Gratitude

Losing Faith 2

 in Gratitude / Louisiana / Travel tips  tagged GPS / Joplin MO / navigating / travel by

Our GPS leads us out of the darkness so unfailingly that when our friend Pat suggested the name Faith, we embraced it. Since then Steve began calling on Faith’s ways of finding reasonable rooms for the night whenever we grow weary. Our March road trip to New Orleans tested Faith on several evenings when pickings were slim, but between our Faith and Pat’s Siri, we found comfortable vacancies.  One evening Siri’s Trip Advisor ratings insisted on an inn a good way off our beaten path.  Without Faith the complicated cross-town zigzags would have been overwhelming, we didn’t despair. Over a late supper, we plotted our final leg, […]

Have You Seen My Mother?

 in Gratitude / Peru  tagged family / Mother / Peru / travel by

      When Mom was two or three, she told her mother something that sounded like “yammer yada blaa boo” to my busy grandmother.  Mom put on her mother’s high heels, packed up the cat and a little rocking chair and set off to visit her grandfather who lived three-quarters of a mile or so up the road.  But Mom didn’t take the road, she dragged the chair and cat cross-country through ditches and fences, gulches and cactus. Her mother enjoyed the quiet for a while then realized what was missing and panicked.  Mom’s father had no trouble following the high-heeled […]

In Praise of Tuesday Afternoon Writers

 in Gratitude  tagged angels / gratitude / writers groups / writing by

One of my biggest pre-retirement worries was how to find a writers’ group to keep me growing. Good writers’ groups are a rare treasure, so when a woman I’d just met invited me to join her group, I answered by hugging her. Bless you Marsha! Our meetings keep me working when the going is tough, and feedback is important, but writers’ groups become so much more.  Shared writings are almost magical in their power to spirit us far deeper into each other’s experiences, gifts, and perspectives than conversation can. In kindling another’s courage to write what matters, I seem to open my mind extra […]

Cruise Makers

 in Grand Eastern European River Cruise / Gratitude by

Our River Navigator cruise director and concierge do everything but sing us to sleep at night.  They give us maps on our way out the door to take tours, suggest things to see at every stop, and never stop working or smiling.  I really suspect that Veronika’s positive energy is some sort of superpower, so many details, so flawlessly executed, and all the while exuding FUN. Still, I’d have been in a bad way without Laszlo.  He showed up beside my dining chair a couple days into the cruise and said, “I’ve been shopping for you.”  He had gluten-free pasta, bread, cereal, and flour, so I could […]

Beach House Thanksgiving

 in Gratitude  tagged Atlantic / beach / beach combimg / celebrations / family / Thanksgiving / waves by

As I mixed Grandma Marie’s stuffing this morning, I dredged memories of the celebration opus our family built around a Carolina beach house last year.  I wanted a full house for Mom, too long alone with her grief.  We all love her, but the kids are scattered from the Atlantic to the Rockies and ever so busy grappling life’s dragons.  Thanksgiving week on the beach proved an ideal no-refuse-offer. The waves, foamy gray, loomed so high that the sun sometimes shone through, illuminating the living green within.  One monster put three-year old Conner to flight.  His sprint propelled him ten times beyond its reach.  He’d never been to the beach; how was he to know what a wave might […]

Wanted: Happy-Thought Nazis 7/7/15

 in Grand Eastern European River Cruise / Gratitude  tagged positive thinkers / river cruise / River Navigator / Ruse Bulgaria by

Our cruise director warned us before we disembarked that no matter how nice the hotel, leaving the ship always feels as if we’ve been expelled from paradise.  She was so right.  Our farewell banquet at the  hotel had little of the charm we’d been steeped in on the River Navigator.  We could hardly hear our table-mates.  The was service was slow.  The staff didn’t understand about gluten free.  And mostly, we’d lost the staff we’d come to think of as friends. Friendships were viral on this cruise, and I suspect that even for the Navigator,  we were a special group.  Early on I noticed that a number of us were militant positive thinkers.  No whine went unchallenged […]

What an Audience!

 in Gratitude  tagged Holland America World Tour / speaker / TOPS by

With my first book scheduled for publication I needed to become an orator extraordinaire, but how to get there?  I didn’t have to look far.  My TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) group is always in need of a program.  Better yet, support is their specialty.  I took my painstakingly constructed motivational talk to all the TOPS groups in the area. I needed the practice because our local coordinator had gotten my talk booked for the International Recognition Days conference.  I would give it for two audiences of up to 600.  Talk about a thrill ride.  Those folks came to have a good […]

Man at ship's wheel statue

A Way With Whales

 in Gratitude / Our Quest  tagged Cape Ann Whale Watch / Cynde McInnis / Gloucester Massachusetts / whale research / whale watch by

If all our research trips for Cruisers’ Guide to the Sea are as good as the one we took to Gloucester, this dream I’m wading into is even better than I thought.  Thanks to Cynde McInnis and Captain Jim of the Cape Ann Whale Watch, Steve and I cruised the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary for a week. As a volunteer on whale watch tours, I used our commute to the feeding grounds to talk to passengers about kinds of whales and their eating habits.  When the first spout lofted, we educators ran to the wheelhouse to help spot and record sightings, making ticks on charts to count the times we saw specific shale behaviors or body parts. […]

Holy Gratitude, Blog Woman!

 in Gratitude  tagged blog / gratitude / Sherri Moore by

I spent over a decade trying to get my mystery novel to work.  It may take another five years to get it publishable, but I’m up for it.  My patience with computer issues is another story.  Seven minutes is tops before my gasket blows.  Fortunately  Steve has amazing fortitude for trying and trying and trying and trying until he finds a solution. Still the idea of creating the requisite book-launch website with all bells, whistles, Tweets, and filters seemed akin to curing cancer.  I called the university computer science department and pleaded for a good student.  That’s when the heavens […]