Gratitude Journal 2020 #9

Now that I am spending around 40 hours/week working in my home office, I have a hard time wanting to come in on Sunday evening to write my gratitude post. It feels a bit like going to work on Sunday night, and who wants to do that? That does mean that gratitude journals are going to get a little erratic until I can figure out a new schedule that works for me, but that is life for now. So I am just going to roll with it.

Gratitude Item #27 – Brownie Mix
Last week, FB kept showing me an advertisement for a weight loss program. This is not surprising as I am a member of Weight Watchers, so the algorithm brings up ads for WW’s competitors. One of those ads prominently featured brownies. Brownies. And, given that I am susceptible to advertising, while I developed no desire to switch to this new weight loss program, I did develop a craving for brownies.
I am not someone who makes brownies from scratch. Let us just get that out of the way. Even if I had had the ingredients on hand, I would not have made brownies from scratch. But D went out shopping on Saturday and brought me home a CostCo box of Ghiradelli Brownie Mix. And so on Sunday, I made brownies. Yummy, yummy brownies. Brownies I would not have made from scratch. And so, I am grateful for brownie mix. 

Gratitude Item #28 – Living close to the Trail
People are bad at social distancing. We get we cannot go to restaurants and that malls are closed. But what we do not get is that we should not all crowd into the parks and onto the beaches, especially not in Seattle on the first sunny weekends of spring. It got to the point that the governor had to declare all public parks and trails closed (or at least their parking lots).
The trail I live near is actually not a public park/trail. It is a utility access trail, and it has not been closed. But that might also be because while it has been busier these last few weekends than it was since the height of last summer, it is still not so busy that people cannot properly socially distance while walking it.

We are extra lucky in that we do not have to drive to the trail. We do not have to park in a parking lot to get there. We just walk over to the trail. And given how crazy I would go without the regular walks I take with the dogs, I am incredibly grateful that we are so close to a safe place to walk.