plentiful supplies of clean soft Water

Public water supplies in the Seattle area are excellent. We have soft water with little mineral content that is delivered right to our tap on a gravity feed system from reservoirs in the Cascade mountains located 20-30 miles east of Seattle.

I drink the local tap water with no hesitations. I know we have an abundant supply of clean filtered water that has been treated to remove kill any bugs that might have been in the water supply. The watersheds that feed into the reservoirs are off-limits to most public access. Logging is strictly regulated to keep dirt and debris out of the tributary streams.

I love having all the clean water I need on demand for drinking, bathing and cleaning. The lush vegetation in Western Washington is a bonus from all that water.

Insulation…

The winter weather took a turn for the colder going from a low of about 40°F down to a low 20°.  The temperature mostly stayed below freezing for the last week.   My apartment stays comfortably warm 24x7 for less than $140/month.   That is due to being well insulated with double-pane windows and being surrounded on the top, left and back walls by other apartments.  My floor is concrete above an open air parking garage.

It is really important to me that it stay warm in my apartment all the time.   One major side-effect of my paralysis is that the circulation in my legs is very poor.  Having a warm bed to get into at night really helps warm up my legs.  If my bed was cold, I would have more health problems during the winter.

The apartment comes with an electric furnace (built-in heater with a noisy fan) that I don't like.  I use the baseboard heater in my bedroom and a small electric portable heater by my computer desk in the living room.  That is a quiet way to heat with a constant temperature instead of a noisy device going on and off throughout the day and night.  It is probably a little more expensive to use the portable heater.  The portable heater is definitely a lot more pleasant than my electric furnace.

I am grateful for my apartment that stays warm on even the coldest of winter days.  A bonus is that it rarely gets hot in the summertime—thanks to the miracle of modern insulation.

Problems that I don't have…

Today's gratitude is for the problems that I don't have. 

There is revolution and/or civil war along most of the African coast of the Mediterranean from Tunisia to Libya to Egypt.  Khaddifi ordered fighter plans to attack demonstrators.  For the first time in 29 years, Iran sent warships through the Suez canal.  Iraq and Afghanistan lack centralized government after years of American occupation.  Malaria is still the leading cause of death around the world.

Russia, China and Australia had large crop failures due to drought.  Prices for wheat, grains and rice have gone up 40% in the last year. 

While there are patches of snow on the ground from a snow last night, the roads & sidewalks are bare and clear.   That is nothing compared to the blizzard(s) that hit the Midwest, South and East coast this year.  The snow we have is eye candy and  not much of a problem. 

I am grateful for living in such a stable part of the world in terms of weather, government, employment, monetary policy, water supply, food supply, energy and crime.  There has never been a case of Malaria in Washington State that I know of.

The food supply here is so good that there are grain silos that store trainloads (not just train cars) of grain to be shipped off in humongous boatloads of grain to other places.  The net increase on a bag of chips will be than 10% when the world grain prices went up 40%.  So far those grain price increases have not even really shown up in US grocery stores.

There are a lot of BIG problems in the world that are not directly impacting my life.  I am grateful that my problems are so simple as needing to stay sober, eat less and get more exercise.   That may not get done, but at least I know I could improve the situation it if I worked at it. I was sober today, ate some raw veggies & salmon, and will work out now.

As Alice would say, "I have a classier set of problems today than I used to have".

Emotional progress

Today I had lunch with a friend.  Tomorrow is his 51st birthday.  He also had 25 years of continuous sobriety this month.  For birthday gifts, I bought lunch and gave him 3 tickets to a semi-pro hockey game this weekend.

Most of my life, I was okay with buying presents for friends and family.  The hard part was giving the gifts to others.  Clearly, somewhere along the way I received horrific rejection or devaluation when giving gifts to others, because it took me years in recovery to be able to give gifts to others.  Now I am much better about being able to give gifts to others.  My happiness does not depend on their response.  My gratitude is now about having our relationship together with another person and being able to celebrate the milestones in their lives.

