Thursday, April 26

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

My barn ally and I are still helping each other feed our horses so that we can alternate days. They don't need much extra right now, it's more of a maintenance thing, but even if we decided that we no longer needed to do this, I am nonetheless TOTALLY amazed at this partnership. I have rarely experienced getting help or support in my life. About the only people who have offered consistent support have been my Mom, and my husband. Most of the time, people just kind of flake out after a short time. I feel that this person, if she's still got her horse at the barn, would be ready to help again through next winter if River needed extra food (though, to be fair to myself, her horse benefitted from me, too).

A weird, yet oddly inspiring incident at Canadian Tire. I went there to buy a product called Sugru, which is a special adhesive that I wanted to repair a ceramic bowl that smashed into at least 20 pieces. The internet said they carried the product, and it was on their computer in the store as being in stock. I didn't want to waste time searching for it, so I asked a clerk, who went looking for it but didn't come back for over 10 minutes. I asked a second clerk, and she too disappeared for at least 10 minutes. I didn't know where they went. I went to customer service, and it was the manager who chose to help me. HE then went looking for it, and it took HIM about 20 minutes or more to find it. It had been delivered to the store, but not put on the shelf yet, but it was also shipped without being assigned a department (according to the manager) which meant they didn't know where it would be in the shipping crates. I felt so weird, having three people spend that much time finding me ONE TUBE of glue. I didn't really need them to kill themselves like that for me, I would have lived if they'd told me it would be on the shelf in a few days, but sort of nice?

A really positive pottery meeting. It's felt like the last couple were kind of tough, struggling to come to some kind of agreement over shelving, and firing schedules (one woman is very worried about toxicity). This one woman was, for some reason, really objecting to EVERYTHING we were trying to change. It's taken a lot of work to find solutions to her objections, and to some degree, just over-riding them in a way that hopefully didn't hurt her too much. Some meetings we accomplished nothing, because she was just so outraged over the changes (which really, were just things like moving the work tables, and improving the shelving). After the same woman freaking out a year or so ago about me wanting to use porcelain and just outright shutting me down, I FINALLY got the support of a couple of other people, and found a way to take my request through the proper channels (after I was led to believe that I was not allowed to raise the issue again), and we will be allowed to use porcelain!!!! I also was able to finally convince the one lady, with support of the group, to find out if the firing kilns really are toxic or not, by looking into an air quality assessment. There are, after all, lots of companies who will do this for schools, offices, etc., why not the studio? This will help us decide whether or not it is actually safe to run the kilns during classes (an issue that just keeps coming back like tuna casserole, more unwelcome each time). Overall, I finally felt like we were getting somewhere.

Getting groceries, and feeling like it wasn't too bad to stick to low glycemic food. I guess the same mentality that allows me to not eat meat is also helping me to not buy food with a lot of sugar. I checked the sugars on some of my favorite treats, like the coconut chunks I love (20 grams of sugar per serving, which is only a few pieces!). My energy level and blood sugar have felt so good lately, I don't want to screw that up. I am grateful to be able to buy healthy food, and to have the time to shop carefully.

Coming home to my beloved animals. It is a profound happiness to be greeted by them. People are used to how happy dogs are when you come home, but it's a privilege when your cats come to greet you too.