(Totally going to have Whitesnake in my head the rest of the night, btw.)

I plopped down on the couch tonight with my tiny, personal lemon pie and got cozy as I prepared to read…

…wait for it…

…my new Nutrisystem resource guide.

Yep, I was closing one chapter and readying myself to start a new one by feasting on my last, delicious, doughy gem of lemony bliss.

I was on the program back in 2007 and it worked great. I just didn’t bother maintaining, so here I am.

Back in the fall of 2010, I would go for many an evening walk, get home and then immediately ice my knee. I used to do 6-8 mile walks back in the day, but doing just three miles was becoming problematic. Abnormally problematic.

Most of 2011, I’d get home from work and ice it — after not having walked at all in the evenings. I figured if just making my way around the office would aggravate the knee, why bother trying to exercise on it? So I didn’t.

Little did I know at the time that my meniscus was torn, hence all the issues. That, plus being an emotional eater made for a pesky increase in my waistline. Happy? Sweet, let’s grab some Del Taco. Irritated? Cool, Del Taco will fix that. Long week? Mmm, pie.

Or cake.

Or both.

On December 23 of last year, just over three months ago, I had my meniscus surgery. The healing process has been — and continues to be — a slow one, and one that still won’t let me do much by way of exercise.

It’s bad enough that I have to wear unsexy footwear for the most of the rest of my life (not that it was all that sexy to begin with), but skewing toward the plump end of the spectrum these days just adds insult to injury.

There’s also a date looming on the horizon…BFF’s wedding in July! And what’d I do? I did what “they” say to never do. I ordered a dress for the size I want to be — not the size I currently am.

Let’s recap: granny shoes + plumpery + intentionally-too-small dress = drastic measures.

And drastic measures = Nutrisystem to the rescue, once again.

My awesome plan is to whittle away at the ellbees fairly speedily on Nutrisystem, then maintain my new weight on Weight Watchers. Seems like a steep hill to climb, but then again, it’s the only hill I’m able to climb right now. I’ve got a bridesmaid dress staring me down every night I blog, and little ability to exercise.

Here goes! Fingers crossed.

So, farewell, tiny personal pies. You’ve been tasty and entirely too comforting, and now it’s time to put you aside to focus more on the waistline and less on the tastebuds.

Tonight I am thankful for new beginnings, and for what I already know will be a difficult first week on the program. It’s always the first week that’s the most rough, but once you scale that little hill, then when I work up the nerve to hop on my own scale, I know I’ll realize that the tough part’s behind me.

I can’t remember how I came across it, but I was recently reading about synesthesia. It’s difficult to put into my own words, so I’ll use a stolen (borrowed?) explanation: “Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes.”

I continued on, because I really wasn’t sure what to make of all those words strung together. In simple-speak, some people perceive letters or numbers as a certain color, while others see numbers, days of the week and months as having personalities. There are many other types (check ’em out — it’s a good read), but I ended up coming across an area of study that’s linked to synesthesia.

The Bouba/Kiki Effect takes two shapes — one a pointy-tipped starburst sort of shape, and the other being a glob-like, one-dimensional gooey mess — and has people choose which shape would be named Bouba and which would be named Kiki.

Try it.

Between Bouba and Kiki, which name would you assign to the pointy-tipped starburst?

And which would you assign to the glob-like shape?

95% to 98% of people chose Kiki as the name for the pointy, angular shape, while a similar percentage chose the name Bouba for the rounded, gooey, bulbous shape. Even children as young as two and a half years old showed a similar naming preference. More stolen words which fascinated me: “Such synesthesia-like mappings suggest that this effect might be the neurological basis for sound symbolism (the idea that vocal sounds have meaning), in which sounds are non-arbitrarily mapped to objects and actions in the world.”

Neat, right?

I guess my only point here is that this while on the surface this concept seems delightfully strange, it reminds us on the most simple level that we’re not all as different as we think we are. It’s as simple as being startled if you heard a scream, or backing up if you saw an animal part its ears and arch its back as you approached. Some things just make sense, and while we common folk may not be able to put our fingers on exactly why that is, we know it when we see it — or when we feel it.

Which then makes me think of that gut feeling we get from time to time, a.k.a. the hunch, a.k.a. suspicion.

The notion that something isn’t adding up, that something is adding up, that something’s about to happen or that nothing will happen.

