I've been sick. Really, I'm still sick. Michael is sick. The Cabbage missed two days of school this week because she was sick. She's the only one that's feeling better. I'm trying not to harbor ill will over it. I stayed home two days this week with a fever. By the second day, I was running out of crap to watch on TV and bored with inactivity. I decided to wash all of the comforters, Lysol the pillows and the rest of the house and change the sheets on the beds. It's a challenge to change the sheets on my bed on a good day. The mattress sits down into the bed frame and the bed is pressed up against one wall. I always feel like I'm roping and tying up a calf while I am wrangling the fitted sheet onto the bed. On a bad day, the act of putting that fitted sheet onto the bed feels like the last thing you'll ever do. But I did it! We all slept on clean sheets that night. 

Some times at the end of a week I find that I am truly thankful for the simplest of things. Particularly when that week has been emotionally and physically difficult. I have been quick to anger and easily brought to tears. My patience is thin and my give a shit level is low (or high depending on how you look at it). I communicate in the least amount of words I can get by with just to be on the safe side of not snapping a head off or hurting feelings. I've taken very few pictures and written very few words. I've shoved ugly memories away and wondered why after five years it doesn't get easier. It just gets more complicated. I am happy with the direction my life has taken, yet sad about. Guilty not guilty. Not lonely but lonely. Missing without missing.

These are weeks when gratitude takes effort. I am thankful for Kleenex and ibuprofen. I am thankful for those clean sheets I put on the bed even though the act of doing so almost made me pass out. I am thankful for the Spring like temperatures we have here today. I am thankful that I am no longer running a fever. I am thankful for lemons and honey and echinacea. I am thankful for kind notes from friends. I am thankful for you.

Here's to a weekend of healing and a beautiful Thankful Friday.