I love my body

1. My body is not actively trying to kill me.
2. My eyes allow me to see beauty every day.
3. I have a beautiful singing voice.
4. My body bore two beautiful children.
5. My ears hear my husband say, "I love you."
6. My body lets me hug my kid, tuck him into bed, and give him good night kisses.
7. I have lips that are the color and shape that most women try to get with lipstick.
8. My fibromyalgia means I am on so many medications that I can't donate blood, so I don't have to feel guilty about not donating.
9. I have gorgeous blue eyes, that I passed on to Cooper.
10. I have three little moles in the center of my back that form a tiny triangle. I'm grateful for that because if I ever get decapitated, I'll still be easy to identify.

Gratitude

1. Chocolate
2. Health Insurance
3. Laughter
4. A healthy kid
5. Pain meds
6. My husband who takes care of me without a complaint
7. The priesthood
8. Home teachers who care
9. Down blankets
10. Avocado
11. Books
12. My family
13. My kindle
14. Temple covenants
15. Glasses
16. Electricity
17. Heaters
18. Purple
19. Passion
20. Snickerdoodles
21. My grandpa who converted to our faith
22. Birdsong
23. Garden swings
24. Sunshine
25. Rain storms
26. Teaching
27. Learning
28. Love
29. Truth
30. Wendell Berry
31. Gainful employment
32. Meaningful employment
33. My mom's fudge
34. Christmas lights
35. Hedgehogs
36. Fuzzy socks
37. Friendship
38. My son that died
39. The resurrection
40. Sharpies
41. Notebooks
42. Donut holes
43. Faith
44. The desire to achieve
45. Candles
46. Cuddling
47. Music that you can sing along to at the top of your lungs
48. Music that inspires
49. Libraries
50. C.S. Lewis
51. Aldo Leopold
52. The Pacific Ocean
53. The Snake River
54. Redwood Trees
55. Bald Eagles
56. My cat
57. The scent of lilac blooming in the spring
58. Cruise control
59. The spot on my husband's stomach that is the perfect pillow for my head when I have had a bad day.
60. Poetry
61. BBC miniseries
62. The internets
63. My siblings
64. My parents
65. Toenail polish 
66. Barefoot weather
67. Craft supplies
68. Bookshelves
69. Streaming video
70. Indoor water fights
71. Falling in love over and over again
72. Inspiration
73. Revelation
74. Snuggling puppies at the pet store to stave off my "need something cute and little" urges
75. A husband who thinks it is sexy when I am smart
76. Happy rocks
77. Purple hippos
78. Having been married long enough to say, "Remember when...?"
79. Lip gloss
80. Massages
81. Nutella
82. Everything bagels with whipped cream cheese
83. Bountiful Baskets
84. Bacon
85. Geek webcomics
86. Fantasy novels
87. Indoor plumbing
88. Cute hair clippies
89. King Benjamin
90. Washing machines and dryers

My fibromyalgia and headache has been worse than normal lately. I have a doctor's appointment Tuesday. We'll see if we can make any more medication changes or if anything else can be done. My body feels like it is holding me hostage anymore, so I am going to see if I can come up with ten things about my body for which I am grateful, because I can't make myself be grateful for the fibromyalgia. Yet.

1. My fingernails that look like I have a french manicure with no effort
2. My intellect
3. Hair that grows superfast so I have no fear about doing weird things to it because if it doesn't work it will just grow back out.
4. 
   

Blessings

The banana bread lesson has stuck around this week. There are lots of things for which to be grateful.

• Really good banana bread.
  
• Wednesday morning I got in the car to go to school and GeekBoy had left fresh flowers in the passenger seat. They are in a vase on the kitchen table and I smile every time I see them.
  
• Cooper got to a stand in the middle of the living room floor with no support for the first time last night.
  
• I made a breakthrough on my dissertation which means (I think) that I have more done than I thought I did. I have to go back and look at it again today, but if I'm correct, then I have about half of it in draft form now. I can see actually finishing this thing.
• Grandma is recuperating from her surgery. She's a feisty lady. It looks like she is going to pull through.
• My Christmas shopping is done. I'm really glad I got it done before the paycut kicked in, but even if there hadn't been a paycut, I'd still be glad it's done.

Little blessings, big blessings, but all blessings in my life.

The lesson of the banana bread

I've been feeling sorry for myself the last little bit. It has felt like our little family has just been having a hard time. GeekBoy (my affectionate blog nickname for my husband) works in the mortgage industry, and his company has gone through round after round of layoffs in the last year or two. A few weeks ago they went through another round, and he kept his job. His department is now down to two people, including him. Last week, they announced a "temporary" 20% pay decrease across the board for all employees. It's supposed to just be for December, but we'll see. We found out about this the day before Thanksgiving.

There was the whole poison control incident, and then yesterday Cooper woke up covered in vomit, and when I put him in the tub to get the barf out of his hair he pooed in the tub, and when I got him out of the tub to put him in clean jammies he peed all over the carpet. And then I went to teach and the copier jammed so I was late to class, and it just felt like one little thing after another. And then I got home and my mom called and said Grandma had fallen and broken her leg in multiple places. The bones were coming up through the skin. She was heading into surgery, but with her poor health, they were calling to prepare us just in case she didn't make it through surgery or the post-op recovery.

Combined with all these minor inconveniences and major traumas was the seeming disparity of good things happening for all those around us. New loves, new babies, heck, even a new dress. It seemed that the old phrase about poop rolling downhill was true, and I was at the bottom of the hill, covered (sometimes literally) in poop.

Then this morning I made banana bread. One of the concepts I'm writing about right now in my dissertation is radical inequality, and as I was turning those old bananas into bread, I realized that I am making bread because I have too much food. The bananas weren't inedible in the form they were in. They were just past the point that I prefer to eat them. To many people they would have been perfect. To a great many people in the world, they would have been lifesaving nutrition. And I was turning them into banana bread because I have the option about being picky about what I eat, and of buying enough food at the grocery store that the bananas can sit out long enough to go past optimal ripeness.

I then had to decide what kind of chocolate chips to put in the bread. I had thought about adding pecans, because I had extra pecans from Thanksgiving, but I wanted Cooper to be able to eat the bread, so I went for chocolate instead. I have multiple types of chocolate chips in the house because 1)I love to bake, and 2) that's what the women in my family do. I know some people put wheat in their food storage, but I have a feeling that if it ever comes to the point where people are living off of their food storage, I can trade six ounces of good chocolate for a few pounds of wheat to any woman in a 25 mile radius.

So, my warm house with plenty of food and a darling child smells of cinnamon and nutmeg as chocolate chip banana bread bakes in the oven. Cooper is starting to spend as much time toddling around the house as crawling. My husband is at his job. I'm going to go write some more on my dissertation with a new perspective on radical inequality. And then, I'm going to go eat some banana bread, and kiss my baby, and thank my Heavenly Father for all the blessing He pours out upon me daily, that I do not take the time to see.

Sometimes, the most important lessons in life are taught by a mushy banana.