Practice Gratitude One Day at a Time
On this American Thanksgiving holiday, I find myself grateful for hundreds of blessings great and small.
I’m grateful to be alive.
Grateful for my family, my mother, my sister, my cousins, our daughter, and my husband. Also delighted and thankful for our loving friends. I feel wealthy regarding family, friends, and in addition, I continue to be blessed with fruitful connections to dozens and dozens of productive, skillful and inspiring writers.
Our Gratitude for Firefighters in California
This is the second year of wildfires, which have devastated Northern California.
My family and friends experience and express gratitude for all the firefighters both local and those that came from out-of-state. All bravely saved lives and rescued pets and wild animals while striving to contain the blazes. In October of 2017, a firestorm struck Napa and Sonoma County. The speed and size of the conflagration wiped out Santa Rosa neighborhoods, burned ranches, farms, historic buildings, and killed over forty residents.
This year, 2018 we suffered the worst wildfire in California history. The “Camp Fire” wiped out the forest town of Paradise. At last count, the total identified persons who died hit close to ninety. Fire officials have a list of five hundred missing persons. After two weeks of toxic smoke covering Sonoma County, and a majority of the San Francisco Bay Area, we rejoiced in three days of rain. Even found myself basking in hours of sunshine and blue skies.
Like most people, I’m especially grateful for those who bring me joy. At the top of my list continue to be our daughter and our furry kids.
Happily, we are multi-species home.
When our daughter was seven, we adopted a pet rabbit named, Paris. When our daughter turned twelve, we choose a young dog — a one-year-old Cocker spaniel-poodle mix named Sydney. He had lived in two buyers homes and had resided in the Petaluma Animal Shelter for three weeks. He had multiple issues and did not know understand what his families had wanted from him.
One-year-old Sydney was not fully house trained!
Our daughter became an excellent dog trainer. In two weeks Sydney knew where to go and did his business on command at the spot we had picked for him in our backyard.
Our rabbit Paris was patient and yet firm with our newly adopted dog. If Sydney dared bug him, our bunny flipped a 180 then gave him a sharp stare. If I could put words in our bunny’s mouth, they would come out something like this.
“ I don’t know what you’re doing DOG, but do it somewhere else.”
Our Paris lived to the advanced old age of twelve. Most wild rabbits live only two or three years. House rabbits often live to eight or ten. So we were fortunate with him. His calm demeanor, dazzling jetés, and twerks brought much happiness.
Tokyo Tuxedo rules our kitchen and family room
About six years ago, we adopted a second rabbit from an animal shelter. He came with the name Tuxedo. He has white one white collar and one white paw. We added Tokyo in front of the name Tuxedo to keep with our tradition of naming pets after famous cities.
In contrast to Paris, Tokyo Tuxedo dislikes all other pets, even other rabbits. When our daughter’s cat Yoda walks into Tux’s territory, Tuxedo bristles. Our family room and kitchen are his domain. He can be quite grumpy and even nippy. Tux runs up to his fencing and grunts. Tux also shows dislike for Sydney who lives with our friends, Marc and Winnie, and visits infrequently.
So, a Dr. Doolittle I am not.
My animals don’t talk. In fact, they don’t even talk to each other. Each pet wants his way. Each wants all of our attention. So, it’s a good thing or daughter keeps her cat Yoda upstairs in her room. Yoda only occasionally visits the family room. By the way, we never chose all male pets; they happen to fit into our adoptive family. Also, we have kept each pet’s name from their animal shelters.

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