Baby Steps Toward Seeing Clearly, a Ten Things of Thankful Post

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It's Thankful Day and there's plenty, as always, starting with last weekend.

Thanks to the mouse eating the dishwasher line and flooding Grandma and Grandpa's kitchen and more, the negotiations with the insurance over what will and won't be covered are ongoing, but we're thankful Uncle J was able to go ahead and order a new fridge, oven/range, and dishwasher, the latter of which he will temporarily install himself so they won't be without one.

Because of plans for Monday, when i got back from NOLA i went and took care of my Monday afternoon client's house.  I was thankful Ms. S allowed me to do it and thankful i was able to still do an extra long work day.

There was only one church service Sunday, Mr. Cal hereby registers his thankfulness for the extra long walk he gets when this happens.

After the service, again because Monday would be otherwise occupied, i went and took care of Carl's place.

I was most thankful to not miss the work, as we had enough of that with the snow the week prior.

Monday morning i was thankful i did as my doctor had instructed and took my blood pressure medication early.

The big day, cataract surgery day, had finally arrived, and i was thankful it would soon be over.

I am thankful for a good doctor who is very experienced, as not only did i feel what was going on, i had a feeling something was wrong.  Indeed, the next day he told me it was a very, very tough cataract to get out.

When the bandages came off Tuesday, i'm thankful i was able to see some and i'm thankful it's been a bit better each day.

I was also thankful to get to go be with my little Annie that day, wearing an eye shield just to protect it.

I'm thankful the pain is less now and the eye shield hides how bruised and awful it looks.

Back to work Wednesday went pretty well, and i'm thankful Ms. G had me only lift the rug edges to clean under them instead of having to roll them up and remove them as i'm not supposed to lift that much.

Ms. V was up early on Thursday, for which i am thankful because it meant i got done a bit early for the day.  Also, she was okay with me simply mopping the kitchen instead of getting on hands and knees and scrubbing and i'm thankful because i think it would have been too much, too soon.

While at Ms. V's, i got a call from Ms. JAI.  She had an accident, drove her car through her garage wall and into her closet.  I'm thankful i was able to call Mr. DE and give him her name and number so she could have a contractor she could trust to take care of this situation.

Sweetie helped me Friday at Ms. GA's place and i was thankful as there was a church ladies' gathering and i was able to go for a while after work.

The shelter had lots of people looking at cats and a couple of adoptions and we were very thankful all the cats which tried to escape their rooms were caught without much trouble and put back where they belonged.

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

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Today is:

Air Force Day -- Nicaragua

Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery -- Mauritius

Be An Encourager Day/Inspire Your Employees to Excellence Day -- begun by ecard companies; send someone an encouraging word today

Candlemas Eve

Cross-Quarter Day of Imbolc/Sughnassad -- various celebrations through the 2nd

Dignity Action Day -- UK (aiming to ensure people who use care services are treated as individuals and are given choice, control, and a sense of purpose in their daily lives)

Federal Territory Day -- Kuala Lumpur, Labuan, and Putrajaya, Malaysia

Festival of the North -- Ketchikan, AK (month long celebration of the arts in Alaska, including a wearable art show, ballet performances, and more)

Freedom Day -- US (anniversary of the approval of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery)

G.I. Joe Day -- the action hero first went on sale this day in 1964

Heroes' Day -- Rwanda

Hula in The Coola Day -- sponsored by iparty.com; a day to laugh at winter doldrums and escape the cold for a bit -- warm up the house, put on your shorts and have a luau!

Independence Day -- Nauru

Kalends of February -- Ancient Roman Calendar; also

     Festival of Helernus (god of vegetables and the underworld)

National Baked Alaska Day

National Storytelling Week -- UK (the Society for Storytelling encourages you to celebrate one of the most ancient art forms; through Feb. 9)  

Robinson Crusoe Day -- anniversary of the 1709 rescue of Alexander Selkirk, whose story inspired the novel Robinson Crusoe; a day to be adventurous and self-reliant

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Day -- the Dominion Police and the North-West Mounted Police officially merged on this day in 1920 to form the "Mounties"

Solo Diners' Eat Out Week -- sooner or later, everyone faces the challenge of eating out alone, so go enjoy doing so, celebrating this lifestyle skill; sponsored by SoloDining.com

Spunky Old Broads' Day (also the start of Spunky Old Broads' Month) -- a day for women over 50 to resolve to live a regret free life

St. Brigid's Day (aka St. Bridget or Saint Brighid of Kildare; Patron of babies, blacksmiths, boatmen/mariners/sailors, cattle, chicken farmers, children of unwed parents, dairy workers, fugitives, midwives, nuns, poets, printing presses, scholars, travelers; Douglas, Lanarkshire, Scotland; Ivrea, Turin, Italy; Kildare, Ireland; Leinster, Ireland)

     formerly celebrated on Feb. 2 as the Imbolc quarter day of the Irish pagan calendar