Ever had that feeling? And have you been surprised — or perhaps not surprised at all — when you’ve been right?

Those are the super cool, really interesting things about simply living, being, observing and listening that fascinate me to no end. Tonight I am thankful for them — for the wiring in our brains that sometimes puts us on the same wavelength as someone else without even saying a word, and for something that tells us to slow down when we’re tensing up while driving, but without knowing why…and then we realize that we’ve narrowly avoided being in an accident, or causing one.

There’s a little voice inside all of us, and maybe yours is trying to be heard. Maybe you’ve been pressing pause on whatever it is that it’s trying to tell you. Or maybe you’ve listened to it and found new peace, new contentment or a new angle of looking at something else — all in the process of simply listening. Don’t confuse your internal voice with the voices of others — ours is the one that’s most dialed in, and the one that’s most ready to be heard. It could hold the key to new possibilities, paths, relationships or to simply unlocking a bit of truth that can help you sleep easier at night.

And I am thankful for it.

I went to Starbucks earlier this afternoon and as I was walking back to my car, I noticed a tiny gnat headed right for my noggin as it was about a foot or so in front of me. I assumed it would try to avoid collision, but I didn’t see it peel off. Now was the hard part — figuring out what part of me it was on.

I ran my tongue over my lip gloss to see if it had gotten stuck. Nope.

I checked to see if I felt any extra protein in between my teeth or anywhere else in my mouth. Nope.

At that point, I assumed it had gotten stuck deep in my mane, and I made peace with the fact that it probably wouldn’t be able to find its way out (which was fine by me, because I probably wouldn’t be able to see it, anyway). With any luck, maybe I’d wash its tiny carcass out of my hair in the morning and see its little body careen towards my shower drain.

As I got in my car, I shook my head and flipped my hair around just in case I could rid my body or locks of its presence. I backed up and started to leave the parking lot.

Just as I was approaching the driveway to exit, I noticed there was a speck on my sunglasses. I took them off to see what had gotten on the lens, and I noticed that it was none other than my friend the gnat, looking to hitch a ride up to Fullerton where I imagine it knew I was going to the carwash and thought it would be exciting to tag along.

I was mostly stopped since traffic was whizzing by just beyond the driveway, but my car was still ever so slowly creeping ahead. Like, less-than-one-mile-per-hour creeping. I blew on the gnat to get it to leave, but no luck. I blew again, and it hunkered down. I went ahead and swept it off the lens, careful not to murder it in the process since I didn’t want any organs smeared across my shades.

As I swept it off, it took up roost on my thigh. Sheesh. It clearly didn’t feel like flying, and I was done being nice. I ended my car-creeping and mushed it into my jeans. Right as I looked up, I saw a ratty old man riding his bike. He appeared from behind the too-tall bushes that have needed trimming for months — bushes which, in addition to the shopping center’s sign, form a barrier that’s impossible to see up and over, since the driveway that you exit from is at an incline. Ugh.

He gave me a thumbs up, likely assuming that I’d stopped intentionally a second or two before to leave him enough room to pass in front of me.

In reality, my vanity and concern for my shades is what kept my car from potentially striking him, or creating an obstacle that he would’ve ridden right into.

That center’s driveway — and the whole lot, for that matter — was bad from the moment it was designed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost seen people get hit, cars run into each other, bicyclists get nailed — there are way too many blind spots, bushes that aren’t maintained and aisles that are accomodating if you drive a Versa or a Fit. But this is Anaheim, so the vehicles around these parts tend to skew toward lowered El Caminos, 1970s trucks and giant minivans (oxymoron, anyone?).

While I have a general wariness for that lot in the first place, my concern for smearing the gnat across my glasses and my subsequent gnat-slaughter is what kept me from going any faster today. I’ve never been so thankful for a tiny flying insect before in my life. And I’m pretty sure that if that isn’t a sign to start going to a different Starbucks, I don’t know what is.

Tonight I am thankful for the tiniest gnat that caused the biggest save of all time: it kept a man from potentially being hit or from hitting me, and saved my own life in a way, as well. I can’t imagine what it would be like to hit a pedestrian or someone riding a bike. I can’t imagine the guilt that accompanies such an incident, the sleepless nights or the lack of forgiveness I know I’d feel towards myself for decades to come.

