So, what am I thankful for this week? Oh my, lots.

• First and foremost, the opportunity that I had to see my grandparents. My grandfather is not doing so fantastic with his health, so who knows if he’ll live for another couple of years when I have the chance to go see them again?
• My trip that now seems like it was months ago – when really, it’s only been about 2 weeks. To read more about my trip and see some photos, check out my personal blog, This is not America.
• My new found love for cooking – and cooking relatively healthy. Eating healthy is extremely important for overall happiness, and in this area I have failed over and over again. However, I will keep trying over and over again, until one day I will get the hang of it. I think my new love for cooking is a great step in the right direction – no more quick McDonald’s for lunch and dinner because I am hungry and hate anything that sounds like much work. Let’s just put it this way – much work is not so much work when there’s two.
• And that leads me to be ever so thankful for the boyfriend. I don’t often let him know just how much I appreciate him. He’s a wonderful person – understanding and helpful in his own way. Thank you Michael.
• Crazy Georgian taxi drivers for adding some spice to everyday life.
• The Dry Bridge market on the weekends in Tbilisi. I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it much, but I loved it. Full of old, antique objects that you wouldn’t find elsewhere. Pins and memorabilia from the Communist times, old Georgian, Turkish, Russian money, lovely little paintings, pretty plates and crystal. The only thing that’s missing is furniture – if only they had antique furniture, I think I would be going there every weekend.
• Wordpress. I recently moved my personal/travel blog from Typepad to Wordpress and life is now looking brighter. Typepad may be fine for some people, but for what I wanted it to do, it was horrible. Although Wordpress.com could work on their gallery options, it is so much easier to make it a post look good than it was on Typepad.
• All the wonderful cooking blogs I’ve found recently. To name a few:
  Simply Recipes
  Taste Spotting
  Your Vegan Mom
  What the hell does a Vegan eat anyway?

• The weather in Tbilisi! No more ice and snow up to my knees. A little rainy, but warm enough for a sweater and a spring jacket.
• Finally buying some furniture to furnish this apartment of ours – and it looking really good! Despite it not being my style whatsoever. I’m very particular with interiors, I have to admit.

Now it’s your turn. What are you thankful for this week?

This week I am thankful for:

• Finding out about Bliss. Bliss is a German band I believe, and I found out about Bliss while eating at an Italian Restaurant in Tbilisi. I heard a lovely song, and so I asked our waiter if he knew who the singer was. He went to check and came back with Bliss. Later that night, I listened to the song over and over again on YouTube. I’m thankful for it now because whenever I listen to it, I feel so relaxed, and it works wonders on a cold, grey day.
• Dreams. Unlike usually, I’ve been remembering my dreams lately. They have been both weird and wonderful. The wonderful ones have been exceptionally vivid, leaving me with a rather interesting if not uneasy feeling upon waking up. Even so, they’ve been lovely, and I wish I would never stop remembering my dreams. It’s rather fascinating to know what your brain is doing while you sleep.
• My imagination and creativity.
• Finding some wonderful health related books. Once I return from my vacation, I will therefore attempt to do some natural body cleanses and I will eat a healthier meal. This I will write about at a later time.
• My inspiration wall that I completed (partially, I will keep adding to it as time goes on) a couple of days ago. I love having an inspiration wall/board because it keeps me focused. And, it never fails to give me ideas just by glancing at it.
• All of my frames arriving here in perfect condition. I love my frames, and I was worried that some of them would break. The glass breaking wouldn’t have been a big deal, but some of my frames are rather intricate, and if it would have chipped or broken, I wouldn’t have been able to replace them.
• The red old Lada car that is always parked in the same spot. I can see this car from my office and the colour combination of the red car and the green little shop right beside it, makes me rather giddy.
• Having all of my Domino magazines on my desk again.
• Candles – they’re wonderful when the power goes out and they’re actually pretty good at warming a room up, especially if you have quite a few of them lit. I especially love nice smelling candles in beautiful glass containers. I miss Chapters/Indigo because they had some of the nicer candles. Expensive, but a joyous little thing on my desk or night table.
• Little luxuries. Such as said candles, that one piece of art that seems to shine on your wall, super soft bed sheets, an excellent exacto knife, that perfect edition of your favorite book, that perfectly lined notebook (I have a thing with how small the lines in a notebook have to be).

What little luxuries do you enjoy? What are you thankful for this week?

• My stuff is coming today! All of my material belonging will be delivered to our apartment today, in the afternoon at some point. I haven’t seem my things in more than 3 months. I guess that’s not such a long time when you’re traveling, but when you’re settling in somewhere new, these things make the new place feel more like home. So, I’m very thankful for the delivery today, especially since there will be a winter coat in the boxes!

