Thankful Thursday

Today I got to thinking why I do "Thankful Thursdays".  For a good portion of my later teenage years on, I have made a conscious effort to see what there is to be thankful for.  Partly to see the good God has put around me, but mainly because I feel better when I'm seeing something to be thankful for.  The benefits are exponentially more when the exercise is most difficult to complete.

I went into work today for a couple of hours.  I was in a bad mood for multiple reasons by the time I walked into my department.  My department as a whole was in a crabby mood, for a couple specific reasons.  I could feel myself getting to be in a worse and worse mood.  However, when I was walking to treat a patient, I did my normal mental prep work.  This includes if I'm having a bad day and I'm crabby, to try to turn it off at least enough that my patient(s) won't see it.  I started listing things that I'm thankful for, the first one or two came slowly and were excessively difficult to think up.  I did come up with them.  Less than a minute or two later, I'm stepping off the elevator at my destination and I've decided that I really do feel better in general now at this point and I'm making much better decisions.  Among other things prior to this, I was thinking of all of the ways I could get at the person who I share a desk with because she wouldn't let my sunglasses sit on the desk because they were in the way (keeping in mind that she has so much stuff on our desk that generally I can't write at it because there is no surface to write on and too much of her personal junk sitting in our chair I have no where to sit including when she is not even there); I was now thinking that her behavior was annoying, but really doing something that would instigate an all out fight is probably not worth it over a pair of sunglasses...  So here is my list for this Thankful Thursday

1. The weather is finally cooler.  I'm not a huge fan of heat, my favorite weather involves wearing sweatshirts, and we are just entering into it.
2. The fall activities have officially started.  This past weekend we went to a pig roast and we went on a hayride and had a campfire while we were there.
3. Listening to Obsidian talk.  Pyrope was/is not much of a talker.  Obsidian is.  Since I'm not used to listening to a very small person's views of everything, it is even more amusing listening to them.
4. Lazy Sunday afternoons.  This past one I spent listening to Pyrope playing and laughing with my cousin (who is 13) while Obsidian was taking a nap on my uncle's chest.  It was a very laid back, quiet visit.
5. Seeing the leaves on the trees just starting to change color.  It gets back to I love the fall (but I love this enough that it is its own specific item).
6. My sister got me drinking a new type of tea.  I don't drink coffee but I love a good hot beverage in the fall, winter, and spring.  I hate having to put sugar in things, this tea I can drink without sugar.  It is almost like drinking a liquid cinnamon red hot candy heart.  Except there is no sugar involved, but it still tastes sweet.  It comes in caffeinated and caffeine free varieties.  I did find it comes in different flavors as well although right now I have no interest in expanding into a different flavor.  I love this tea.
7. I found where I can buy above tea locally to me (my other options were having my sister buy me some or buying it off of Amazon, both fine options but ones that require forethought when I'm running low).  I didn't even have to go to a lot of different stores to figure it out, a simple status change on Facebook, and I then found out where I could buy my tea.  Yum.