I’ve always wondered why those irritating little insects exist. What do they add, anyway? What good to they bring? They get stuck in potato salad during summer BBQs and try to pass their winged bodies off as specks of pepper, they wreak havoc on breezy days and adhere to lip gloss and they sometimes stalk the plums and nectarines by hovering over the kitchen fruit basket.

The outcome of today’s Stabucks run is one of many reasons, I’m sure, that they exist. And I couldn’t be more thankful for them.

Until a summer BBQ, that is.

A few years ago, my then-guitar teacher and I were having a conversation about what type of musician we considered ourselves. He asked me if I ever considered myself a singer, and I emphatically said no. He asked me why.

“I dunno, I just never really have been,” was my reply. I explained that I’d always been the pianist, the so-so guitarist and the even less so-so bassist.

He asked again why I didn’t consider myself a vocalist. I explained that I’d never really practiced it as I did piano, and with the exception of a few voice lessons that I took (and which went badly) from an operatically-trained woman in her late 20s/early 30s (when I was, like, 10 or 11), I sang in the shower and the car and that’s about it. Or, if it was in public, it was in a crowd of people where you couldn’t tell my voice from the others.

He explained that for years he also felt the same way about his voice. It was unique and unsure, and he never felt comfortable being anything other than the guitarist that he was.

One day early on in his career, he was getting ready to play his usual gig at Disneyland. He and his bandmates expected their singer to show up, but the singer was MIA. Once it became obvious that one of them would have to do double-duty for the evening, my teacher decided he’d fill those shoes.

At first, he was terrified. He wasn’t a singer — never had been, never would be. He stumbled through the first song, then the second, and realized he wasn’t doing the songs any justice by being nervous. He knew he needed to embrace his own voice.

I think he said they ended up taking a break for a few minutes so that he could compose himself, and when they went back out there — intentionally choosing a livelier number to play instead of what the setlist called for so that they could inject some energy into their performance — he owned his voice like he never had before. He owned it because he had to — there was an audience who was expecting a show that they already weren’t getting because the singer had bailed, so he had to step in and fill the role that they weren’t aware was missing. He didn’t care if his wasn’t a trained voice, and he didn’t care that it was “unique” — he used his voice and sang with all the confidence in the world, because the people there didn’t know any differently. For all they knew, he could’ve been the singer for years.

The crowd ended up loving the show, and he’d just earned himself the role of lead singer, in addition to lead guitarist. The other singer never returned, and to this day, my old guitar teacher is still singing. And guitar-ing, banjo-ing, dulcimer-ing, dobro-ing, mandolin-ing and bass-ing.

I remembered our long-ago conversation this evening and thought about how true it is that when you discard your worries, fears and concerns you might have about what others may think or say — or even when you discard your own thoughts about how you’ll feel about yourself — that’s when you tend to find your voice. Your literal voice, your writing voice, your voice in the world, your niche among many — in an office, in a class, in a company, in a circle of friends. It can be a painfully difficult thing to find, but when you cast off the very things that quietly fill your head with whispers of doubt, I imagine it’s a freeing sensation like no other. I don’t know for sure, because there are so many voices in my own life that I’m still trying to find.

Tonight I am thankful for recalling that conversation, and for the inspiration gleaned from the rainy evening to let the fears wash away after years of building up. It may not happen overnight, but with patience and continuing to put one foot in front of the other, the switch — in time — will be flipped.

And a voice will be found.

I can’t win.

On weeknights when all I want to do is get to bed at a decent hour for maximum sleepage, I fail miserably.

And on nights when I don’t have anything I need to be up early for the next day, it’s not uncommon for me to hit the hay by 9:30 or 10.

What gives?

It’s a similar phenomenon when my alarm goes off in the morning. Usually it’ll go off at 5:15, I’ll snooze for 30 minutes then get up, feed the cat, toast a muffin, scarf said muffin, make some coffee, hop in the shower around 6am and — so long as my makeup is done and my hair is underway by 6:45, it looks likely that I’ll be out the door by 7:15 — a necessity for tackling rush-hour on the city streets and being at work by 8.

But no. Usually I stumble somewhere along the way, and inevitably I run 5-10 minutes late.

Today I snoozed too long, lingered over the toasted muffin for too many minutes and, even though I noticed the time, I still bothered to make my coffee. I didn’t make it into the shower till 6:20, so what happened? I was out the door at 7:10.

I can’t explain either situation, so I’ll resign myself to the fact that they’re simply mysteries of life.

