Since last weekend when I hiked in the high country and enjoyed the brilliant fall colors (see for yourself here and above), I’ve had a week of little upsets and irritations:

Starting with hearing about the health issues of family members and friends; a recent filling cracked, necessitating yet another trip to the dentist; I’ve endured intermittent computer/internet issues; then that ludicrously expensive mistake of mine EHarmony, sent me one ‘carefully selected match’ who’s 2 inches shorter than me and is looking for someone to join him on regular 10 mile bike rides and kayaking – neither of which I will ever do as I’ve clearly stated in my profile; oh joy, my washing machine leaked on Saturday evening and to top it off, this morning I found out that the ‘local’ Glenwood mall sales tax is a staggering 10.1%. This after driving a 36 mile round trip because I’d wrongly assumed it was lower than my local city tax and I wanted to be fiscally cautious (yes, yes, what about the gas both ways I hear you say but fyi, gas is 20-30 cents a gallon cheaper there). To add insult to injury, someone put a dent in my car and drove off while I was shopping in Target – oh and as for Target, the only one within 90 miles I might add; they’d run out of almost everything on my list.

But all in all, it’s been a good week because I’ve decided I have a lot to be grateful for. For instance, I decided not to give these events the power to bring me down in light of the fact that my dear friend’s dog has made a miraculous recovery from what seemed like a death sentence and now she gets to keep her beloved pet and won’t be parted from several thousand $$$ to pay for veterinary treatment.

As an aside, I’m fed up to the back teeth with the medical profession being cavalier with their diagnoses; human, animal or otherwise and causing us to spend money on unnecessary procedures, not to mention the trauma of it. I’m still paying for completely unnecessary ‘nuclear medicine’ from 18 months ago. In case you aren’t familiar with the term, nuclear medicine in my case involved an injection of something radioactive that made my insides glow in the dark, followed by another injection of something else that caused my spookily-glowing organs to compress horribly. I could have watched all of this on a little screen if only I’d stopped weeping with shock for a second. It was accompanied by a strong smelling liquid being wafted under my nose by a kindly nurse who was trying to prevent me from passing out from the pain of it. They never tell you any of this until you’ve been hooked up to an IV and the drug is flowing.

But I digress…that was then. My friend’s dog is recovering; the weather is perfect and I did a lovely hike yesterday with another friend and our dogs. My place has spectacular views from every window including my bathroom and for this I’m grateful several times a day, every day. My health is good, aside from a sore shoulder resulting from a weird fall in Aikido last week and I’m really looking forward to Aikido tomorrow; tonight ‘Mad Men’ followed by Masterpiece Theater are on TV and I just created a great dish with eggplant, garlic, red onion, basil, goat cheese and pine nuts … I’m listening to great music as I type.

I could go on but hopefully I’ve made my point – point being that whenever everything seems to be conspiring to piss me off, I get through it by focusing on everything I have to be grateful for.

My glass is always half full and I like to keep it topped up. Mine’s a martini!