30 Days of Gratitude - Day 2 - Sleep

I'm so grateful for sleep.

I've never really had trouble sleeping until the last few years. I can fall asleep pretty easily--I usually read until I feel sleepy, then put down the book (iPad, lately), lie down and go to sleep around 10:30 or 11:00, only to wake up at 2:00 a.m. I used to try to fall asleep again, and if I can't in a half hour so, pick the iPad or iPhone up and read, but Bob said it bothered him, so without any distraction, I would just lie there and think of everything in the world that I might have to worry about.

I know that my mother takes a sleeping pill every night to sleep, but I've never wanted to do that. For one thing, I'm fairly susceptible to drugs, so they make me feel groggy in the morning. But I was feeling kind of desperate, and felt like I was getting almost no worthwhile sleep. So I started taking an ibuprofen "PM" every night (generic for Advil PM). The bottle says to take two, but I only take one. It's just enough to help me sleep through the night--if nothing wakes me, I'll usually wake up around 5:00 a.m., get up and go to the bathroom, then go back to sleep pretty quickly until my (or Bob's) alarm goes off.

It doesn't drug me enough that I don't wake up if, for example, Dinah starts to throw up--that sound will make me sit straight up in bed, turn on the light, and grab for something to put under her, or knock her off the bed if that's where she is. But even then, if I have to get up and deal with that, I can fall back asleep, no problem.

Sleep is very important. It knits up the raveled sleeve of care, etc. I'm very grateful that I've found something that helps me get a better dose of it.

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Almost all of the reading I do now is of the digital variety. I follow a couple of blogs that list a few free Kindle and/or Nook ebooks every day. I don't download every free book that comes along, but I get a lot of them. If a book sounds even slightly interesting, I'll usually go ahead and download it. I have hundreds of books in my account that I haven't read, but I also have a lot of free books that I have read, and that have turned out to be great.

I also get some of the $.99 or $1.99 ones, but in those cases I always download a sample and read it to see if it's something I really want to read. Even if it's only a dollar, I don't want to throw it away.

Amazon has a "Kindle Daily Deal" where they offer one or more Kindle books at a discounted price. They are quite often tied to upcoming releases -- today's deal was "Shelter," by Harlan Coben, a YA novel starring Myron Bolitar's nephew Mickey. The second book in the series, "Seconds Away," comes out in a couple of months, so they are offering the first one to build interest. It worked for me, I bought it for $2.99.

Amazon also has a monthly list of around 100 books under $3.99. There aren't always a lot that I am interested in, but there were a couple of $1.99 ones this month that sounded good. It always pays to check the list. You can often get a book that you would have paid full price for at a significant discount.

Photo: 9/2 - Reading material: It's all digital lately.

Links:

Pixel of Ink - Free and bargain Kindle books

Books on the Knob - Bargain reads, free ebooks and book reviews for the Amazon Kindle, nook, Kobo, Sony and other ereaders

Kindle Daily Deal

What I'm Reading

30 Days of Gratitude - Day 1 - Rain

I have a lot of things to be grateful for, but today I'm grateful for the rain. After weeks of drought, we're getting, as one of my weather apps put it, "the remnants of Isaac," and it's been raining steadily for about 24 hours now.

Two or three weeks ago someone from the gas company showed up at the front door, saying that a neighbor had reported smelling gas, and they had tracked it to our house. He said he needed to shut off the gas, and he would come back the next day, in the daylight, and run a temporary line. He said that "hopefully sometime before winter" someone would come out to bury the line. Apparently they were having problems all over the area due to the dryness of the ground.

Our house is settling to the point where it's difficult to open the door from the living room into the garage. I haven't gone out and watered the foundation like I should, but hopefully the rain will allow things to get somewhat back to normal.

Bob said this morning and we have water in the basement, maybe worse than it has ever been, but I'm not going to complain. Hopefully the slow, steady rain will soak into the ground and give us all some relief from the dry weather. I don't know whether it's going to be enough to make any difference to the farmers, or my lawn, and I am sorry that it had to come at the expense of the people near the Gulf who are experiencing flooding, but in my little corner of the world, I'm very grateful for the rain.

Photo: 9/1 - Home: Home is where the cat is.