Tupperware Sculpting Day -- internet generated; take an old, worn piece of Tupperware, melt it, and sculpt something

Working Naked Day -- dedicated to those who work from home without the support system an outside work environment provides

Ya-Ya Matsuri -- Owase, Mie Prefecture, Japan (parades, street festivals, and boys diving into the sea for purification; through the 5th)

Birthdays Today:

Lauren Conrad, 1986

Michael C. Hall, 1971

Pauly Shore, 1970

Lisa Marie Presley, 1968

Pauly Shore, 1968

Sherilyn Fenn, 1965

Brandon Lee, 1965

Princess Stephanie of Monaco, 1965

Bill Mumy, 1954

Rick James, 1948

Bob Jamieson, 1943

Terry Jones, 1942

Sherman Helmsley, 1938

Don Everly, 1937

Garrett Morris, 1937

Boris Yeltsin, 1931

Stuart Whitman, 1929

S.J. Perelman, 1904

Langston Hughes, 1902

Clark Gable, 1901

John Ford, 1894

Louis Stephen St. Laurent, 1882

Hatty Wyatt Caraway, 1878

Victor Herbert, 1859

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Late Night with David Letterman"(TV), 1982

"Rich Man, Poor Man"(TV Miniseries), 1976

"The Secret Storm" (TV), 1954 (first TV soap opera)

"General Electric Theater"(TV), 1953

"You Are There"(TV), 1953

"La Boheme"(Puccini Opera), 1896

"The Corsair"(publication date), 1814

Today in History:

Teenaged Edward III is crowned King of England, but the country is ruled by his mother Isabella of France and her lover Roger Mortimer, 1327

The Colony of Roanoke Island is established by the landing of Sir Walter Raleigh, 1587

Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, is rescued from the uninhabited archipelago of Juan Fernandez, 1709

The Ottoman sultan orders the capture of his unwelcome guest, King Charles XII, resulting in the Kalabalik i Bender (Tumult in Bender), 1713

The first US steamboat patent is issued, by Georgia, to Briggs & Longstreet, 1788

The capital of Upper Canada is moved from Newark to York, 1796

The American Insurance Company of Philadelphia opens, the first such company managed by blacks, 1810

Volcano Mayon on Luzon, Philippines erupts killing 1,200, 1814

Slavery is abolished in Mauritius, 1835

The first US dental school, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, is incorporated, 1840

Auburn University is chartered as the East Alabama Male College, 1856

Morris Raphall of NYC becomes the first rabbi to open the House of Representatives, 1860

Julia Howe publishes the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," 1862

Jefferson Long of Georgia is the first black to make an official speech in the House of Representatives (opposing leniency to former Confederates), 1871

The first volume of A New English Dictionary, A to Ant,later called the Oxford English Dictionary, A-Ant, is published, 1888

Thomas Edison completes the world's first movie studio, in West Orange, N.J., 1893

The first auto insurance policy is issued, by The Travelers Insurace Co., 1898

China's empress Tzu-hsi forbids binding woman's feet, 1902

The first US federal penitentiary is completed, at Leavenworth, Kansas, 1906

Russia adopts the Gregorian Calendar, 1918

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police forms as Royal Northwest Mounted Police merge with Dominion Police, 1920

The United States Army launches Explorer 1, 1958

Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, 1960

The Hamilton River in Labrador, Canada is renamed the Churchill River in honour of Winston Churchill, 1965

Canada's three military services, the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force, are unified into the Canadian Forces, 1968

Director Roman Polanski skips bail and flees the United States to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl, 1978

The Ayatollah Khomeini is welcomed back to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile, 1979

Lillian E. Fishburne becomes the first female African American to be promoted to rear admiral, 1998

Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard, 2003

Johanna Siguroardottir is elected as the first female Prime Minister of Iceland, 2009

Myanmar's first freely elected parliament in 50 years has its opening session in Nay Pyi Taw, 2016

Archaeologists announce that the discovery of thousands of previously undetected structures in Mayan lowland civilization in Guatemala, using Lidar technology, which suggests there was a population of about 10 million, 2018

January 2019 was Australia's hottest month on record according to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, 2019

Locusts swarm across East Africa, leading Somalia to declare their largest national emergency in 25 years, 2020

Wisdom the Albatross, age 70, becomes the world's oldest known bird to hatch a chick at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, 2021

The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, considered the 'Nobel Prize for Engineering,' is awarded to Masato Sagawa for inventing the neodymium-iron-boron (Nd-Fe-B) magnet, 2022