My friend has a good life with wife, kids and a job.   Last time I saw him, he was having some problems with a sort of existential angst.  Today, he was as happy as I have ever seen him.  He is pretty funny when he is really happy.  We laughed our way through lunch. 

All too soon it was time to go.  That is fantastic progress for me in my relationships with others.  In the past, a conversation could not end soon enough.  Today I have had three conversations with people that were cut short, not by a lack of things to share with each other, but by some external deadline such as a meeting or catching a bus.

I went to a meeting after lunch.  It turned out that the timing was such that I got there right when the meeting started.  It was a small spiritual experience for me to know that my higher power (HP) had ended our lunch right on time so I would go to the meeting.  Being late for a meeting start is a valid  enough rationalization for me to not go to the meeting at all.

Today's meeting turned into a discussion on people's relationship with their hp and being restored to sanity.   There are many paradoxes at those meetings.  Turning our lives over to the care of a mythological entity so we can be restored to sanity is way up there on the paradox charts.

Electronic toys

I am not a very materialistic person with not nearly as many material possessions as most others in my community.  

In the last year I have been on a veritable shopping spree buying a BluRay DVD player, giant LCD TV, and a laptop . This was my first laptop although I have owned computers since  1982 when I bought a VIC 20 for $250.

My birthday is coming up soon.  My sister sent me a Amazon Kindle ebook reader.  It came today.  I already have three books downloaded on it.  The primary reason for getting an ebook reader was to have access to many more large print books and novels.  I loved to read while laying on my side in bed since I was a child.  That does not work so well while wearing reading glasses.  Cranking up the font size on the Kindle solves that problem.

I am grateful that I have lived long to get older and for the modern electronic devices that make my life better.

Living in a great location

I live in Bellevue, Washington.  Bellevue is 5 miles east of Seattle.  Lake Washington separates the two cities.   There are snow capped mountains to the East and to the West.  Mt Rainier, located 60 miles to the SE, towers over the rest of the Cascades mountains at 14,000+ feet.

From the air, Western Washington looks green all year long thanks to being in and surrounded by a conifer forest.  In the summer, there are a thousand shades of green from the grasses, flowering plants, gardens, weeds and leaves.  That is the sort of beauty you can find throughout Western Washington.

What makes where I live so great for me is the convenient access to the amenities I use and need.  I am two blocks from a major freeway exit.  It is a mile to the bank, drug store and grocery store all located in a two-block stretch.

As a person in recovery attending 12-step meetings, it is hard to imagine a place with more meetings within a mile that have free parking anywhere in the world.  There are over 100 meetings each week from six AM to eleven PM weekdays with midnight meetings on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

I am not much of a shopper, but the three local malls are great places to meet, walk and talk with friends.  Bellevue Place is upscale with 150ish stores, a 15-screen movie theater, Westin and Hyatt hotels, a plethora of restaurants with all kinds of food, and an art museum.  Factoria Mall is a bit like a score of stores that got glued together between a grocery store and a department store with a large indoor hallway serving as the glue.   Crossroads Mall has a wonderful food court with a dozen restaurants that make good food fast at budget prices.

What also makes my location so great is the parking spot right outside my door.  It is flat, level and close.  That is a big deal when it comes to bringing in the groceries when you use a wheelchair to get around.

There are two hospitals a mile away to the north, Overlake and Group Health.  Overlake has greatly expanded to become a big giant hospital campus.  Unfortunately, the last two times I went to Overlake for medical problems, I ended up leaving in worse shape than when I got there.  Both times I got a pseudomonas infection  requiring IV antibiotics delivered through a PICC line leading to my heart to cure.

Fortunately for me, the number two-rated rehab hospital in the US is the UW Medical Center in Seattle across Lake Washington from Bellevue.  Literally, the UWMC is on Lake Washington.  One of the most important factors in where I live is good health care.  Seattle has so many hospitals in one neighborhood, it is called 'Pill Hill'.

