Stupendously lucky

Thanksgiving just passed here and I've been thinking about gratitude.  You know the kind I mean, the lump in your throat, tears in your eyes kind of gratitude that you get once in awhile (thankfully, I only get it once in awhile, because the tears are often a little embarrassing and hard to explain).  Anyway, I've been having a few more of those moments this week, I think the holidays sort of bring it out.  One of the things I'm really grateful for is my family.  I have a kind and loving husband who has a job that keeps him busy enough without draining him completely and allows him to pursue golf as much as he wants.  My parents are healthy and love where they live and have enough things to keep them busy without making them any crazier than they already are.  My brother has a great job and a wonderful partner and because of the completely amazing political system we have, is going to be able to get legally married in his state (which we are all pretty shocked about, as the state where he lives had just past legislation to make gay marriage illegal and then the Supreme Court decision overturned it-YAY Supreme Court Justices!).  My sister and her family are healthy and happy and able to take an extended trip around the world which they are blogging about here.  And in addition to all these blessings, I have a job that I find interesting, challenging, and most of all fun in addition to being healthy and strong.  So how lucky are we?

I'm also grateful for electricity and specifically air conditioning and refrigeration.  I'm grateful for communication systems that allow us to connect to people all over the planet effortlessly and I'm immensely grateful for the opportunities of education.  As part of that education, I've been reading quite a bit.  The last two weeks I read a brand new book called The Royal Institute of Magic by Victor Kloss.  This is a really fun new book (which I hope will be a series) about a boy named Ben who's parents are missing.  Ben and his best friend Charlie are following clues about their disappearance since the police don't seem to have a clue.  They find a piece of mysterious fabric and then a note which takes them to a building in London, the Royal Institute of Magic.  It feels a bit like Harry Potter or Charlie Bone but the characters are so interesting and so compelling, you'll stop making comparisons pretty quickly (I know I did).  I can't wait to get this one into my school library.

I also read Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.  She is a completely amazing writer and has such a gift for being able to show us what someone else's life is like.  In this case, the main character is a girl named Cather who writes a blog of fan fiction (which, I'm sorry to say, I'd never heard of).  Fan fiction (if you are clueless as I was) is where people write stories about characters from books you know and love and take them places they want to go.  Cather is struggling with many things in her young life-a twin sister who she adores but who wants her own identity, a manic depressive dad, boys, a very strong and powerful roommate (who scares her), freshman year of college.  It was a great story and really hard to put down.  Here's a book trailer about it.  

And right now I'm in the middle of "I am Malala" which fills me with gratitude, that I live in a place that offers religious and educational freedom.  More on that one later...