Georgie has been with us one whole month and a week. He’s made a lot of great strides during his time with us. He no longer bites my butt as I walk across a room. He can walk up and down the steps like a big boy. He has major fear of missing out (FOMO) so he follows us around a lot and fights sleep. When I was younger, my mom would look at me knowingly and say, “I can picture you with two boys...”. I know this isn’t what she had in mind and yet, Wrigley and Georgie chasing one another around the coffee table doesn’t seem too far off the mark. Once again, I am reminded of the unexpected ways the universe provides - in ways we would never expect and don’t always understand at the time.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I love to prepare the food and take the time to enjoy a meal with family/friends. I also appreciate an entire holiday devoted to the notion of gratitude. I enjoy when people make it a practice, if only for a day or throughout the month of November, to share what they are grateful for. Focusing on abundance isn’t a place that most people operate from. It’s easier and almost more nautral to focus on what’s not going well in our lives, in the world, and to focus on what’s absent from our lives. To focus on the relationships that are no longer whole in our lives, the jobs we interviewed for and didn’t get or the fact that our bread machine died on Thanksgiving eve. Gratitude requires a shift in mindset that isn’t easy or natural. We can take gratitude one step further by trusting in the timing of the universe and believing that the universe has our back.

Imagine if more people practiced gratitude and this practice extended beyond November or Thanksgiving? A quick Google search on the benefits of gratitude reveals that the benefits are plentiful and yet gratitude isn’t something many of us consistently express beyond a day or a month. I believe we can overthink gratitude by believing only big ticket items are worth expressing gratitude when in reality, little things in life can bring us so much joy that we’d be remiss to overlook them. Obviously, people are seldom grateful for the hardships in their lives but we have to admit, even grudgingly that these hardships enhance the joys. "No mud, no lotus." Thich Nhat Hanh

I haven’t taken my gratitude to Facebook during the month of November but I have gratitude FOMO so here goes:

1. Coffee!

2. Excedrin.

3. Sense of humor and laughter.

4. The fact that I have 2 ovens - handy on Turkey day...

5. Reliable transportation.

6. My health and health insurance.

7. Dry shampoo.

8. Writing! Mine and others.

9. Sobriety.

10. My crazy menagerie of pets.

11. Andrea.

12. Family and friends who are like family.

13. Employment.

Happy Thanksgiving!