Seattle winters usually have four to ten days of snow on the ground in the lowlands.  Worse than that is 'Seattle mist' which is like a wet clear fog.  It does not put much rain on the ground, but it does make everything wet and the clouds can block out the sun for weeks at a time.  This year was supposed to be a terrible year for bad weather thanks to a La Nina  weather condition.  It was a terrible year for bad weather—in the Midwest and East Coast.  Seattle weather was great.  The worst thing so far was a scary start with several days of snow in late November.

I am grateful for all the goodness where I live.

Four Ways to Give Thank (and increase Gratitude)

From http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_to_give_thanks/

Research in positive psychology has identified several ways that practicing gratitude can boost people’s health and happiness. Here are four of these research-tested “gratitude interventions.”

1. Write a gratitude letter. Research by Martin Seligman, Christopher Peterson, and others has shown this one to be particularly effective. Write a letter to a mentor, family member, or some other important person in your life whom you’ve never properly thanked. Deliver it in person. Read it out loud. Bring tissues.

2. Keep a gratitude journal. Studies by psychologists Michael McCullough, Robert Emmons, Sonja Lyubomirsky, and others have backed up this exercise, which involves keeping a list of things for which you’re grateful—anything from your children or spouse to the beauty of the tree outside your window. Doing so helps you focus on the positive things in your life—a practice that’s been shown to increase happiness.

3. Savor. Take the time to notice beauty and pleasures in your daily life. Loyola University psychologist Fred Bryant has shown that savoring positive experiences can heighten your positive responses to them. A key to savoring is what Bryant calls “thanksgiving,” or expressing gratitude for the blessings that come your way, large and small.

4. Think outside the box. It’s fairly obvious why we might feel grateful for grandmothers, lovely sunsets, and anything else that has provided comfort or beauty in our lives. But what about thanking the homeless people who come to the shelter where you volunteer? “Individuals who do volunteer work sometimes speak of the benefits they receive from service,” writes Robert Emmons in his forthcoming book, Thanks! “Since service to others helped them to find their own inner spirituality, they were grateful for the opportunity to serve.” If we look hard enough, he argues, we can find a reason to feel grateful for any relationship—even when someone does us harm, as that person helps us appreciate our own vulnerability. Emmons claims that such highly advanced forms of gratitude may actually increase the level of goodness in the world by inspiring positive acts in ourselves and others.

good teeth

Today I went to the dentist for my quarterly teeth cleaning. It went well. There was one tooth that was a bit tender.

My gums are doing great. They have actually grown back a bit. They used to a pocket gap of 7 or 8mm. Since I have been doing diligent dental care for the last 11 years, they are now up to a 4 or 5. My teeth could be whiter. I have my concerns about any damage done by chemical whiteners.

I had my wisdom teeth pulled 8 years ago. All the rest of my teeth are still in place. For the most part, my teeth don't hurt. I had a root canal done last year and even that was not all that painful since the problem was diagnosed early on.

My teeth had been neglected for nearly 20 years in my early adult life. I am fortunate that there are few long-term problems from that. I never had to wear braces and my teeth were straight with no gaps between them.

Listening to the problems some of my friends have had with their teeth, I am extremely grateful for how healthy my teeth are. It is a bonus that I can afford good dental care with regular teeth cleaning, x-rays and any needed dental work.

Bad teeth can get crazy expensive while being exquisitely painful. I don't have the money to fix all dental problems, but have been able to fix the ones I have had. For that, I am extremely grateful.

I know someday, I will likely lose some teeth due to dental problems. Nothing to worry about now. Good reasons to brush and floss regularly. I have been doing that. The results are awesome, my gums are actually getting healthier! It is a nice reward for the less than 5 minutes a day I spend brushing my teeth and flossing. I love my Sonicare toothbrush with built-in timer.

My Sobriety

After years of alcohol and substance abuse problems, I went to a rehab facility and was able to stay sober for a large part of the last twelve years. My sobriety is hands-down the most important attribute (“possession”?) in my life. I am extraordinarily grateful for having the necessary gifts (miracles) that allow and enable me to stay sober.

I volunteer, service work in 12-step parlance, with a number of people whose lives have been tragically derailed by alcohol and substance abuse. Statistically, most of them will never obtain long-term sobriety. That is a needless tragedy for all of us and especially for them.

