For the Love of This Life

Today was not a great day. It’s cold here. Not as cold as it has been. It could be a lot worse. It’s single digits cold and we’ve seen winters where it didn’t even reach the negative single digits for weeks at a time. It’s only been this cold for a few days and by Sunday it’s supposed to warm back up into the thirties and forties again. We’ve had an extremely mild winter and, being a winter-hater to begin with, I’ve really been spoiled by it.

I haven’t had to worry about the hose freezing or ice lurking under the snow waiting for me to step wrong, fall and bust up my knee — especially the right one, because that was my good knee. My bad shin, but my good knee. And yes, I am too young to have a “good” knee. But I do.

So there was the cold and the ice and the busting of the knee. And I tried to stay positive, I did. But it was a little too much like waking up on the wrong side of the bed — well, the equator, really, but who’s keeping track? And it went downhill from there.

You know how that goes, when you get off on the wrong foot and then everything seems worse than it is? The dishes are piled in the sink and somehow it seems worse than when they were piled in the sink the day before. And the laundry; there seems to be so much more of it. And the email inboxes are full. And the editors aren’t responding as quickly as you’d like. And the deadlines; they keep stacking up but you feel like you’re treading water anyway. You know those days?

That was today.

And I still needed to get groceries when The man got home this afternoon. Which, let me just say, for as much work as I put in growing and raising and harvesting and butchering and freezing and canning and dehydrating? I still seem to manage to spend an increasingly astronomical amount of money at the grocery store. Really, how does it even happen? I don’t know.

And not just that but The Man got home, I told him my plan to go to the store and he insisted on coming along. I said, “I’m going to get groceries because this is the only time I’ll have to do it all week.” And he heard, “Let’s take the whole family on an outing to town at seven at night on a school night.” And so, we were off.

And I fully expected it to be terrible, downright terrible, but it wasn’t so bad. Yes, I spent an especially ridiculous amount of money since they were all along to voice their opinions over which cereal we should get and how we really needed to restock the Kashi bars stash and the vodka, because we bought orange juice so why wouldn’t we? But they were also there to help. They pushed the cart and got the stuff off the bottom shelf that was pushed way to the back and The Man loaded the bags into the trunk at every stop while insisting I wait in the car with the heater going.

We got dinner — which ended up being horrible, but free and if nothing else forty five minutes of undistracted family time at a table where all we had to do was wait and talk and play games — and we bought enough groceries for an army and we came home. And when I got here I logged onto Facebook and found Janice had posted as her status:

I like my life. What about you? Like if you like.

And less than an hour after she’s posted it there were more than fifty likes. To shamelessly channel Molly Shannon, fifty! And yes, my like was one of them. And I just sat there, smiling, thinking to myself not only how lucky I am to like my life even on the not-so-great days, but to be part of a community of people who love theirs too. Most of my friends like their lives, and they have good reason to; most of them live incredible lives well worth loving.

But I wasn’t raised this way. In the majority of the country it’s not like this. How awesome is it that I have the opportunity to live this life, this way, with these people? How truly awesome, indeed.

Tagged as: Gratitude, life, Love