• The cat, she is the most lovable little creature in the world. Although, I’m a little worried she will intoxicate herself with water – she’s been drinking out of the tap since I woke up, almost an hour ago. I think she likes water.

• Christmas shopping has been made so much easier with Etsy. If you don’t know what Etsy is, visit the store, it’s a Handmade heaven. Anything you want, handmade by someone in the world. Either that or vintage finds, which I think is pretty neat. After all, they have typewriters for sale – I mean, really? It can’t get any better than that.

• I’m really quite thankful that they don’t start the Christmas crazy on November 1st here. Rather, the boyfriend told me that they just started putting up lights on Rustaveli. I figure they will probably start them all on December 1st, which I think is much more reasonable than November 1st. I love Christmas, don’t get me wrong, it’s my favorite time of the year, but I like to be excited about Christmas at Christmas, not in November. The excitement dies down by the time Christmas actually comes around. On that note, aside from one gift, I have yet to figure out the rest. Are you an early shopper, late shopper, last minute shopper? I definitely gravitate towards the super early shopper. I like to have presents well in advance, otherwise I start getting really stressed, and stress is not suppose to go hand in hand with Christmas.

• I’m thankful for my recent cooking streak. Normally, I hate cooking. But the last week or so, I’ve found some great recipes and I’ve tried them all out and overall they were all a success. Expect last nights stir fry. That was horrible, and I was quite upset. But I’m glad last night didn’t make me want to throw my cooking recipe folder in the trash bin and vouch never to cook anything again. Instead, I’m going to make a breakfast casserole today. Soon. Although it’s only 7am, but I’m very hungry. I skipped the stir fry last night.
• The mouse scratch pad that we bought a few weeks ago for Isis (the cat). She’s finally learning to use it, and what can I say, the mouse scratch pad is saving our couches. That’s definitely something to be thankful for.

• And on the previous note, I am thankful for the invention of plastic water guns. It has helped with teaching Isis that scratching on the couches is bad, very bad. Especially since they’re not ours.
• I’m very thankful for switching my sleeping schedule around. Now I’m usually awake at 6 in the morning, and there is something wonderfully peaceful about being awake so early. I love how quiet it is – I can sit here, listen to the wind outside and drink my cup of tea – in utter peace. It’s a wonderful time of the day.

So what are you all thankful for today? All the Americans should have tons of things to be thankful for today, seeing as it is Thanksgiving. So if you’re an American and reading this, why are you not eating turkey?

This week I am extremely thankful for not having a 9-5 job. Last night, I wasn’t able to fall asleep, so I spent most of the night up and about, browsing the world wide web until the sun came up. I then attempted to go to sleep, for about the 5th or 6th time. I lay in bed for 2 more hour before I finally drifted off. There is little that is more frustrating to me than laying in bed and not being able to sleep, and usually I don’t waste my time doing that, but I was quite tired. I just wanted to rest. Sleeping for a couple of hours at 10 in the morning would definitely not have been possible if I would have had a set hour job. So, I lay in bed for 2 hours, listening to the sound of traffic and watching the leaves outside my window dance in the wind.The sun that was shining through the leaves into my bedroom was casting a play on my walls and on my face. Although I was tired and frustrated, I couldn’t help but smile. Going to bed in the morning also reminded me of Canada. I used to work as a Night Audit at a hotel for a little while before switching back to day shifts, and although I disliked it, there was one single aspect of it that I loved. I loved going to bed in the morning. I would get off work at 7 am, drive home while everyone was waking up; and while everyone was defrosting their car windows, I would go into the warmth of my basement apartment (or sometimes frozen basement apartment), make myself some hot chocolate, turn the heater on and off to sleep I went. I loved thinking that I just finished a work day while everyone else started it.

I’m also thankful for the Undo button that magically reappeared the morning after it didn’t have a click-able option. I was writing a blog post using Scrivener. It was all ready and I was happy with it, so I copied and went to paste it into wordpress. Somehow, I had copied something other than my blog post, so I go back to copy the right thing, and my blog post was gone. I freaked out a little bit, until I realized – ah, the Undo button. Whatever I did, it will erase it. The only problem was that when I hit Edit>> I couldn’t hit Undo. I tried everything, nothing worked. Upset, I went to bed early, and by that I mean 9 in the evening. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning because of my ridiculously early night and proceeded to check what happened on the internet while I was asleep. My best friend was on Skype, which already made my early morning fantastic, since we haven’t been able to talk for what seems like months – but in reality it was only a couple of weeks. After going on about how I lost all my work the night before, I was curious again as to what I did wrong, so I tried to figure it out. I clicked around on Scrivener, and then I go to Edit>> and then there was an option! I could click Undo Paste. And, my post was back! I was ecstatic! It’s really a shame when you work on something for a while and you actually like it and then… just one click and it all vanishes (a main reason why I like the traditional paper & pen or typewriter).

