http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D9VxwqharBo

(Footage and music by Steve Rawley)

i love the view from our house. peace.

— wm

i’m a peace-loving girl, right up to the point where two freaks break into the house and try to come after my family.

after that? all bets are off.

This is one crazy story. Glad she and the baby are both okay. (A fund is being established for Mrs. McKinley and her son, if you are so inclined…)

…for friends, for family, for hope. and that… is all i’ve got.

but it’s a lot.

— wm

yesterday, i was grateful cuz we all went to see the Muppets movie (soooo funny) and my sis and her husband, Red-Headed Guy from Texas, went, too. I was going to fix dinner for us, but she said, No, we have to go out for Indian food. So we did! giving me not 1 but 3 things to be grateful for: the Muppets, time w/ family, and Indian food. oh gosh it was good, i’m just saying…

Today? Today i am extra-grateful cuz Steve did the grocery shopping, and now he’s hanging up the Christmas lights. wow. what a dude, huh?

oh yeah also he sent the final (final?) (final!) (cuss plz let this be the final) draft of my book + the bio + the cover to the publishers for the hard copy y’all have been so impatiently waiting for.

so check the website and we will have links up within the next couple weeks.

i promise.

thank you for your support. ps my bookmarks for “That’s Not It” arrived this week, too. If you would like a personalized bookmark, plz leave a note in comments or send me an e and i will mail one to you!! They’re very pretty and shiny.

grateful for the sunshine. off to work in the yard! won’t be long now until we’re planting spring peas. i’m really enjoying our herb garden, which looks like it may survive winter. parsley, sage, rosemary and two kinds of thyme! (pineapple and standard. get it? standard thyme? ha! ha! yeah i love a bad pun.) we also have lemon balm and oregano in pots. we have some ornamental oregano, too — v. pretty.

some of the herbs are in the ground, some are in pots. wasn’t sure if I was going to want to move them around or not, so we tried to stay flexible last year. I have a long rock wall with a few spots to fill in, up above. (here’s the picture from last summer. the area I need to deal w/ is to the left, above the strawberries.) the raspberries are taking over, the apple trees are a mess and may need to come down. (diseased fruit, diseased leaves — we keep treating with copper sulfate, but this could take awhile, or not be a success story at all.)

my mom is giving us a couple more hydrangeas and another snowball bush, too. now where to plant everything?

happy friday, y’all.

— wm

grateful today because i feel optimistic. i feel wildly, uncontrollably, ridiculously optimistic. the economy is lousy, the wars are still raging, there are still way too many people going hungry and homeless and without jobs. but i have hope that someday things are going to get a little better, or at least ease up, a bit. and maybe, after that, things will get a lot better.

why do i feel this way? i have no idea, but i’m going with it.

grateful and hopeful and yearning for a better world for my kids and everyone else’s to grow up in.

peace, and peace and love and happiness.

yours,

wm

grateful for everything today: the rain, salmon leaping across the roads, my health being way better than it was two years ago at this time. grateful that my wildass tomcat is feeling better, grateful that Steve has a week off for vacation (? what???), grateful for the apple pie I just assembled and threw in the freezer, to bake on Thursday morning, and grateful that it’s almost December, cuz I like December. not cuz of Christmas, necessary, but because it just seems like such a cheerful month.

also grateful for brussels sprouts, which i hated so much as a child (ask my mother: “God, no, I’m not making brussels sprouts, calm down”), but which now i adore. especially roasted with a lot of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

the end.

— wm

grateful for all my blogger friends, cuz without them, i’m nothing.

go read Nan, she cracks me up.

I am grateful that my hissy, bitey tomcat, Baby, seems to be recuperating from the icky head wound he wound up with (wound/wound, get it?) after yet another CAT FIGHT. God he was sick.

the vet’s office called today to check on him. “How is that big, handsome boy, Baby?” me: “He’s high as a kite on the pain meds you gave him.” office lady: “Isn’t it lovely? Enjoy it!”

oh my wacky cat, I love him so. he gets to live in our room for two weeks. he is wearing one of those crazy cones around his neck.

and while i am not grateful that Panda, our one remaining hamster, died last night… I am grateful that she wasn’t in pain and miserable, in the weeks leading up to her demise.

damn pets.

— wm

Grateful today for movies, music (working on Grandma’s memoir/cookbook today, so I’m listening to her music, not mine ;), poetry and books.

How about you?

— wm