Happy birthday to me!

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

A nice sunny day, warm enough to be very pleasant.

A good ride on River, with several other riders around. My riding friend brought me banana muffins, which was very thoughtful of her. The other riding friend that I see there often picked up River's poop for me in the arena, which is a pretty nice birthday present.

The two sons of the owner of the barn are about 5 and 3, and they are getting to an age where they interact more with people who come to the barn. They are often in the barn or the arena, or out in the yard. Today they invited me to come sit with their Gramma and watch them on the trampoline, so I did, and I even gently joined in for a while. They sang Happy Birthday to me, which was amazing.

A good phone conversation with my Mom.

I got another giant haul of groceries today. It's kind of astounding that we are eating this much food, but I have to remember that it has been at least a week since I've bought food, that we are eating pretty much every meal at home right now, that I am planning extra food for lunches for the guys working here, and that I am replacing a lot of things at once because so much went bad in the old fridge. These giant grocery runs are kind of exhausting, but I am glad to have the means to buy the groceries, the physical stamina, and a vehicle to make this possible.

My sweetie helped me do some chores and get supper ready, so that our friends (the husband is helping us with the house) could join us. I feel like I did better with putting a supper together without freaking out, and what helps is that they understand that I'm a vegetarian and I no longer have to worry about whether or not the food is okay.

My friend brought a wonderful chocolate cake for me, and I felt terrible about having only a very small piece (almost a smudge) of it, but I just said that I had been making some very serious changes to how I eat lately, and it's been working for me, and that seemed to be all I needed to say. Everyone else enjoyed it, so that's good. It's the thought that counts.

Overall, today was nice in that I felt like so many people were a part of my life that weren't there a few years ago, and that the friends that came for supper have been a part of our lives pretty much since we moved here 12 years ago, and they feel like "real" friends now, not just acquaintances. I'm not always open to kindness and being social, and I often feel too unloveable, or too tired of how people drift away to keep working towards connection, but today felt good.