Also, excitement! Goodwilli (the biggest supermarket that you can find in Georgia) had Buko (a Danish cream cheese spread)! I became obsessed with Buko the first couple of months of being here, and then all of a sudden, every place in this country stopped carrying it. It was in fact devastating. Since then, I tried other cream cheese spreads, but none compared. Yesterday while sulking about something else, the boyfriend excitedly brought a few cartons of Buko to the shopping cart. That made my evening. For breakfast today, I had a piece of bread with Buko and it never tasted better. Speaking of food, I’m glad there is a Populi (a smaller, chain supermarket) within 1 minute walking distance from our apartment, for days like today when I have cravings for Diet Coke (or, sorry, Coca Cola Light) and a Kinder Surprise egg. It’s also handy for those days when I attempt to cook something and I realize, oh… I don’t have such and such. I’m not always lucky to find such and such at Populi, but at least there is that chance that I will.

So, what are you thankful for this week? I’d love to know.

My iPod. That might seem like an overly materialistic thing to be thankful for, but I do have good reasons. Or rather, at least one good reason. To those of you who don’t know, I just moved in with my boyfriend a few months ago. No, I don’t listen to my iPod so that I won’t have to listen to him. Rather, I listen to the iPod so that my music won’t disturb his work time. At first, not being able to blast my music at any given hour of the day was something that bothered me. I’ve lived with many people before, all friends. The thing with living with friends is that we were at the same stage in life, studied together, watched movies together, worked similar hours and that of course also means that, most of the time, we also listened to music together. We’d blast whatever song we’d be loving at the moment, jump on our beds, paint our nails and converse until the wee hours of the night. Thats the beauty of being a student of the female sex.

Living with a boyfriend who has practice questions, lessons and exams to write and classes to teach is a bit different, especially if his schedule is much different than your own, which is the case with M and I. However, for my own work, I need music. Music is a major source of inspiration for me and it also helps to keep my thoughts on track when writing. That’s of course, where the iPod comes in. The iPod is something I didn’t always have, but received as a belated birthday present just a few weeks ago. It’s extremely useful to me and M, who benefits from it in the sense that he can concentrate on his work without listening to the same David Gray song 50 consecutive times.

Which leads me to another thing I am thankful for this week. David Gray. If you don’t know David Gray, please get to know him. He might not be to you what he is to me, and you may not even appreciate him at all, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give him a chance. I’m especially thankful for David Gray this week, because I’m a dreamer. Let me explain. I started my This is not America blog when M and I moved to Tbilisi. It was mainly for our friends and family so that they can keep up with us without having to write too many e-mail updates. I never intended for it to be read by others, but, I was definitely not going to complain if someone besides family and friends read it. For the longest time however, I have wanted to start a blog that I did actually intend to spread out. So, after a couple of weeks of preparing, I finally started this one. Of course, like most people I can imagine, I had visions of it becoming famous, getting book deals, and becoming the next Seth Godin. Yeah, well… that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because success just doesn’t happen overnight. It takes many months and even years for some success to show itself. And it will only show itself if you deserve it (or if you’re extremely lucky). Throughout my first few weeks of starting this blog, I was extremely discouraged. No one visited my blog, and despite leaving comments on blogs whose content I loved, no one seemed to love my content back. I’d be sitting up at 3 am writing a new post and halfway through, I would wonder what the point was? I’m not a good writer. My content is not terribly original. I’m just another blogger. Nothing sets me apart. Blah, blah, blah.

But despite my self pity, there was David Gray and Annie Lennox cheering me on with their beautiful voices. David Gray’s song Full Steam is what kept me writing, kept me ‘running full steam ahead’. And through this song and other inspiration, I came to the realization that it’s okay. It’s okay to be a no-body in the blogosphere right now. It’s okay to develop slowly. It’s okay because I have made a decision to work as hard as I can to do that which I love, and I do believe that with this passion, I will eventually get somewhere. And since I’m writing this as I am once again listening to David Gray, you can assume a couple of things. First, that I have an unhealthy obsession with David Gray. Second, that I’m still feeling discouraged, every day. But every day that I continue to give it 100% against my fear of failing, I know that I am a tiny bit closer to my goal. For now, that’s all that matters.

And what may you be thankful for today?

Photo by: catikaoe

So what am I thankful for this week?