Working with those that are less fortunate helps me have a useful life. Service work is also is incredibly powerful in reinforcing the need and value for my sobriety. That keeps me from taking sobriety for granted. Focusing on being grateful is built on the foundation of my sobriety.

More daylight

 

I love the longer hours as we move past the Winter solstice towards the Spring Equinox. One standard of progress for me is when the sun sets after 5:30 PM. Today the sun set at 5:31 in Seattle.

 

My birthday is on March 5th. That is a great time for a birthday. I know that spring is well on its way with early flowers and trees beginning to bud-out. Since I have the solar calendar out, I can see that the sun will set at 6 PM on my birthday. In three weeks, the sun will set 30 minutes later making for another hour of daylight each day.

 

Washing machines and other appliances

Of all my home appliances, the washing machine is probably the most important to me. If I did not have a stove, I could get by with a microwave and a toaster oven. No refrigerator would call for a lot of canned food with no leftovers—not pleasant, but do-able.

There is no substitute for clean clothes. I wash like the bachelor that I am with cold water and no color sorting.

Fortunately for me, I have all the usual home appliances and so don't have to choose one to throw off the island like on Survivor. If I did, the washing machine would win in the long run. The fridge would easily be king of a weekend. I love my modern appliances and am grateful for 24/7 electricity to run them all.

PS: These short gratitude posts will happen when I am not at my primary keyboard. I am also grateful for my wireless keyboard and laptop!

An Attitude of Gratitude: A Powerful Source of Happiness

Lacking inspiration for a topic to write about, I Googled 'grace gratitude research' for a topic. This article was worthy of being copied whole.

From http://www.happylifeu.com/Attitude-of-Gratitude.html

Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic. John Henry Jowett

Scientists are finding that an attitude of gratitude is a powerful contributor to a happy life. Some believe that it may be the single most effective way to increase happiness. In this article, we explore what it means to have gratitude, the power of gratitude and ways of cultivating gratitude.

What is Gratitude? Gratitude is expressing thanks for gifts we have received. According to Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary, the word gratitude comes from the Latin words:

gratia meaning favor, charm, and thanks, and gratus meaning pleasing and grateful.

These Latin words are similar to the Sanskrit word gmati meaning he praises. Gratitude is a basic human emotion. It is expressed in some way by all ancient and modern cultures. According to Dr. Robert Emmons, a leading gratitude researcher and author of the book thanks!, the idea of receiving a gift is central to the concept of gratitude. While merely appreciating something for its positive qualities does have a positive impact on our lives and emotions, gratitude takes then next step beyond. Gratitude happens when we go beyond just appreciating something to acknowledging that we have received a gift that we did nothing to earn or deserve. On some level, the warm emotional rush we feel when we really feel gratitude is very like the glow we feel from realizing we are unconditionally loved.

The glow of gratitude is like the warm emotional rush we feel from realizing we are unconditionally loved.

The feeling of Gratitude like living in a state of grace. One definition of Grace is unmerited divine assistance given humans for their resurrection and regeneration. In short, grace is our response to feeling loved unconditionally by God. When we practice an attitude of gratitude we are practicing feeling loved.

New research shows that practicing gratitude may be the fastest single pathway to happiness, health, long life, and prosperity. In a remarkable study performed by Dr. Emmons, people who kept a gratitude journal for just 3 weeks measured 25% higher on life satisfaction after wards. They exercised more, drank alcohol less, and their families and friends noticed that they were nicer to be around. And the effects lasted for several months beyond the initial 3 week study. Other studies on gratitude are confirming these results. People who take the time to notice and appreciate the good things that come their way through grace, or luck, or the goodness of others are happier and more peaceful. They do better on cognitive tests and tests of problem solving skills. They practice healthier habits, have better relationships, are more optimistic and live longer. Gratitude is one powerful emotion.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. Eric Hoffer

Cultivating Gratitude

So how to we develop an attitude of gratitude? If you are worried that such a powerhouse of happiness and success must come with a high price, fear not. It turns out that developing gratitude is surprisingly easy. Here are 5 proven methods:

1. Keep a gratitude Journal. Every day or so, write about the good things that happened to you that day. You do not need a special format or to keep to any special schedule, although the people in the study who got such great results used the journal daily for 3 weeks.