But the wheels in my head starting turning, and before too long Ben Franklin’s, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” was reverberating inside my brain.

I tend to agree with this, although I’m more often late to bed and rushed when rising. But over the past couple of years as writing has moved toward the top of my list of things I’d rather be doing at any given hour of the day (no, I don’t really have a list but, yes, writing is way up there), whenever I’ve done it in the morning, it’s paid off in spades.

I find my brain is clearer, despite having woken from its recent slumber. The air is still. The morning light — something that usually takes a backseat to evening light for me — is brilliant and illuminating. It’s like when light floods a canyon, shining its golden hue on every crevice — you can’t stop it; it makes its way everywhere. That’s the way the morning light is for my thinking. My thoughts. My brain. All synapses are firing. And it makes me appreciate that I’m not in bed, even though I consider myself a big fan of sleep.

While tonight isn’t an early-to-bed evening, it makes me thankful for the weekend that we’ve already begun to enjoy, and for the abundance of time that’s directly before us. We may not be early to rise, but we can still wrangle those minutes and make them whatever we want them to be.

A color. A fragrant, bushy plant. A smart person. But wait! It’s also an adjective.

Sage [ˈsāj ]. Adjective. 1. Wise through reflection and experience.

If there was any guarantee I could get away with making my body a canvas for tattoos the way Nikki Sixx has, I’m pretty sure I would’ve started getting them years ago. But aside from not having a career that lends itself to them as well as his does, I also have short-list of other assorted hangups. That said, one thing’s for sure: the more I hem and haw over ’em, the better they’ll look in my old age if I ever take the plunge.

I’ll be the snarky 88 year-old in the corner of the assisted living dining room, cat in lap, with the rad, fresh sleeves o’ ink and a G&T in front of me.

Anywho, back to the subject at hand. What’s the sage advice?

“Flip it.”

Two little words. Gobs of truth.

I heard an interview with him this morning on KLOS as I drove to work, and he spoke about his book, This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx. He spoke of his sobriety, his family, his death and his subsequent rebirth.

One of the questions he was asked had to do with his years of drug use, and whether he had regret. A summary of his answer was basically this: you do things that you may not plan to do, but you do them all the same — and you can dwell on them and their negativity, or you can flip it.

I think it’s something we’ve all been told at some point or another in our lives. You know, the whole glass-half-empty/glass-half-full idea. We’ve been encouraged to see the glass as half-full, but let’s be honest…there are things that we’ve been through, things we’ve done and things that we’ve allowed to take up residence in our mind more often than we’ve allowed faith to have a starring role. More often than we’ve allowed belief in ourselves to own the majority of our thoughts. And more often than we’ve allowed forgiveness to take hold.

It can be a neverending downward spiral if you don’t flip it. It makes you wonder if you’re a good person, or just a so-so person. Somedays it makes you wonder if you’re a bad person. Sometimes I wonder if I’m worth it — and “it” can be so many things. For me, it’s easy to have a great day, then wonder the very next second why so much good came my way.

Wouldn’t it just be easier and better all around if I were to flip it?

I realized years ago that I’m pretty good about giving other people advice and telling them — because they are — that they’re worth it, that they deserve things and that they need to put themselves first. But when it comes to me, I don’t always believe those things.

Tonight I am thankful for hearing that interview with Nikki Sixx, for letting his words permeate my spirit and for the reminder that it’s OK if you’ve been through less than ideal stuff while navigating the roads of life. What is it that Winston Churchill said — if you’re going through hell, keep going? It really couldn’t be more true. The “PS” to all this would of course be to remember to “flip it” when you reach the other side. Flip it and turn it into something else. Into fuel. Into creativity. Turn the waste into recycled energy. If a part of you died for some reason, let it spur a rebirth in another area.

Let us all be wise through reflection and experience. Wise enough to remember to flip it — because we deserve it.

When I was 13, my parents and I flew back to Kansas City to visit some friends who used to be our next-door neighbors here in Anaheim. I think I’d only been on one trip before that where I actually flew somewhere, so flying was still a big thing to me. I was careful to pick out my airline best which, at the time, meant I made sure my gnarly short hair was as awesome as possible. [Read: it was as stiff as a cinder block thanks to a vat of LA Looks hair gel, and my outfit was a knee-length t-shirt adorned with puffy paint, worn — with a knot at the waist — with a rad pair of acid-washed jean shorts.]