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Links:

See the list and take part: 30 Days of Gratitude

Here's a great article titled "What I Am Grateful For," by James Altucher.

Happy Tapper has several good iPhone and iPad apps, including Gratitude Journal for iPhone, and Gratitude+ for iPad.

30 Days of Gratitude

In an effort to get back in the habit of blogging more often, I decided to do two blog projects in September. One is "30 Days of Gratitude," and I will blog about something that I'm grateful for each day in September. I also want to do a "photo a day." If you would like to participate, just save the list and follow along. If you have an Instagram account, send me your username so I can follow you, or use the hashtag #sept12photoaday so your photos are searchable.

I imagine that the two projects will intersect, and I will be taking photographs of things that I'm grateful for, but I'm not going to specify that.

Here's my September list:

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There are a lot of "photo a day" projects, apps and sites out there. I think I originally got the idea for the photo-a-day project from FatMumSlim.

I have used an iPhone/iPad app called Photo365, which makes a cool little calendar on your phone with a thumbnail of each photo, and of course, Instagram.

I also use Gratitude Journal, another iPhone app. There is also an iPad version. The app lets you record multiple things that you are grateful for, attach up to four photos, and rate your day (all my days are 5 star days). There are also various themes that you can use.

Here is the photo list in text format:

1. Home 2. Reading material 3. Family 4. Comfort 5. Morning routine 6. Hydrate 7. My hobby 8. Warm 9. Work 10. Lunch 11. Beautiful 12. Green 13. Take a note 14. Artist date 15. Gratitude

16. My obsession 17. Memory 18. Animal instincts 19. Exotic 20. Take a walk 21. Alignment 22. Time 23. Wrap it Up 24. Golden 25. Sky 26. Love 27. Bloom 28. What I carry 29. Patterns 30. Joy

Just my opinion

A friend posted on Facebook the other day that he didn't understand how other people who have full time jobs have time to go to the lake, visit friends, or have fun of any kind. He said that he and his wife spend the entire weekend from sunup to sundown cleaning the house, doing laundry, prepping food for the next week, working in the garden, doing yard work, etc.

I wrote out an answer, but didn't post it because I don't like to get into long discussions on Facebook. But here's my opinion: You figure out the things that are important to you, and that's what you do.

Of course, there are always things that have to be done -- housecleaning (to a certain extent), laundry, meals. I don't care if my house is spotless, and while I cook a "real" meal a couple of times a week, we're happy with sandwiches or leftovers, or picking up fast food, the rest of the time.

I'm sure Bob would love it if I would cook gourmet meals every night, but he understands that I need to do other things, like knit, read, sew, make jewelry. I'm happier, and he's happier as a result. I read a quote somewhere once that said, on their death bed, no one ever said, "I wish I had cleaned the house more."

If it's important to you to have a spotless house, more power to you. If it's important to you to serve a gourmet-quality meal every night, I'm not going to judge you. You can make your own salsa from vegetables you grow in the garden, and grind the wheat to make tortillas, and I'm sure they're amazing. But I'm going to feed Bob a ham sandwich, clean up the kitchen, and spend the two hours of free time I have before bedtime reading a book.

Vacation

I have four weeks of personal time a year--vacation, sick leave, personal leave, whatever I need. The only years that I've ever used it all were the years when I had surgery. I usually end up with at least a week or so unused. I had used one day this year, I think, and the year was more than half over, so I thought I'd better take a little time. Bob and I are going to take a few days and go down to the Lake of the Ozarks in October, I think, but I wanted to take some time before then, so I took last week off.

I didn't really have any plans, and I didn't go anywhere, but I made a point to go out to lunch every day, and one day when Bob was off, we went to lunch together. We went to Red Lobster, which was really kind of expensive, but as he said, we don't do that much anymore. Once in awhile is fine.

I made the rounds of the craft stores one day, and bought some new sock yarn. I watched a lot of the Olympics, cooked for Bob a couple of nights, slept in, and just basically had a pretty lazy week. Oh, and I gathered up about six trash bags full of stuff to give away. I need to call someone to come get them, right now they're lined up in the front hall. That's pretty much the only productive thing I did all week.

It was nice. And hard to go back to work this morning!