Gratitude

The cake got done, as cakes do. I left it cooling in my kitchen and forced myself out to walk around Greenlake in the dazzling sunlight this morning; the walk really cleared my head and, just in that hour, I found three things to be improbably grateful for, all out of proportion:

1. The enormous blue heron I saw standing alert and motionless at the water's edge, just past the crew house and grandstand. I crept off the pavement onto the muddy running track for a closer look, while hordes of other joggers steamed past me oblivious in either direction. No one else seemed to even notice the heron; we eyed each other steadily for probably a minute. He looked to be four feet tall, somehow, and never moved until I chuckled to myself and moved on.

2. The swellegant Goth daddy, with cropped purple hair and piercings and a long black velvet overcoat and fearsome boots...pushing his toddler son's stroller across the lumpy grass by the wintering-over swimming beach, so they could get a better look at the ducks.

3. The message etched inside the stall door of the public restroom I stopped in. (This one's a special shoutout to Holly, who might remember this sentiment from our high-school days. Happy Thanksgiving, lady.) I settled down to my business and read the following, scratched into the paint at (seated) eye level: YOU BICTH.

Funny, the things that make us feel so much better. I can find hope, in strange places indeed.