Gratitude Journal #7
Apparently, you can train your brain to be happier by keeping a gratitude journal, so I am giving it a go. My goal is post about 100 things I am grateful for over the course of the year. (This should average out to just a little over 2/week.) However, I am going to try and stay away from the standard family/friends/pets. Please know I absolutely am grateful for my family, friends, and pets. I would not have made it through the past couple of year without each of them. But if I am trying to train myself to be happier, then I want to start recognizing the smaller things in life that I am grateful for.
Still running late. I have spent this last week sick, and it sapped my energy to do anything except lay on the couch or in bed and watch mindless television. It also brings a rather specific set of things to be grateful for. I also have no good pictures for this week – other than that of a terrier lying on my lap, letting me know I need to stay exactly where I am.
Gratitude Entry #13 – Nasal Spray
I got terrible colds when I was a child. I mean, really awful colds on a regular basis. I learned there was not Tooth Fairy because I had such a bad cold that my mom was too busy listening to me breathe to remember to put the 50 cents under my pillow. As a kid, Vicks vap-o-rub and a vaporizer were the only things that made it possible for me to sleep when I was sick, and I still did not sleep very well. I remember seeing commercials for nasal spray as a kid (they were mostly about people having to find ways to hand themselves upside down while using the spray in order for it to work), but it certainly was not something we ever had in our house.
It was not until C and I started dating that I ever even considered nasal spray. C had had sinus infections his whole life (and even sinus surgery at one point), and nasal sprays were something he used. He commented that they used to be no good, but the new ultra fine mist ones worked pretty great.
And let me tell you, ultra fine mist nasal sprays work great. (My favorite, unsurprisingly to me, is made by Vicks). When I get a cold, I get a head cold. My sinuses fill up and swell up and shut down. I cannot breathe. And not being able to breath means I cannot sleep. Nasal spray opens up my sinuses and clears them out. I can sleep. And oddly, when you can sleep, you get better quicker.
Nasal sprays can really dry out your sinuses, so you really cannot use them more than directed, but for the most part, I have never needed to.
So yeah, in a week of feeling like my head might explode, a week where being semi-upright in the recliner was so exhausting I had to go lie down in bed, I was really, really grateful for the ability to sleep, and that was brought to me by nasal spray.
Gratitude Entry #14 – Chapstick
I do not know why my lips dry out when I am sick, but they do. When I am not sick, it generally does not matter the weather (well, unless I got majorly sunburned), my lips do not tend to dry out. It only happens when I am sick. But then, I lick my lips, causing them to crack and hurt, and be miserable, and so I lick them some more…. It is a terrible, terribly cycle.
Enter chapstick. I can put it on my lips. It helps protect them and heal them and reduces my desire (or unconscious habit) of licking them and making it worse.
Chapstick is not sliced bread or Sudafed, but it is one of those little things that reduces my overall discomfort. And that matters. I am grateful for it.
Gratitude Entry #15 – Streaming video
There will be a couple times when I need to have three entries for a week, if I am going to make 100 things I am grateful for this year. So here we go. This week, I am also grateful for all the various streaming video options we have. I binged Property Brothers via Roku, fell asleep during a BBC documentary on the Crusades on YouTube, started Dead Like Me on Netflix, and watched Transformers: The Last Knight on Amazon Prime.
I was sick. I often did not even have the energy to be on my computer. Match three games took too much brain power.
Yes, there used to be regular television. But I grew up without cable and a mother who hated soap operas with a passion, so as a sick kid, just vegging out in front of the tv was not much of an option. And even as I got older, no matter how many channels I had, I was limited to what was actually showing on those channels. Sure there might be a couple episodes of Supernatural on TBS, but then they were over…
The streaming services let me pick something I want to watch, and then just be like Ron Popeil, set it and forget it, and just having something I enjoy on the television all day -without having to get up and flip the disc over, rewind the tape, or even just swap out the dvds.
Streaming video is not one of those things I am only grateful for when I am sick, but being sick certainly brings it to the forefront. Anything that makes lying around being miserable just a little less miserable is something worth being grateful for.