I can’t remember if I wore one of my many shirts that I’d made back in the day, or if it was specifically the one with the retarded flamingo. (I was convinced that, when balancing on one leg, the flamingo’s other leg was bent at a right angle — with the foot at the end of the bent leg pointing towards its beak. This, my friends, is not the case. I wore that shirt once before being mocked to the point where I was emotionally scarred for life. It might’ve been on that flight.) All that said, I know for a fact there was some serious puffy paint action of some sort long about row 21.

But I digress.

On the flight home, my parents and I were split up. They were in the middle and aisle seats somewhere around row 13, while I was across the aisle and behind them in row 18-ish. I was seated next to a young girl about 5 or 6 years old, and a person that I assumed was her mother was sitting by the window.

(Window hog. The nerve!)

Knowing that I was a lover of the window even before I had many flights under my belt, I found it beyond bizarre that she kept it shut the whole time. What was even more strange is that she apparently had the urge to see oooooooonly the tiniest slice of land every now and again, and she’d open the window shade about an inch then — whenever her daughter (?) or I would look over with excitement, thinking she was going to open it all the way — she’d slam it shut and go back to reading what I ascertained was a script of some sort.

Really? Whatevs.

I decided to get comfortable and settled into Seat D with my super rad Sony Walkman. You know you all remember it — they were those things that played old school cassette tapes and, whenever the battery would start to get a little low, the music slowed ever so slightly, and the music got reeeeeeaaaaaalllllllllllyyyyy mmmeeeeeeelllllllllloooooooooooowwww.

So yeah.

My brother was (and still is, natch) seven years older, so at the time he was into uber-mature dude music like Metallica and Pink Floyd and, thus, that’s what happened to be on the tape I was listening to. Whatever he liked, I liked. To this day, I’m still that person who will sing loudly in her car without any regard for the windows being down (usually 80s hair metal), and I still think that someday I’ll grow up and be a rock star.

[Digital high-five to the Saatchi band. Love y’all!]

I must’ve been really enjoying the music (or maybe it was just because I, you know, existed) because I could feel her scoffishness (not a word, I’m aware) towards me. As we began our descent into LAX, I decided I was going to look out the window come hell or high water.

I removed my headphones. My stiff, short hair and I politely leaned over.

“Excuse me, would you mind opening the window shade?” I asked the lady.

She’d slammed her script down on the seat back table in front of her and, after squaring up and directly facing me, looked me straight in the eye.

“Yes, I do mind, and I’ll tell you why,” she said.

“Um, alright…” I replied.

A dramatic pause and a long, equally dramatic inhale (from her) filled our row.

“I think you’re weird,” she said.

Alright, cool. I do, too. Only I think she thought it would offend me.

Was it my drumming o’ the fingers on the table in front of me as I immersed myself in The Wall? Or could she hear the Metallica through my headphones and therefore feared what her child (?) was able to hear more clearly?

Two can play at this game. She didn’t know that I was traveling with my own crew.

I hollered up to my mom and dad.

“Hey!” I yelled.

She froze.

My mom and dad prairie-dogged over their seat backs and turned around. I motioned to the broad (yes, broad – it’s OK to use this word if you’re of the female gender) next to me.

“She thinks I’m weird!” as I motioned toward the broad by the window.

My mom’s fuse was lit. She was ready to blow at any minute.

We landed, and my mom was the human equivalent of a chicken who was going to wield its bloodthirsty beak at anything that crossed its path. Or that didn’t. She was lookin’ for a fight regardless.

Disclaimer: for all who know my mom, you know this isn’t the case.

…or is it? Muahahaha…

I think she penned the lady in to the back of the plane as everyone else was existing. In my mind, I like to think that the penning was for a good half-hour. In reality, it was probably for, like, eight seconds.

Either way…

Good stuff.

Tonight? I’m thankful for my beak-wielding mom, for the lady who thought I was weird (Pot? Meet kettle.) even though she was the one so intently studying her important script from the comfort of — you know — coach class, and for the trip that will forever live in my mind as one of the best stories ever.

Yeah, I’m “weird.”

So are you.

And you, and you, and you.

Newsflash: we’re all supposedly “weird” because we’re not all alike. But those who think someone else is weird probably lack the appreciation to realize that we all make up the entire rainbow full of beautiful colors. Conversely, those who skew towards thinking we’re all “unique” are the ones who follow that rainbow and know it leads somewhere amazing — so long as you don’t judge, don’t think you’re “better than” and you let others do their own thing. At the end of the day, it all adds up — if not for you personally, it still adds up to a great thing for humanity as a whole. And tonight I’m thankful for it all, because who wants to live in a world of gray?

