We have so much to be thankful for. All of us.

It’s Sunday night.  Alexa is fast asleep after a day filled with swimming, football, outdoor adventures, books, and sticker fun.  I’m supposed to be working right now.  Ha!  Instead I am drinking a rather large glass of red wine, writing in my blog, trying to drown out my sorrows since George left the country this morning, yet again.  In typical Alyssa fashion, I let my stress and sadness get the best of me and become the culprit of bowing out on one of my most amazing girl friends night as we were supposed to attend the odd Roger Waters Pink Floyd the Wall Concert together.  She still went with another friend.  Glad she still enjoyed it, shame I missed it.  Funny enough, although it may look like quite the opposite at the moment, I’m actually looking forward to some time to myself this week.  I think I just needed today to be down.  Isn’t it okay to be down sometimes?  Contrary to most of my blog entries (I use my blog as an outlet), I tend to always try to keep busy or stay upbeat every day for me, for Alexa, for everyone, but maybe I deserve a day here and there to be sad.  Maybe I can even eat something bad when I’m sad like some salt and vinegar chips or something.  In the movies they eat ice cream.  As ironically as it sounds after mentioning my bowl of a glass of red wine and my random organic salt and vinegar chip fix, I am looking forward to a nice long week of veggie juice detox and full-on athletic training.  Oh and of course, as you know, coupled with loads of work, classes, bills, house work, and all the other day-to-day life shit we Americans attempt to cram into our lives.  If you know me at all and my packed ass schedule, you will be shocked to know I’ve been considering trying to squeeze in swimming lessons for Alexa (again), guitar lessons and French lessons for me, and even kite boarding lessons (something I’ve wanted to do since I was 25 years old).  My mother when she was visiting a few weeks ago said to me quite a few times how I need to stop always being in such a rush.  My life is always in such a rush, rushing to my next thing I’ve crammed into mine (and Alexa’s) busy ass day.  But that’s just it, besides a few things out of our control; this is mostly self inflicted stress.  I mean, it is so important to recognize how lucky we are to have our health, our youth (yes, that’s a state of mind), our family, and our friends.  I am grateful to have food on our plate and grateful for our jobs and our home.  There’s so much love surrounding our family (although our family is wide spread across the hemisphere at the moment) it would be selfish and disgraceful to constantly focus in on any of our petty superficial bullshit.  I know it is okay for me to deeply miss my husband in Amsterdam; my brother, niece, and nephew in Texas; my parents in Texas; my mother-in-law in New York; my beautiful daughters-in-law in London; my smart and talented son-in-law in Boston; and all my friends and family scattered about the world… but, thankfully, we are all connected through the amazing energy of love.  What if we were living in Haiti or New Orleans or Thailand when natural disasters hit and we lost each other and all that we knew of life?  What if we were “lower on the chain of life” as animals whose children are ripped away from them or homes are destroyed or lives are slaughtered for reasons of human entertainment or “gain” or land “development”?  What if.  We have so much to be thankful for.  All of us.