Rain. Most of the days this week were rainy and I thoroughly enjoyed them. It’s refreshing to have some windy grey days after a sweltering summer. Although, I’m also very thankful that it wasn’t extremely cold, otherwise I would have literally turned into an ice cube. You see, my winter coat is in Rotterdam at the moment. Soon it will be in Amsterdam. Then it will go to Cologne from where it will be shipped to Tbilisi. My coat will be accompanied by pretty much all of my material possessions except for one suitcase that I had initially brought with me to Tbilisi. I figured that the whole process won’t take so long, but I forgot to incorporate people-who-hate-their-jobs-and-don’t-do-it-properly into the equation. If it weren’t for the shipping company in Netherlands, my material possessions could have already been on their way to me. But alas, things like that happen and I don’t think about it too much. Plus, the weather has been holding up decently, so why should I complain? In the worst case scenario, I will just have a nice excuse to buy a new jacket!

One other thing I’m extremely thankful for this week is my bed. About a week ago, it broke. Being in Tbilisi I didn’t think that it would be so easily fixable – I mean, I didn’t think that the company would replace it. Of course, this country proved me wrong, yet again. Whenever I think that something is not possible in Georgia, the possibility jumps up right in my face. Before the company agreed to replace it, I had started thinking about all the different ways that I could have fixed the broken bed myself, but thankfully, I didn’t have to implement any of them. This of course means that the money that would have had to go into fixing the bed can now be used for something else, like some furniture! I’d say that’s pretty exciting.

I also have to say that I’m extremely thankful to a blogger I happened to come across a couple of days ago — David Turnbull. It was through his helpful blog that I learned about some wonderful products. Right now, I am typing in a program called Scrivener (only for Mac). It has easily become my favorite writing tool. If you write for a living or write really long blog posts, or even if you’re just fed up with MSWord (because after all, it is ridiculously slow on a Mac) and want a change, I seriously recommend this program. It is not free, but at $40 it is not unaffordable. You can also try it out for 30 days before committing to buy it, so if it works for you, great, if not, you can export all of your files and you won’t lose anything. My desktop was also becoming a bit hectic – David’s blog helped with that too. Now, I only have a one icon on the desktop and all my files are extremely organized.

Lastly, I have to say that I am completely amazed by all these young bloggers out there. David Turnbull is just one example — although I’m not sure exactly how old he is, he can’t be more than 18. And yet, if you look at his website without paying attention to his photo, you would think he’s well beyond 25. David Turnbull is not the only one, the owners of PludinID and Upgrade Reality among many others are also very young bloggers with a lot of insight into life and a vast knowledge of the WWW. So, in other words, I am thankful for all these young kids who are able to educate me.

And now it’s your turn. What are you thankful for this week?

That being said, taking some time out of your day to write down the things you are thankful for requires at least some sort of routine so that you really do it every single day. I for one, do not do well with routine. I’ve tried many times but I’ve always failed. So, a little while ago, I decided to change my approach. Instead of writing every day, I will just write down a few things I’m thankful for once every week. Once a week, same day every week – that works for me. For you something completely different might work better. If you don’t know what works best for you, give it all a try. Perhaps every day, when you wake up or go to bed, spend 5 minutes and think of one or two things that you are thankful for that day. Maybe spending one day a month relaxing and having some “you” time in which you could write a list of things you can be thankful for works better. Only you know what is the best method for you.

After a while, you will have a whole list of things you are thankful for. Use this to remind yourself of the abundance you have in your life, especially on those days when getting out of bed seems impossible. Sometimes all one needs is a reminder that there are good thing in life – something that is hard to do when the mind is foggy.

So let’s start with one thing I am thankful for today, and every day.

The ability to walk – in 2003 I had surgery for CES (Cauda Equina Syndrome). If the pressure on the Cauda Equina caused by a herniated disc is not relieved within 48 hours, permanent damage is very likely. Permanent damage includes loss of bladder functions, nerve damage causing foot drops and other muscle related pain/damage, or the worst – paralysis from the waist down. I came out of the surgery 99% fine. Some weakness, but nothing noticeable. Recently, I have had another scare – the same disc that was operated on in 2003 protruded once again. Some pain, some muscle spasms, some muscle tightness to this very day – but I can still walk. And as long as I can walk, this is perhaps the number one thing I will always be thankful for. Walking is freedom for me – I want to live, to explore , and I am so grateful for my ability to walk after what I’ve gone through. I know I have been very fortunate here, not everyone with CES gets away so easily. People take walking for granted every day, but CES (or other things that impede the ability to walk) can happen to anyone – a hard fall does the trick, as in my case.

What are you thankful for today?