2. Write a letter of appreciation. Express your gratitude to people who have helped you, particularly those who have helped you without special reward like teachers and nurses. We are touched by others everyday.

3. Make a gratitude visit. You can express your gratitude in person even more powerfully than in a letter. Gratitude is such a powerful emotion for both the giver and receiver, you may find writing the letter first helps you get your thoughts in order and deliver your message more effectively.

4. Make a gratitude list. This can often be a quick pick-me-up. Set a goal of listing 100 things you have to be grateful for, then keep adding to your list until you reach that number. Some days it is hard to get started, but persistence pays as the longer list pushes us to examine our blessings more deeply

5. Take a gratitude walk. This method works a little like the list in that you have a set time period- your walk- to focus on deepening your gratitude. Many people find the movement and variety of a walk help the brain and heart to work better.

Attitude of Gratitude

Whatever method you choose, there are quick and easy ways to develop more gratitude. How fortunate for us that this powerhouse of happiness and success is so easy to get. So take the time to develop an attitude of gratitude and you can enjoy a happier life now.

lessons from Prison

Once a month I go out to the local prison to participate in a 12-step meeting. Tonight's meeting was canceled due to a prisoner killing a guard two weeks ago in then prison chapel. The guard was by herself in a place where the cameras did not work. Nobody noticed she was gone until after she did not show up for the shift change.

The inmates are on lockdown until Monday. The guards are mad about the lack of legally mandated safety equipment and the prisoners don't like being in lockdown. The prisoner that killed the guard was already serving a life sentence.

I volunteer at the prison for my own self-interest. When I first started going out there nine years ago, I felt great commonality with the inmates. They know what a life sentence behind bars is. Having to use a wheelchair for the rest of my life is also a life sentence to living in a metal cage—just that my cage is a lot lighter and goes more places.

After a few years, the thing I got most out of going to prison for a meeting was the serenity that the inmates in recovery have. While the Washington State Reformatory is not the worst (roughest/meanest) prison in the state, it is still prison. Nonetheless in a crowded limited tightly-controlled living situation, the inmates in recovery have remarkable serenity.

I have learned from their example that serenity is an “inside job”. Thanks in part to the lessons learned in my prison visits, life's little irritants bother me a lot less than they used to. I am grateful for that and many other lessons learned while volunteering at the WSR.

Being able to help others

Since I started reading and blogging about gratitude, I have a new found powerful sense of being able to help others by making a positive impact on their lives. In turn, learning more about their lives makes me much more grateful for the gifts in my life.

I am blessed with sobriety, serenity and gratitude in my mind along with enough money for food, a nice apartment, clothes and a car to get around with. The more I help others in need by saving the world one person at a time, the better I feel about my life.

Much of my life, my mind was filled with negative self-talk. In recovery, I learned ways to quiet those depressing thoughts. With gratitude, I now have tools to immediately change the self-talk from negative to positive self-talk by merely thinking about what I am grateful for. That is more progress in 2 months than what I made in years of therapy---although to be fair, it was years of therapy that got me to a place where I could be grateful.

Today was sunny and life is good by the grace of a kind loving higher power.

silverware, getting a matched set at last...

This week, I have been shopping for a new set of silverware aka flatware (knives, forks and spoons). I have never had, much less bought, a new matched set of silverware in my life. In the grand scheme of things, it is not that expensive, yet I feel compelled to shop around way more than what is reasonable for a $50 or $100 purchase.

I am fortunate to have friends that are quite knowledgeable suggesting local stores to buy flatware from. One aspect of buying flatware is the need to actually feel the knives, forks and spoons to see which is comfortable in my hand. Thanks to the internet, it is easy to read up on the differences in stainless steel composition and do price comparisons on a few patterns to see which stores have competitive prices.