Weird? Damn straight. Thanks, lady.

Exactly three miles north of Disneyland is my house. It’s on a cul-de-sac, and it’s the street that I grew up on.

I like to think of my casa as the everything house. It’s the house that I came home to after my first day of preschool, my first day of kindergarten and it’s the house I was nervous to leave as I readied myself to head off to first grade. It’s the house that my brother and I stood in front of each Halloween as we posed in our costumes for the obligatory annual photo, it’s the first date house, the first heartbreak house, the learning to drive house and the prom house. It’s the house that I would wish I was home enjoying when I was away at college in Michigan, the house whose backyard I’d come home to each weekend for laying out instead of walking a block to the sand when I lived in Redondo Beach and it’s the house that I now reside in with my cat (natch).

Each night around 8:40, the Disneyland fireworks begin. If I watch them from my driveway, it feels like you can reach out and touch them. The explosion reaches me and resonates in my chest shortly after a million specks of light flood the sky, and some nights it’s as though I’m back in high school working my summer shifts as a merchandise hostess in Frontierland, Adventureland, New Orleans Square and Critter Country. I remember staring up at the sky like the rest of the park guests; the magic overhead seemed like something you could watch a thousand times over without it ever getting old.

Other times, seeing the fireworks reminds me of college. My first semester away was the hardest and I remember — when I found out he was going to visit the park — asking my brother to buy me a CD of the Fantasmic music. I don’t consider myself the biggest Disney fan, but having grown up a stone’s throw from The Happiest Place on Earth and having spent two great summers working there, the park holds a special place in my heart. Sure enough, he bought the CD, and after it arrived, I tore off the packaging and wasted no time listening to the songs. It was as though I’d never left home, never stopped working at the park, and I’d play the show over and over in my mind while chilling in my East Shaw Hall dorm room with a white wonderland of snow outside.

These days, I sometimes watch the fireworks while I sit at the computer in my front room. The colors twinkle through the leaves on the tree just outside the window, seeming more like fireflies than fireworks if it wasn’t for the booming that punctuates the otherwise still night. Sometimes I’ll be at the piano, and that first explosion is just the signal I need to stop what I’m doing and peer out through the plantation shutters at my own personal fireworks display. It’s something I probably take for granted most of the time, but tonight I was reminded of those infrequent nights when I’m aware of their absence and how my heart feels a little less full, and the night sky feels a bit darker than usual.

Tonight I am thankful for those extra sparkly and beautifully bright spots in my life that I don’t always take the time to acknowledge, but which would leave an unspeakable void if they were gone forever.

Sometimes I wonder what I’m going to write about when I sit down at the keyboard each night before bed, and then I realize how silly I am for not knowing.

After all, it’s a blog about something I’m grateful for each day, so is it really that hard to find something?

Nope.

There are little elements in each hour of every day that call out to be noticed. They’re put in front of us to be seen — but often times we don’t consider that there’s a reason and, if we do, sometimes we’re too busy to really give it proper thought.

Maybe we observe something because we’re supposed to take action, to do things differently, to make a complete U-turn in life or to practice patience.

Maybe we see a situation so that we can see ourselves in it and wonder what we would’ve done, how we would’ve behaved or what we would’ve said.

Or maybe it’s just so we can take pause and think of all that we have.

On my way to work this morning, I saw a man driving a rickety tow truck. The lettering on the side was nothing more than those stick-on letters from a store, and they were applied crookedly. The truck — a lopsided, 1970s Chevy — looked like it used to be his own, and like it perhaps was turned into its current state when the economy took a nosedive. The man inside looked a little beat down; maybe he was doing his best just to find new ways to make a buck. It certainly looked that way.

This evening on my drive home, I saw a woman and her three kids walking on the sidewalk along a busy street. She was carrying one who was about a year old, and the other two — maybe four and five years old — were holding hands and dutifully walking next to her. I wondered if they had a car, or if maybe it was in the shop getting fixed. I wondered if she had a husband; if she did, maybe he used it to get to work. I wondered about the children. Were they used to walking on such a busy street? Did they have far to go? Were they going to be able to eat dinner tonight, and would they each have their own bed? Maybe they would share a bed because space was limited. Or maybe there was no need to wonder at all, and they were simply walking.

