Gratitude

I am thankful for this day.  It began with Angel the cat crawling over my head and then Gilbert the dog licking my face.  I am thankful for such furry cozy loving alarm clocks.  I am thankful that Angel lead me to her food and takes such great delight in manipulating her human. I am really thankful that I am her human.  Gilbert meanwhile went back to sleep, his job of assisting his sister done, and now he would wait for the leash.  I am so thankful that I have these two curious companions.   I am thankful for my friend Laura who was in the bath while I was making coffee and enjoying immensely the aroma and taste of that first cup of coffee. I am thankful for the yoghurt and banana too.  Then I looked at my iphone which I am really thankful for and the friends who post on facebook and twitter and email me.  So I have this moment drinking coffee seeing what my local world of known friends is interested in.  I'm annoyed by the Facebook pigs and worry about missing family posts given the limits of display.  But really I'm very thankful for this communication and the BBC on line which gives me an reasonable headsup to world affairs. Meanwhile Laura is listening to CBC locally. So by the time I'm in the washroom thankful that everything is working we have got the scoop locally, nationally and internationally and learned we really have no excuse not to get dressed.  After a shower I am immensely grateful,  functioning bowel and bladder, and shower are right up there as number ones, well I'm ready to get dressed. This week I'm especially pleased that I got the laundry done and can find clean clothes relatively easily.  Gilbert has his Canucks jersey on. I say he must wear it for luck so the Canucks will win tonight.
Now with Gilbert I go outside and am really thankful for the clean air. I don't much like the rain right now or chill but the air is great. So are the colourful flowers. I'm especially thankful that I can get by with a simple leather jacket and don't have to wear a parka.  And I'm overwhelmingly thankful for my new car. I love the Mazda MX5 sportscar and after putting Gilbert in get on my side and get the top down. Then I'm really thankful for Blue Collar Comedy on Sirius Satellite Radio. I'm thankful for hearing and breathing and heart beating and feeling and the motion in my body and that the pain level is tolerable.  I'm thankful that beautiful Laura joins me and we head off to her work.  I'm grateful to have such a lovely friend.
then I'm really grateful for the parking space and the second cup of coffee. I'm grateful for the work too. I'm grateful for the staff. I'm grateful that I'm able to get through the hundreds of email daily and the calls in addition to the countless demands that make up the work and that I've recorded everything as best I could though I know there are those far removed in ivory towers and Monday morning armchairs who would never think that my recording is good enough. My hand writing is not neat enough and my typing is not all encompassing. And I'm overwhelmed to answer the myriad of in depth questions in so little time.  There is never enough time and I feel like I'm squeezed in a chute going down a dark tunnel with a whole chorus of people shouting at me from every side saying remember me, I'm first, me first, me first, and all the time I'm trying to focus on the person in front of me who sometimes in the past has carried guns and knives and told me that they were going to kill me or have tried to kill themselves.  Complete strangers have walked in off the street making threats. Anonymous phone callers have phoned making threats.  I am afraid of the interactions of these new compounds. I'm hastily looking up and cross references and citing texts and talking. I used ot only listen but the change was so limitted. Now I talk more and people change positively more.  There's a sweet spot between talking and not talking and yet more and more as the medical model is demanded again I'm back to the general practice 'teaching' model and my brain is okay but yours is not. I miss the days when our minds were all that mattered but the economists don't know meaning. We're deluged with self important technicians.  I'm thankful for the lack of surprise today and that I was of use I hope to many. I'm glad I could be a cog in a great wheel. i am thankful for doing my part in the busyness of the multidimensional glass beed game that today's psychiatry is. At times I even felt like I was playing three dimensional chess again but I must restrict myself to unidimensional chess. My colleague who retired writes of resurrecting people and we know how dangerous that is.  I'm thankful for the anonymity.  I'm thankful for the mystery. I'm thankful for the colleagues. I'm thankful for the internet and wikipedia and the books in my office and the programs and all the learning that I've been so blessed to be apart of. I'm deeply thankful for my teachers, those ones who gave me such positive lessons and those one whose lesson was to teach me what not to do.
I'm thankful for my fingers.
I'm thankful for the close of day. I'm thankful for my dog. I'm thankful for driving home in a new car. I'm thankful I'm not on the motorcycle in this rain. I'm thankful that parking was so easy when I stopped at the store. I'm thankful for the delis in grocery stores. I'm thankful tonight for IGA. I'm thankful for the cellphone so that I could notify Laura that' I'd pick up dinner for us.  I'm thankfu for the great meal and the joy and fun of sharing barbecued chilcken with two cats and a dog, all of us nibbling togehter.  I'm thankful for the chicken tradition and the pets.  I'm thankful for my family. I've thought of them fondly through the day, cousins, nephews, brother, in laws, dad.  I'm thankful the Canucks won. I'm thankful for televison. I'm thankful for Cherry Garcia ice cream.  I'm thankful for this routine day, this relatively uneventful day.  I'm thankful for tradition and routine and the novel and amusing.
I'm thankful for this bed . I'm thankful for sleep and dreams.  I dreamed last night I was shooting a monstrous bear that was attacking me. I was using the small guage 30 30 that I crushed under the flipping ATV. I guess I probably incorporated the time the bear did attack me and I was shooting it repeatedly in the back as it came to within inches and feet of me but veered off to go up the tree where my last shot killed it.  When I skinned and butchered it I found my bullets had gone through the heart , both lungs and liver, guts and spleen and one hip.  It had fallen from the tree when I'd severed its spine.  It'd put a clip into it at close range and changed out the clip to shoot the final shots at it up the tree.  My 3006 rifle was touching fur in the final shots of the charge. A medium black bear.  In my dream the bear was monstrous and the 30 30 shells were having little effect yet I was backed up by afriend with a pistol and the bear didn't maul the person it was chasing who ran by me.  Odd dream.
It is bear season. This time last year I was climbing mountains and shooting over the heads of bear who lived to tell the day wary now of men with cockapoo dogs at their sides.
Iam thankful for the outdoors and nature, hunting and fishing, hiking and wilderness. I am thankful for this day. Thank you God for this day. Thank you.