Well, I’ve complete 24 posts in my 30 Days of Thankful. They weren’t daily posts, like I had wanted to do when I first started this project, but I think 24 posts and counting where I discuss what I’m thankful for, is still pretty amazing. Especially when I think back to why I started this exercise, to avoid a mental breakdown and get out of some bad thinking habits. And that has been a huge success.
I still have my down days. I still have days where my bed is easier to deal with than the to-do list sitting, mocking me, on my dining room table. But I have begun a good process of thinking about what the day brought for which I am thankful, even if I didn’t always write it down here on my blog. And that, is a good thing, and a worthwhile thing, even if I beat myself up everyday that I didn’t write it down on the blog, and then I have to start all over my good thinking process.
Counting this post I have six things to write about that I’m thankful for, and I’ve been meaning to write up about each of my siblings, my friends, and my fiance. I have four more siblings to write about so that takes me to the end of my 30 days and then I’ll go back to reviewing books and movies and posting odd things I’ve found on the internet.
Today I’m thankful for my sister Melissa. Melissa is quirky, complicated, an she always tries to do more than she should. She gives to the people around her, she takes care of everyone in her life, even to the point where she burns out. She reminds me to keep on going, because helping people is what brings joy.
Melissa makes me laugh. She can beat me at Dutch Blitz, which is not easy to do, and she loves to make home made eggrolls, which I love to eat. (Occasionally, I’ll help make them too. Darn things take forever to make! Soooo, worth it.) She’s the big ideas man, and I’m the do the details man, and we make a great team. Each of us has our strengths and we appreciate the other person’s part on the team.
One of my favorite memories, and which shows the typical way in which we work together, Melissa decided to deep clean the kitchen when we were teenagers. She comes up with random things like that. When she pulled the stove away from the wall to get behind it, she noticed that the floor under the stove was a completely different color from the floor that was getting used. In fact, she turned to me and said, “It looks like somebody peed all over the floor.” And indeed it did. This was due to the fact that the previous renters had been smokers. So, yay, nicotine stains.
So she decided to take up the entire floor. You know that scene in friends, where Joey points out to Monica that the floor is discolored, and goes to take up a part of it, and discovers that it is all glued down tile? Yah, that is exactly what happened next. The tile was all glued down. Well, except the few pieces Melissa had pulled up.
Then, without finish the first project, Melissa got another idea. She would redo the entire kitchen in 48 hours. Which meant of course that she had to go to Lowes and I got to be the person left behind who spent hours on her hands and knees finishing removing the tile from the floor.
In the end it was worth it. We repainted the cabinets, wall papered the top half, painted the fake wood panels, put in a chair trim, and in 48 hours transformed out kitchen. It was pretty amazing. That’s the wonderful thing about Melissa, she has amazing ideas, and when executed, despite my grumbling, I’m always very happy with the finished product and thankful Melissa is my sister.
Absurdly Nerdly 