least

Grateful to wake up on the right side of the grass.

Hevyn

Grateful to read your positivity today. Love you all so much.
I'll be scarce for a couple days - leaving early tomorrow for Ocean City, Maryland & my father-in-law's service.
Meanwhile, I will remember to be grateful every single morning.

courage2

Grateful for giggles.

Alysheba

Grateful for my shift at ARF last night, although the back is a little sore, what can you do?
Grateful for their big fund raiser tonight. It's a big deal. I hope ARF raises a lot of money for the death row animals.
Grateful for days when I feel like I need rest and can actually get it.
Grateful for your friendship. Speaking of, Rusty, praying for you and hoping you are feeling ok with the chemo.
Have a great day Grat Pack. Love you all! ♥♥♥

Austerities

Grateful for clean water
Grateful for clean sheets
Grateful for forrests

Mags1

Fearless, I think it’s a great idea with the pebble painting party.
Aly, I’m praying many funds are raised for the animals at ARF.

Grateful for my early morning coffee
Grateful for the silence of the morning, I can just hear my wall clock ticking.
Grateful for another sober day
Grateful for all of you.

Rose335

My day was unexpectedly hi-jacked yesterday because of minor family crises and I was out in the evening so I didn't get a chance to post. Since I unwisely booked a very early grocery delivery for today, however, which I'm now waiting for I have the luxury of time. I enjoyed catching up with everyone's posts.

Hev - I hope your father in law's service brings some comfort and prompts good memories for the family.

Fearless - I think the pebble painting is an excellent plan, not least because it's for a school fund raiser. There'll be no shortage of takers for such original items. And btw, let's hear it for cogs the world over!

Mags - I'm extremely grateful for the invention of the toaster too! Even though I can - and do - wreck mine regularly, seemingly with a single glance, I use the current one every day.

Courage - I'm just wondering if you're exercising quite enough gratitude? I'd be truly grateful for "Silence is Golden" on a permanent loop in my head instead of the Dingle Dangle Scarecrow!

Aly - glad you're still able to wear summer clothes. I determinedly did the same yesterday evening, mostly because I wanted to wear a particular pair of sandals. Felt a bit stupid when it then began pouring with rain and got really cold. Hey ho. Time to get out the jumpers and boots.

Thankful for online shopping and home grocery deliveries even though I often make some strangely sized inadvertent purchases. I've ended up with midget sized tins of coconut milk today.
Grateful for a very nice evening out at my friend's house yesterday. I did the cooking which seemed to be a success. I also ended up pouring the wine, yet again, which was not a problem. Apart from a slightly surprised 'oh are you still on the wagon' comment, no one was remotely interested in what I chose to drink.
Thankful I survived giving a couple of people a lift home at the end of the evening. Living where I do in London means I don't generally need to use the car so I've got a bit unconfident plus it was absolutely pouring but there are times when it is dead useful so I feel I must not lose the skill.

Looking forward to a non-hi-jacked day and and I'm about to organise my BALT breakfast, courtesy of Fearless' previous post. Hope everyone has a good Sunday.

FBL

Grateful for Junior Samples.

Grateful for another day sober.

Rusty Zipper

grateful for following directions

Kevin78

Kevin78 signing in for the first time in a long time. I was quite active in my earlier sobriety.

Very Grateful to have 2+ years sober again.

courage2

Kevin78, welcome to the Grat Pack!

Rose, I had to look that up.

Grateful for memories of a toddler -- and just as grateful not to have one underfoot today.

Alysheba

Welcome Kevin!
Rose I was laughing with you at your attempt to wear summer clothes yesterday. All of a sudden, it's gotten a bit cooler and may it's the fog, so there's not much sun. October can have some of the most beautiful weather here.
Rusty, prayers for you and that you are doing as well as possible. I know what you're going through and it's no picnic. I'm praying for you, love ♥♥♥ and I'm grateful for you!
Grateful for all of you too. Have a grateful morning. all!