It turns out that Macy's is the same as the best prices on Google Shopping and Amazon.com. I thought Macy's would be twice as much. Wait, check that. Macy's is about 5x as expensive. Macy's price was for one set of 5 pieces, not place settings for 5 people. No, wait, Macy's is having a sale… Geez this is confusing.

Okay, I have had enough fun with my shopping research. Thank god for the miracle of the internet. I loathe the idea of going from store to store to do product price comparisons. Looks like I will be buying flatware at Macy's. Feeling mighty upscale about my future dining habits at home.

It is a blessing to have so many choices of where to shop, pattern to purchase and the convenience of having probably the largest selection a five minute drive from home. Let the retail therapy begin!

My King size bed

Years ago, my girlfriend moved in with me. I found out when I came home from work and had a brand new king size bed. She lasted for about 9 months. The bed has 9 years and counting. I love my big bed. Due to chronic pain, I have a dozen pillows to strategically place to sleep without being in pain. I also have 3 comforters to use as props or as blankets. It is good that I have a king size bed. The bedding would not all fit on a queen size bed.

The second easiest way for me to make the bed is put the fitted sheet on the bottom corners, then drag the mattress across my lap until I can reach the far top corner. The truly easiest way for me to make the bed is to get someone to help me or, even better, do it for me.

My cats will sleep on the bed. They will also come over to be petted, but never both cats at the same time nor do they sleep next to each other on the bed. They will sleep next to each other while sitting on my wheelchair next to the bed. Cats have inexplicable behaviors!

When I sit up in the morning, one cat will jump on then floor. The other cat wants her back massaged incredibly hard until she feels like jumping across my lap from the chair to the bed.

I am not much of an artistic decorator. My bedroom is very comfortable and functional for me. I am grateful for a warm comfortable quiet place to sleep and read.

Much better backup plans and alternatives

My primary PC is being used by a friend. My backup PC uses the same monitor. Fortunately for me, my third alternate using my TV screen and a wireless keyboard seems to be working okay. The keyboard has a slight ergonomic curve. My regular keyboard has a full ergonomic split in the middle so this is a bit different to type with, but not too bad.

Normally I use MS Word 2007 for my word processing, save and then upload to blogspot. On this PC, I am using LibreOffice (formerly Open Office) which is not yet tuned for my preferences. In other words, I am 'roughing it' while doing my gratitude blog entry for the day. It is a plush way to rough it. My TV is a 58” LCD which makes for a ginormous monitor! No problem with being able to read 1920x1080 resolution from eight feet away with this baby.

Today I am blessed with an abundance of resources including multiple PCs, bank accounts, credit cards, friends, recovery tools and more gratitude than I ever thought about before in my life. Two of the biggest decisions that I have to make in the next few months will be where to buy a nice set of matching flatware/silverware for my more upscale dining needs and then what kind of ebook reader/tablet to buy. As Alice would say, I have a lot classier set of problems than I used to.

That is near infinite progress from how it used to be. It is a miracle. For that, I am extremely grateful and glad to be able to share my good fortune with others.

Being grateful to a spiritual entity

12-step programs have a gazillion slogans. One of them is that it is a spiritual program of action. I have my limited perceptions of an essentially infinite entity that fits my god, higher power, spiritual being or deity. My problems with authority preclude my acceptance of a limited or vengeful god as described in theologies.

What I know now is that in a way, it does not matter if there is or is not a god. What matters to me is that when I act as if there is a god, my life goes a LOT better. I then get to turn over the results and focus on the process. My life becomes a journey instead of being focused on arbitrary destinations.

Thanks to the miracle of the 12-step programs, I am now able to reliably focus on doing the next indicated thing turning over the results to my higher power. There is a epic reduction in my level of fear and anxiety concerning the results allowing me to work the process. With practice, taking action is becoming second nature.

There are countless examples of my new found ability to take action in my life. A recent example was trying to find a topic for tonight's gratitude post. I bought a couple of books on gratitude from Amazon, read a few pages from The Psychology of Gratitude, chatted with my roommates about our day and came up with the topic of being grateful for my spiritual experience of the educational variety.

Thank god for just about everything. I am grateful for what I have today.