get up that early unless she has the early shift, so i went home to check email as i can't go do my second volunteer job on Tuesday before 8am.  I found an invitation from my doctor's office to create a MyChart account, some new system they are trying, and as i've helped Ms. D set hers up, i went ahead and did mine.

I was thankful it went well, sometimes there's a hiccup with setting up such things.

Thankfully, they already had the test results for some of the work from the day before and not only am i once more low in sodium (which explains why my blood pressure is behaving itself so well), i as usual had a bit of blood in the whiz quiz.

This happens every year, and every year it gets tested again, and every year it's not a big deal, and i'm thankful to have a doctor who gets it that it's just my weirdness and monitors everything anyway.

Once done with email, Bree texted me the new code and i was thankful to be able to go back to the shelter, do as much as i could there with the time i had left, then go to the other job, then off to see Ms. G.

Ms. G was still at her haircut when i arrived, so i began with sweeping spent birdseed, then she came and we went through the usual stuff, load cold drinks in the fridge, vacuum, etc.  After last week's plumbing problem, which has been fixed, it was time to reload all the stuff to under the sink.

We're thankful she had pared the stuff down and we were able to easily fit what was left.

Once the chores were done, and right before her afternoon appointment (she stays very busy), we ran out to the next town to get her ladders from a house she's readying for sale and got back and got the ladders out of the truck and into the yard -- and we were thankful to get it all in right before the rain started in earnest.

Carl had taken the day off, so my cleaning at Ms. V's followed most of it's usual path but with the exception of following him about the kitchen and making him clean after  himself as i cleaned.  When he walked out of the kitchen, once i'd wiped off his place at the table, you'd never have known he was there.  I'm thankful for small miracles.

Thursday evening in bed, i pulled up my blanket and suddenly felt something sharp and painful rake across my right arm.  I pulled the blanket back and didn't see anything, and looking at my arm it was itchy and painful but didn't show any sign of what had happened.

Then i heard a muted buzz, gently lifted the blanket again, and there was a bumble bee in the bed!

I gently lowered the blanket so as to maybe keep it in place and told Sweetie, who went to fetch the jar and flat plastic "card" we keep for bug rescue.

When he got back, i again gently lifted the blanket until we spotted him and Sweetie gently set the jar over her and slipped the plastic under it across the jar lid.

Once it was safely in there, we we able to take it outside and let it fly away.

I'm grateful Sweetie is good at catching wasps/bees which sometimes get in, and getting them safely out and whatever it did to my arm must have not injected any saliva or venom as there was no pain after the first few minutes and the tiny red mark it left is totally faded now.

Many of us were thankful the joint was jumping Friday night at the shelter with adoptions, plenty of volunteers to get everything done, and while there's been a population explosion (as there has at all shelters this time of year), we're very thankful most of them are healthy and staying so, any which were sick have been isolated quickly enough it hasn't spread.

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.   

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

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Today is:

Best Friends Day -- as declared by the ecard people

Bounty Anniversary Day -- Norfolk Island (celebrates the arrival of the Bounty descendants from Pitcairn Island)

California Artichoke Festival -- Castroville, CA, US (lots of fun in the Artichoke Capital of the World; through tomorrow)

Duanwu Jie -- China; Hong Kong; Macao[Tung Ng]; Taiwan (Dragon Boat Festival, spectacularly decorated boats loaded with rowers and drums race each other; the actual festival day this year is today, but the offical holidays last through Sunday)

Feast of Bona Mens -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of right thinking, the personification of the mind)

King's Birthday -- Tuvalu

Lindisfarne Day -- Asatru/Slavic Pagan (commemorating the Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793)

Name Your Poison Day -- just another wacky holiday with no explanations

National Caribbean-American Health and Aids Awareness Day -- with events all over the US

National Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day

Primoz Trubar Day -- Slovenia (birth anniversary of the author of the first Slovene language books and consolidated the Slovene language)

Sovereign's Day/King's Birthday -- Pitcairn Island

St. Medard's Day (Patron of brewers, captives, imprisoned people, mentally ill people, peasants, prisoners, vineyards; for good harvests, good weather, and rain; against bad weather, imprisonment, sterility, and toothache) related event:

     Festival of the Rose -- Salency, France (on St. Medard's Day, and supposedly begun by that saint before the year 545)

Upsy Daisy Day -- the day to remind people to get up joyfully and gratefully each morning (tell that to my sleep-til-noon family!)

Vacuum Cleaner Day -- Ives W. McGaffee obtained a patent on this day in 1869 for the first carpet cleaner that worked on a vacuum principle

Watch Day -- the sign that you are over 30, you still wear a watch!

World Brain Tumor Day -- International

World Ocean Day   

World Wide Knit in Public Day -- better living through stitching together!   

Anniversary Today:

Christopher O'Neill marries Princess Madeleine of Sweden, 2013

Birthdays Today:

Kim Clijsters, 1983

Kayne West, 1977

Julianna Margulies, 1966

Keenen Ivory Wayans, 1958

Scott Adams, 1957

Tim Berners-Lee, 1955

Griffin Dunne, 1955

Kathy Baker, 1950

Sara Paretsky, 1947

Boz Scaggs, 1944

Don Grady, 1944

Andrew Weil, MD, 1942

Nancy Sinatra, 1940

Bernie Casie, 1939

James Darren, 1936

Joan Rivers, 1933

Jerry Stiller, 1927

Barbara Bush, 1925

Robert Preston, 1918

Byron Raymond White, 1917

Francis Crick, 1916

Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867

Debuting/Premiering Today:

Trading Places(Film), 1983

Malaeska; The Indian Wife of the White Hunter(First "dime novel", Publication date), 1860

Today in History:

Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England, 793

Richard the Lionheart's Crusade begins with his arrival at Acre, 1191

American attackers are driven back at Trois-Rivières, Quebec, 1776

The volcano Laki, in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine, 1783

Mr. Hall of NYC advertises the first commercially made ice cream, 1786

Ives W McGaffey of Chicago patents the first vacuum cleaner, 1869

Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his punched card calculator, 1887

Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value, 1906

Carl Laemmle incorporates Universal Pictures, 1912

Milton Berle hosts the debut of Texaco Star Theater, 1948

The United States Supreme Court rules that Washington, D.C. restaurants could not refuse to serve black patrons, 1953

The first World Ocean Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992

The first Transit of Venus since 1882 takes place, 2004

Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State's worst storms and flooding in 30 years, 2007

Australia bans live cattle exports to Indonesia for up to six months in response to reports of cruel treatment at Indonesian slaughterhouse, 2011

The world's most powerful supercomputer, Summit, which can process 200,000 trillion calculations per second, is launched at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, by IBM and NVidia, 2018

The World Bank says it expects the global economy to shrink this year by 5.2% due to Covid-19, 2020

National Geographic announces it is officially recognizing the South Ocean (Antarctic) as the world's fifth ocean, 2021