Monday Mimisms ~ Mailbox Birds and Other Blessings

I've been thinking about the concept of thankfulness this weekend. Not so much "gratitude" as is popularly touted these days, and rightly so, but thankfulness. I think there's a difference. For instance, to say you "owe someone a debt of gratitude" is too much like a debt.

Not much joy.

To say you are thankful conveys a sense of fullness as opposed to lack.

Make sense?

Semantics. Connotations. Connections.

I consider this totally Craig Crawford's fault. He posted a take-no-prisoners article on the subject of teachers this weekend and asked his readers to write tributes to their favorite teachers in his comment section. I did and so did over 200 others (well, there was some rancor in there as well). It started me thinking about people I need to thank in my life. If you don't mind I think I'll take a moment to thank a few people and things. And I would like to leave out those I am obligated to thank thank you very much. I will try to tuck the snark away in a less noticeable corner of my mind and not pull it out until I'm done thanking things.

Ahem. I would like to thank anyone reading who is thinking by now "She just wrote 3 whole paragraphs telling me what she is going to write and why or why not she is maybe not going to write it." Thank you for not saying that out loud.

I'd like to thank all you grammar scholars for not noticing that I should have used finished instead of done in the 4th paragraph above and maybe not even "that" in this sentence. And that sometimes I start a sentence with and and sometimes my sentences aren't sentences at all. I like it. You get the conversation in my head that way. I get no migraine.

I would like to thank those who read and never comment, some for years, everyday everyday everyday. I wonder what it is that keeps them coming back when apparently they are not speaking to me. Nonetheless, I am thankful for your presence here and hope I say something someday that will unplug the comment cork. If not, carry on and notice the Queen wave K?

I would like to thank my garbage man, who never complains that I don't separate the recyclables properly. I know I should but at times the milk jugs mix in with the biodegradable.

Is that such a crime?

The postal carrier who has only complained once that there's a bird nest in my mailbox. 

And the lunch lady at work who lets me get extra crackers and honey mustard dip for afternoon snack like I'm her child or something and never makes me pay.  Oh! And the kind man who pumps my gas with a smile (I do not pump my own gas. No. Just no) who looks after my tire pressure even when I don't notice. He doesn't have to do that. He doesn't make a penny. And he always says, "Now you be careful today out there on the road, Young Lady!"  I think I love him. The fact that he calls me that is reason enough to pay extra for gas pumping.

Thank you to my latest adventure dating disaster with Mr. Cuteness that ended this weekend with a lengthy and sorrowful apology for deciding to give it one more go with the old ex-girlfriend waiting in the wings. I would like to thank her for contacting him on his birthday. You saved me from a future of fickle-minded wishy washy hurt. That must have been some helluva birthday card. (**hat tip email friend for that line**) And to think I convinced you to get your flu shot. She should thank ME.

We'll always have the flu though...can she say that?
No. I didn't think so.

Which leads to me to wonder if there are people we really should never thank in the first place. Do we need to thank people in our past for being in our past? Don't you think that's a sarcastic backhanded compliment? Do we really need to thank people who caused us pain just so we can remind them of it? And what's worse, elevating ourselves above blame in order to stand in judgment of them ? I've been guilty of that at times in my pencil skirt way. It was wrong.

But here's what is not wrong: Saying what you need to say when you need to say it.

Never let it be said I didn't do that.
That is my greatest fear.

Maybe tomorrow I'll even get the bird out of the mailbox.

Photo images Public Domain or property of Mimi Lenox