Fearlessat50

Hev, Again sorry about the circumstances, but I do wish you safe travels and a nice time with family. Will miss you!
Aly, I hope the fundraiser went well last night
FBL, when you said Junior Samples, it somehow made me think of miniature snickers bars! Grateful I don’t crave those types of things anymore
Hi Kevin!
Rose, lol about the dingle dangle scarecrow, wearing summer clothes in the rain and the mini coconut milk tins. Btw, people used to always ask me about still being on the wagon. They don’t anymore. It’s been over 2-1/2 years and folks just don’t care, which is nice. One friend, who is a heavy drinker and has tried many times to stop, had asked me once if I stopped because it was a problem. She is one of the only ones I was completely honest with, I suppose because I think she has a problem and maybe I could help her. I didn’t go into a lot of detail, but I did tell her that yes, it was a problem and was progressing, so I felt healthier and better about myself giving it up completely. She has not been able to stay stopped for any length of time. She often says I inspire her. I hope one day she will stay sober
Grateful to finally check in. It’s morning somewhere!
Grateful for connection and friendship here
Grateful for a big laugh my son gave me when he was playing his wordscape game and came up with dildo and asked me if it was a word. He said it was cool sounding and it should be a word if it’s not already. He started pronouncing it in funny ways just to get me to laugh more. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him what it was, but I’m pretty sure he guessed from my reaction it may pertain to something naughty
Grateful to start on some pebbles today and think about planning a party.
Grateful to buy some things at my neighbor’s estate sale, to help support them and to find some great things for such a good price. I bought a brand new ice cream maker for $10. Husband bought a ladder that can be used for stairs.
Grateful for a wonderful moment to remember my Uncle in a way that reinforces my belief that he is definitely still here in spirit
Grateful for each of you

Austerities

Grateful for the smell of fir

Rose335

Kevin - nice to meet you.

Austerities - I love the smell of fir, especially after it's rained. No fir trees around me in London but we often get to stay in a house close to a forest of fir trees.

Fearless - I think kids have a special antennae for spotting words they shouldn't say: and then saying them over and over again! There must be something in our response that gives it a way. That's interesting what you said about your possibly excessive drinking friend. I've got one of these as well. She's always very interested in my progress and keeps saying she wants to cut down. And she used to be one of the people I socialised with when I was drinking whom I didn't feel embarrassed about when I'd drunk to excess. So she may well be a member of this non-exclusive club.

Aly - my summer clothes are now carefully packed away in the cupboard, Sigh. I only have to wait 6 months now to wear them!

Courage - couldn't have put it better myself (re toddlers I mean). And since Monday has rolled around again it's toddler swimming lesson time....

Grateful for a more or less decent night's sleep that only involved waking up once and not for too long at that.
Thankful for a very relaxing day yesterday. Although the weather was miserable I got a good walk in and did some cooking (so that's one chore off the list)
Thankful for having discovered a new, slightly bizarre, very entertaining and very well acted mini-series in Amazon Prime. Has anyone see 'Succession'?

Off to face the day. I was still very tired when I woke up this morning and I found myself thinking 'how on earth did you get up early day after day after a night spent drinking at least one bottle of wine?'. I don't know the answer to that: the body must just make the most enormous adjustments. And then it has to adjust back to normality so to speak. Glad to have got to treble figures, finally, in terms of my number of days sober. The longer the stretch between then and now the greater the relief.

Numblady

So much to say! Hoping I can remember at least most of it.
Kevin, welcome (back). Hope to see you here lots — and congrats on the 2+ years!
Courage, I think you must be a pretty good singer; I feel like I would have a hard time singing “Silence is Golden” on pitch.

