Welcome to my gratitude journal

I've been thinking ahead lately to New Year's — partly because it's a way of getting past this stressful Christmas season and partly because time flies so fast it'll be here before you know it. I don't make resolutions any more. I kind of like me the way I am.

But I think I might try a gratitude journal. I've heard it's a good idea. You write down things you're grateful for or about, and if you try hard enough eventually you really do feel some kind of gratitude and it becomes ingrained in you. Who knows. It might work.

So I'm going to give it a try, starting now. Might as well get a jump on New Year's.

First off, I'm truly grateful that I have all the fingers on both my hands. That's pretty basic, but if you've bought movies or CDs lately you might recognize how fleeting those digits might be. You almost need a blow torch to get into the plastic prison those discs are encased in. Once you do, you need an ice pick, or an illegal knife, to get the cellophane wrapper off. By the time I actually open the case and slip out the disc, I've burned at least 500 calories from the aerobic activity of trying to get to a CD of relaxing music. So I'm really grateful that after all that, I still have all my fingers.

This gratitude stuff isn't too hard. I'll try another one.

I'm so glad I was gifted with what used to be called horse sense. Common sense. It's pretty uncommon any more. Take for instance those hermetically sealed DVDs and CDs. Manufacturers and stores seal them in plastic to keep them from being stolen, but you know, if someone wants them bad enough they'll find a way. They'll just take the whole shebang and probably have to back the car over them to get them out of the plastic. If thieves can spirit away entire jugs of liquor and conceal entire hams in their baggy clothing, those things pose no problems. Stores and manufacturers haven't figured that out yet, and so they make it difficult for cash-paying customers to enjoy their purchases. I figured that one out. Sure glad I have that much sense.

This is getting easier. If I try real hard, maybe as I get into this gratitude stuff and eventually I'll find a reason to be grateful for those little oval stickers people put on fresh vegetables and fruit. There's gotta be a nutritious benefit to the glue that binds them to produce skin since sometimes there are as many as six of those little sticker thingies on one tomato. I'll bet if I think about it long enough, while I'm picking little oval stickers out of the dishwasher and off the counter top where they seem to take root once I get them off my apples and pears, I'll find a reason to be thankful. Maybe I'll be grateful that they're so small that if I do accidentally ingest one, I won't choke on it.

WIth my luck, I probably will. Looks like this gratitude thing is going to need a little work.