be grateful please ™

Today I spent the day in Dolores Park with a new friend and her sweet boyfriend.

Eventually the conversation turned to scars and I whipped out my three ankle scars and said “are you ready for a story?”

I told them the Sunday-in-the-park version of the fell-of-a-balcony-almost-died story. I focused on gratitude and ended with the sticker as I wrapped it up. As I finished the story and we all appreciated the importance of being grateful to be alive, I threw several stickers at them as they both showed me the goosebumps on their arms.

Five minutes later I stood up and noticed a woman on a nearby blanket with my sticker on the back of her jacket. I quietly pointed it out to my friends and asked if one of them put it there. They hadn’t.

So I walked over to her, kneeled down and said “I just want to tell you, I make these “be grateful” stickers and one of them somehow ended up on the back of your jacket.”

She had no idea it was there but once I told her, she and her friend continued to check on it and make sure it was still there.

Eventually another friend of hers started talking to us and said that he found a sticker on the ground and put it on her jacket. At that point she told me, “I just had surgery and it went really well and I AM grateful!”

So I threw three more stickers into the middle of her group and we all went on our way. Bless you park strangers. WE ARE GRATEFUL.

My friend just tagged me in a picture on Instagram. A fashion blogger spotted a sticker I stuck at a Caltrain station. 13,000 followers, getting that word out!

😉

I’m grateful for the marks it left

Several years ago my friend Christina developed this trick to get us all what it was we wanted at that moment.  She’d write it on a post-it note and stick on her mirror.  I credit my amazing SF apartment to this magic…

Christina’s since gotten married, moved far away from her friends and family and had a baby.  She sometimes has a hard time with it all.

Tonight we were texting about life and she sent this:

“…I don’t know if it’s a cure-all but I’m hopeful. Guess what my new mirror post-it is?”

I guessed incorrectly, and she sent me a picture of this:

That’s the note I sent along with the *first* be grateful card I ever made and handed out (for Christmas the year I fell).

This year I drove down to my brother’s house in San Luis Obispo for Thanksgiving.  His girlfriend’s family was flying out from Chicago and they were planning to hike up Bishop’s Peak with Thanksgiving dinner in their backpacks and have a picnic just before sunset.

He asked me if I’d be able to make the hike.  I went to college in SLO and walked up that mountain almost every weekend, but that was long before my ankles were made of metal. I told him I’d be OK and still, he offered to carry me on his back if it got too hard.

As we all sat at the top for our feast just before sunset, Tom announced “I’m grateful that my sister is healthy enough to walk up this mountain and be here with me.”

I’m SO grateful for my little (big) Libra brother who’s always been a steady, strong source of support.

Sitting down next to an older gentlemen on the bus, I accidentally nudged him twice with one of my bulging bags.

Me: Sorry… Extra baggage.
Him: That’s ok. We all travel with some.

I’m back from Burning Man, year 2.  I took a few days extra vacation, then went back to the job I’ve had for the past 3 years and worked my final two days there.  I said my goodbyes and then said hello to one week off. No job. Closed one chapter and had 7 days to reflect on the story I’d just read, and  then look forward to the one about to start.

I didn’t do much.  I cleaned out my room, donated clothes, bought a new duvet cover and realigned my feng shui.  I also watched all 5 seasons of 30 Rock on Netflix.  The one plan I made in advance and committed to was taking a solo drive on Sunday, today, the last day of my rare in-between-jobs week-long moment.

When I was in college and needed a moment to soak up the glory that was my life, I’d go perch myself in front of the ocean with a camera and a journal.  And I have so much to be grateful for now that I knew it would take as much space as the ocean to bring all those things into mind and soak. them. up.  Car, music, ocean, journal.  A moment of reflection in a big way.

Today I walked to the Audi Zipcar I treated myself with for the day (a sunroof was a crucial part of the plan) and climbed in, not sure exactly where I’d end up.  I opened the sunroof, rolled down all the windows, plugged my phone in and turned on Spotify… loudly.