Grateful to have dragged my children (and for one night my husband) on our first family camping trip. It started as something I organized for several families and one by one, through just not wanting to do it, and one broken wrist and stomach bug that got a kid sent home from school the day we were supposed to leave, they all dropped out.
Grateful my kids are good at making friends. My daughter found a buddy who turned out to be the daughter of a scout troop leader on a trip that weekend.
Grateful the scouts were so welcoming and kind. They let us tag along on a 3 mile hike with a master naturalist to a scenic overlook, and then they let my daughter take part in a bunch of different games they set up.
Grateful for scenic overlooks, vistas, and other natural beauty.
Grateful for a very strange trip with my son where we went to a nearby bait shop. The old man was very sick and couldn’t hear. He got us 2 dozen minnows (after struggling pretty mightily to do so). The shop was ancient and the floor was dug out for different bait fish to be raised I guess. He told us about his lungs not being able to get enough air and upcoming doctors’ appointments out of town to try and fix it. He told us to catch lots of fish and that he caught a lot of fish and did a lot of hunting in his day, that God had been good to him, and that his doctors wouldn’t let him fish or hunt anymore but that was okay.
Grateful for my tender hearted son. After the strange experience in the bait shop we looked at the bag full of minnows, thought about putting them on hooks, and then he suggested (and I heartily agreed) that we should just let them all go.
Grateful my sweet little son also wanted to check with a ranger if it was okay to let them go to be sure they weren’t an invasive species that would damage the ecosystem. Grateful the ranger said it was probably fine since people fished with them, as I”m not sure what else we would have done with 2 doz. minnows.
Grateful my son looked at me and said, why are we so soft?
Grateful we tried to go fishing with some of those 5-hearted earth worms later that day. It still felt gruesome to me to stab them around the hooks but slightly less so. An older man and his wife noticed us casting out over the 15 or so feet web of nasty hydrilla and told us that this was a special time for fishing, that it was one of only 2 days per year where these flies go from larval stage to taking off from the water. You could see the fish trailing them. He asked us if we wanted to wait so he could get this special bait he had and at first I said no but my son said if it was that special we should definitely wait.
Grateful the man came back and his special bait was not alive. In fact, it was the consistency of play dough and didn’t involve stabbing any living things except the caught fish (which I’ve learned do remarkably well if you take them off the hook correctly).
kind of grateful we didn’t catch anything because I’m still mastering the art of getting the fish off the hook correctly to release.
Grateful for a silly dream I had about seeing a Russell Brand show that was part live, part movie and feeling like he and I could relate to each other as sober people. Also people kept cutting or taking my seat.
Grateful 2 of our family friends (the father and son) joined us for one of the two nights, which made my son much happier.
Grateful to be home and for our washing machine and dryer, for the sublime shower I took when we got back (oh forgot to mention we went canoeing and in order to avoid my daughter drifting away I had to step my foot into thick mud and water that my entire feet were swallowed into), to have a/c (until about 3 a.m. it stays in the 80s so sleeping was even more of a challenge than ordinarily), to be back in my bed.
Grateful that when the kids were really acting up last night (my daughter especially) my husband says, don’t you wish you were drinking (very supportive, right?) and I said yes, actually I do. And then let a few moments pass before I thought of my words. “But it doesn’t really fix anything and in the long run it takes more than it gives. “ I was proud of my answer and he let it go.
Grateful to be back here with all of you. It felt strange not checking in, but between the early flight back from MN and then going right into the camping adventure I just couldn’t.

Rusty Zipper

welcome kevin!

thanks a mighty fine grat list numby!

grateful for another new week of sober adventures

lyddie

Grateful to be here

Fearlessat50

Auster, when you said fir, I thought of my cats fur
Rose, I’ve always thought those who observe others drinking patterns the most are concerned about their own drinking. I was also one of them. I have not seen Succession but have heard a lot about it and it’s on my watch list. I am glad you had a better night sleep. We seem to have similar sporadic sleep patterns! I don’t know how I did it either- all those hungover mornings. Makes me shiver.
Numblady, so glad to see you. So touching about what your son said about the ecosystem. Love that the younger generation seems to be so respectful and protective of the environment. I am learning a lot from my son and his classmates. Glad you got to experience the 5 hearted earthworms
Grateful for Russell Brand. I would love to be sober friends with him!
Grateful for a better night sleep. It’s like every other night. I will take what I can get! Grateful that any sober sleepless night is still always better than the type of sleepless nights I had in my drinking days, and the resulting hangover. I just can’t imagine ever going back
Grateful for fall weather at last
Grateful to have time for a little gardening g today
Grateful for each of you

Daisybelle

The pebble painting party sounds like a fun idea Fearless, go for it.
My little g.son is also working towards his black belt in karate but he has to do one more brown belt tab first.

Aly I hope the ARF managed to raise plenty of money.

Fearless re your son's word game. xxx

Grateful to wake up sober and present.
Grateful the school run went well.
Grateful that it hasn't rained today.....Yet!
Grateful for coffee.
Grateful to have my fire on, I'm feeling cold.
Grateful the other grandmother is doing the school pick up.
Grateful that I've already prepared dinner for later.
Grateful to see Kevin78 here, well done Kevin..
Grateful to see Rusty here.
Grateful to you all. xx