Thankful Thursday | No, we didn’t get a second cat!

New here? Thankful Thursday is our weekly gratitude practice; a way to hunt for the good that is there in our lives and in the world. And it costs exactly $0.

This week, I am thankful:

for Sonia’s pet-sitting job

She took care of these two white cats last Christmas (I saw the job on Nextdoor and snagged it for Sonia, with her permission) and this past week, she got asked to take care of them again.

It’s a pretty fun and easy way for her to earn some money.

that the oak flowers are almost done

They’re really starting to drop now, and I think with the next windy day, they will all be blown down.

This is good for those of us who have allergies and also good for those of us who are just annoying by the yellow dust on everything!

that life is getting back to something more like normal

And I see even more normalcy on the horizon, like maybe in-person college classes next fall.

that geometry is almost done

Zoe only has one more week of assignments left and then she is all done with math for the summer. Woohoo!

(Geometry has been slowly sucking the life out of the two of us this school year.)

that my last big biology exam went well

We have four exams that are super heavily weighted; as in, you can do awesome on everything else in the class, but if the exams don’t go well, you are kind of hosed grade-wise.

So, that makes me a little nervous when the exams come up.

But I did well on the last one, and I have only one more left before the end of the semester, so I think I’m in pretty good shape.

for my group of friends from biology

It’s an online class, which makes friendships slightly more challenging! But we have a text message group of about five moms who are in biology, and I am thankful for them.

It’s nice to have other people to bounce stuff off of or just to listen to a rant. 🙂

that I am in college while my kids are older

Some of the other moms are jumping back into college with younger kids at home and boy, I’m really thankful I was able to wait until now.

Of course, the girls do still need me in various ways, but not as much as they did when they were all in grade school. And that makes it much easier for me to do my own schoolwork.

for a healthy body

Aside from the usual small issues that almost everyone has, my body is in good working order for being in its fifth decade.

(I had to sit and think about that for a minute and I concluded that yes, when you are in your 40s, you’re moving through your fifth decade. Turning 50 caps off your fifth decade just like turning 10 caps off your first decade.)

for good sleep

My mom and I were talking about night nurses for infants the other day (like someone that people hire to take care of their baby at night so the parents can sleep), and I thought that that sounds like a terrible job.

It’s like taking the worst part of parenting a baby and make a job out of it!

Anyway, I am thankful that no one regularly needs me in the middle of the night now.

And I am thankful that there are plenty of other career choices besides being an overnight infant caretaker.

that we are not house shopping right now

We sold our townhouse and bought this house during the height of the last housing market boom (2005) and man, I do not want to repeat that experience again.

The selling part was crazy easy but oof, the buying was terrible.

I am very thankful that we have no pressing need to move and that we can sit this one out.

that our mortgage balance is pretty low

Since we’ve been here for almost 16 years now (!!!) and since we had a lot of equity from our townhouse at the start, we now owe less than $150K on this house.

Which, ok, yes, that is still a lot of money to think about paying off. But in terms of a mortgage, that’s not bad at all, particularly for this area.

Also, since we’ve been here for this long, a pretty large portion of our payments now goes to principal instead of interest and that makes me happy.

that there are lots of temperate days in the forecast

When I look at the 15-day forecast, I see lots of days in the 70s or very low 80s and I think that’s pretty perfect spring weather!

What are you thankful for this week?