A bit further down, I saw a woman riding a bicycle. Her clothing was dirty, and she was traveling with something in a plastic grocery bag that dangled from one of the handlebars. She was squinting in the bright, setting sun, and working hard to pedal. She reached the signal and had to stop for traffic, and I couldn’t help but notice how defeated she looked. But she kept riding when the light told her to go.

Close to home, I saw a man that I’ve seen before. He stands on a center island in the middle of busy intersections with his cardboard sign and, because I’m sure he’s aware of the various things that go through the minds of passersby, has decided to make his sign one of the more unique ones I’ve seen: “Please help. Need fuel for Learjet. God Bless.” It’s funny to those who see it, as I’ve noticed people asking him about it and laughing with him on more than one occasion. He’s gotten a dollar here and there just because people like it so much. I wonder if he has someplace that he retreats to each evening, or if he calls whatever bus stop bench that happens to be available “home.” I wonder, appalling as it might seem, if maybe he’s doing it for fun. Maybe he has a home, maybe he’s retired. Maybe he’s out to see what direction we as a people are heading in. Maybe it’s an experiment happening right in the middle of busy, bustling, too-important, too-busy, gotta-make-more-money humanity. Maybe the joke’s on us.

But probably not.

Tonight as I was wondering what I was thankful for, I had only to look back on a single day and find multiple answers: for a job, for transportation, for driving home in a relatively speedy manner each night and arriving at a house where I can eat a simple meal in comfort and peace, and rest each night on a bed that — while I wonder if my back popping lately is a result of it, or just of age — is likely more bed than each of the people I’ve mentioned will see tonight.

We.

Have.

So.

Much.

Have you ever had a random thought or feeling about something and, after you’ve followed it and checked out what it was all about, you realize it paid off in a delightful way?

I was watching TV last night when a commercial for La-Z-Boy came on. I saw a few of the fabric patterns and instantly vowed to go check out one of their stores. The stuff was pretty cute, and not at all what I usually imagined when someone had previously mentioned the decades-old brand.

Today I went to visit my parents, and brought some of my Christmas giftcards with me. My mom and I hit the mall where I found an old, favorite fragrance once again in stock at Sephora, so the gift cards took care of that purchase. After breezing through Nordstrom — a verb which isn’t at all meant to imply that no damage was done — I left with a sizeable chunk of dinero missing from my checking account. That said, their stock is skewing cuter than normal these days, so it was absolutely worth it.

On the way back to my parents’ house, the sky opened up and a pretty decent rain shower decided to make itself at home in the area. My mom noticed a La-Z-Boy store off to the right; I did a quick glance in my rear and passenger mirrors, saw that no cars were around and made a beeline for the driveway to the parking lot. I think mom was a little surprised, but she went with it.

As I was parking, I explained that I saw the commercial the night before, thought the stuff was really cute and promised myself that I’d check out a store sometime soon. And today was that day. What better way to kill the remaining moments of a rainy afternoon?

We entered and a friendly salesman headed our way. I explained I just wanted to browse, and he kindly hovered at a polite distance so that I could entertain my whim. I saw a gorgeous chair with covert reclining capabilities and squealed over the fabric. Such a glorious print!

He indicated there were plenty more fabric samples along the wall, and on my walk over to see them, I saw it.

It was irresistible, and I knew it would be mine.

It was a table!

On clearance!

Severely, shockingly, deeply-discounted clearance!

It was a half-circle sofa table whose glass top was resting on a bronze frame. And the front of the table had star after star after star — all in a row, and all calling out my name. There must have been 30 to 40 of them, all in a row as they wrapped around the curve.

I squealed again and hollered to the salesman that I needed to make a purchase, immediately and with great urgency (because everyone in the store was eyeballing the table, natch).

(No, not really.)

He obliged, and then we realized I had no way of getting it home since we’d been cruising around town in my car (the IS does not like to schlep). Thank goodness for mom’s Highlander! To the rescue, once again.

I have no idea where I’ll put it, but I know my friendly star-studded table just found its forever home with me.

Tonight I am thankful for those little, friendly nudges from the universe that led me to my serendipitous moment inside, of all places, a La-Z-Boy store this afternoon. Completely looking forward to my new addition that found me on such a gorgeous, rainy and random Sunday.