MID-NOVEMBER . . .

Well, almost the middle of the month. Close enough.

Facebook folks are well into their month of posting daily gratitudes. Weather is changing daily--yesterday chilly; today a little warmer; tomorrow warmer still; next day cold/rainy/stay-at-home weather. 

I trawled through the long, long list of old blog posts to see what I'd said about gratitude in the past. Don't panic!! I'm not repeating an oldie-but-goodie. I just didn't want to inadvertently say the same stuff I've said before.

Why not? Because there's always something new to be grateful for. Some new blessing we didn't have last week or last month or last year. It's all part of Life Going On.

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So, here we are in mid-November, 2022. We're two and a half years away from the complete shutdown COVID-19 brought us in March 2020. We've had to change . . . shift . . . learn new ways to cope . . . figure things out again. Did you notice that? With so many things not happening or products not available or services altering, we had to actually pay attention to our lives. We had to take an active part in living, not just roll along as many of us always had. Now there's a gratitude for you!

Though I'm not in favor of a pandemic to remind me how to be grateful, the lessons are, nevertheless, welcome. Here are a few of them:

• new coping strategies - with shortages of paper products, foods we've always taken for granted, services we've come to rely on, finding alternatives.
• trying new procedures - order groceries online, pick them up in the parking lot of the store; call in orders for prescription refills or order by mail; "visit" a health care person by phone.
• changing habits - no "shopping in person" just to see what the store has (or hasn't); instead, learning to search online for a particular product or a type of product, possibly finding an alternative. Possibly even find a cheaper but just-as-good model, or, a better one!

Granted, all these "new" ways of behaving and living use up time--learning them, trying them out, fine-tuning. All that was time we could've been doing something else. But the positive side is this: we learned how to get along with a different way of doing things, even if they take longer. We haven't had to shut down our lives entirely; just made a few alterations.

An added plus: Some of these "new" ways are actually what we used to do, back in the day. Before Internet. Before virtual big box stores. Before hundreds/thousands of choices to go through before we came to what we wanted. In an odd way, I'm rather grateful that we had the chance to see how we coped back then.

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In my neck of the woods, many activities are "back to normal," as folks like to say. Which means, there's not enough concern about new variants on the same old theme of COVID to postpone sports events, holiday dinners, school dances, or family get-togethers. Weddings take place. Funerals take place. We see government leaders on TV without masks on their faces. This "new normal" may last--or not. We'll enjoy it while we can.

So I'm grateful, this November day, for (1) coping strategies learned; (2) new procedures shoring us up; and (3) a chance to change old, established habits. And (4) for reminders that we used to get things done 'way back when.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child