MY ABC'S OF GRATITUDE--A THROUGH D

I am going to post A to Z, things I'm grateful for. We'll see how far I get today.

A--Artichokes. I love artichokes but they have to be dipped in mayonnaise, lots of mayonnaise so I guess I will not love artichokes as much as I used to when mayonnaise was considered (by my cousin, Jim, who used to eat mayonnaise sandwiches) a food group. In fact, I will not eat artichokes at all so I guess I will not love artichokes but maybe will love armadillos, instead. I don't know why. I just think they are cool and there is that new commercial about the armadillo who gets so frightened he rolls into a ball and his wife knocks on his shell and says something like, "Honey, it's all right, you can come out now." Is it a Capitol One commercial?

B--Baths. I gave my kids baths every night before bed. They smelled so good and were so warm and clean and when I tucked them in I breathed in their cleanness.

I loved baths as a kid. I would stay in the bathtub for an hour, emptying and refilling the water as needed to keep it steaming hot.

Now, there isn't time for baths? (I have to blog, after all.) And, not so much of me is submersible. Who wants to see large portions of the anatomy sticking out of the water? So I do not love baths as much as I used to. Or at all.

I will love the color Black--for "B"-- instead, which goes so well with white pants but winter is coming and the white pants will have to be put away so even black isn't as much fun as it used to be.

I wonder, is anything as much fun as it used to be?

C--Conference. Tomorrow is our semi-annual General Conference--two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, broadcast from Salt Lake City for us to watch on TV,--and the same on Sunday. We hear talks from our Prophet and the General Authorities. These two weekends (1st weekend in April and October) are my favorite ones of the year.

Tomorrow, during Conference I think I will have to make some chili sauce out of my very ripe tomatoes. I will watch Conference while I work.

One year the kids and I made apple pie filling during General Conference. We made a huge apple mess in the kitchen and Kraut threw apple peelings all over us and yelled, "Happy New Year." We laughed and laughed. It is one of my finest memories. I don't think we listened to much conference but we did have the TV on all the time. We bottled over 60 quarts of apple pie filling and it was delicious but we didn't make one apple pie with it. We heated it as a side dish. Maybe Apples should be my "A" word.

D--Dessert. I have a friend who, in her personal computer cookbook, has more dessert recipes than all other items, doubled or even tripled. I love to look at pictures of desserts on cookbook sites. Because of the nature of what happens to the body when you eat desserts, I don't eat them much. See "B" above about why eating lots of desserts and then having baths are not a good idea.

So, maybe I will forgo being grateful for Desserts to being grateful for Dogs, which we do not have. We used to. His name was Sebastian and he was Lord Bumhampton's dog. When Lord Bumhampton grew up and left home he left his dog here.

Sebastian was an obedient dog. He loved to howl at fire engines and ambulances. I would go to the bathroom window in the middle of the night and tell him he could not howl, and he would howl-whimper, and then I would tell him again and he would just whimper. He wanted to howl so much but he acquiesced to my wishes and muttered, in a high pitched sissy sort of way, deep in his throat, but didn't howl.

After he died, I often found Phil, standing at the slider in the kitchen, just looking out at the back yard. He'd say, in a quiet little voice, "My dog died." It broke my little heart.

So, I'm grateful for one very funny dog who wanted to be in the house so bad that he laid on the top step in the dead of winter, with ice on his fur, shivering almost off the step, instead of going into his HEATED dog house because he thought there might be a chance we'd let him in.

Which we did.