I stopped at a Walgreens after driving about 45 minutes and bought a new journal and a pen. There had been several spots to pull off and look at the ocean by that point in the drive but I hadn’t felt compelled to stop just yet.  While getting the journal I started wondering if I’d passed the “perfect” spot and started questioning where I would to end up.

But I kept going the same direction and kept my eyes peeled for “the spot.”  I stopped wondering if I’d passed it up and trusted that I was still on my way there.  I pulled into a beach that I remember going to with my family as a kid, thinking maybe that was my fated spot.  But alas, you needed to pay to park and I didn’t have cash (shocker).

After I U-turned out of there, I grew impatient and told myself I needed to stop. My reservation with the Zipcar was going to require I turn around and head back home soon so the time was now.

I pulled into the next turnoff and noticed that there were no other cars.  Good sign already.  I grabbed the journal and a pen and headed towards the edge of the cliff in front of me.

And saw this:

Oh hello Universe.  I thought I’d find you today.  Thanks for letting me know you’re here with me.  Good point, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and keep trusting you’re on my side.

I’m so ready for this next phase of the journey and so grateful for the road that brought me here.

Hello. I love you.

Tonight I sat next to a smiling, humming 90-something year old woman, and a 40-something year old man sat in front of us.

Around 7th and Market she asked us where Bart was. He and I talked her through it, then to each other about the best place for her, in her delicate tiny body, to get off the bus. He says something about all the construction, then concern over where she’ll get a ticket.

Resolved, he says to this woman he’s never met, “you need to get on Bart mama?” She nods. “I’ll get off with you and we’ll go together.” Smiling but confused she asks him, in her heavy Russian (?) accent, “are you? Going to Bart?”

He pauses then responds that he is. Laughing now, she looks up at me, so pleased to have found this strong, kind helper. “It’s your lucky day!” I say to her, knowing in my heart he had not been headed to Bart 2 minutes ago. People are nice, love is everywhere.

This isn’t a post about Thailand. I’m not about to show you all the tropical amazingness I found there. I’m going to talk about one person, and one camera.

I spent my first full week in Thailand on the beach on Tonsai Bay in Krabi (south of Bangkok and north of Phuket).  I got there on Christmas Day and left on New Years Day.  So many experiences, so many feelings, so many beautiful amazing memories.

I can be a bit careless about things sometimes, so I was extra careful to not lose my room key, wallet, camera, etc. However on my last night on the Island, New Years Eve, my camera managed to slip out of my awareness.

Throughout my week, I had made good friends with a man from New Zealand named Julz and he happened to be with me when I realized it was gone. I had to leave in a hurry to catch the boat that would take me to the car that would take me to the airport, and he reassured me he would ask around for it, never once worrying that he wouldn’t find it.

He found it.  And it wasn’t like here in the States where he just walked to the bar we were at and they checked their lost-and-found. No, this is third world island life. Julz walked to the bar we were at and asked about it every day, twice a day.  He switched bungalows to “apply added pressure” and lived at the bar’s resort for the rest of his stay there. He was finally handed my (broken) camera, pretty sure they’d already sold it and then had to get it back from the neighboring village.

By then though, I was North in Chiang Mai and he was still in Southern Thailand.  He lived in India and I lived in the US. He would be traveling but he would mail me my camera.

It’s been about a year since then.  He had left Thailand and moved back to Kashmir and was trying to stay alive. Julz, my friends, is a real-life-pirate hunter. He’s not chasing down people who pirate music online. He actually searches for actual pirates in the Middle Eastern seas and hunts them down.  

The last time I heard from him was June. I started doubting he was ever going to send it and by now, had resigned myself to stop thinking about it all together. He said he was going to send it but hadn’t. I trusted him but it wasn’t happening.

Then tonight, a box arrived.

Julz who’s been living in dangerous countries fighting pirates and Typhoid mailed me an entire box of presents from his travels, not the least of which was my long-lost camera.

I am blessed. And speechless. And GRATEFUL!