I thought I would try a themed Thankful Thursday today….one around my office. (Been in here for over 3 hours so far today.)

I am thankful for this wonderful job I have, playing and working with words, a job that allows me to work from home in a beautiful office filled with books and paper and all the touchy feely things I love best.

I am thankful for the new roof we put on. A stone coated steel roof. My office has a high beam ceiling and the old shingles were just piled on top of that. No insulation. In the summer the room was an oven and in the winter you could feel the columns of cold air drifting down. But since they put the new roof on it is pleasant. The AC is running on the house but even then I used to sweat in the office. Not now.

I am thankful for all the fun pieces of old office furniture and accessories I have been able to gather here to give it warmth…the old oak teacher’s desk, the antique library table, the ancient file cabinet that matches the desk. The old botanical prints that are waiting for me to hang them on the wall. The old oak recipe box that holds my plotting index cards and all the little knick knack dust catchers that make me smile.

I am thankful for the ergonomic setup that helps me hurt less – (though today something is funky and my neck hurts) the chair that adjusts a gazillion different ways. The roller mouse keyboard that is no strain on my arm and should. The keyboard tray that lets me use a negative tile which reduces the strain on my wrists.

But I think today I am most thankful for the view outside my window. From the computer desk I can’t quite see the bird bath or the bubbling rock (which means there is another water feature in our future) but I can see the birds swooping down as they race the length of the yard and come in for a landing. I can see them up in the Japanese Maple tree flitting from branch to branch, looking for bugs. I see the mourning doves, three of them, who have decided under the young Ironwoods is a nice place to take a nap and a fourth one wandering the path like an old man in search of his lost glasses. There’s a cabbage white butterfly that’s hovering over the monkey flower just at the edge of my view and an orange skipper resting on the coffee berry. The carpenter bees are working the tall yarrow at the back fence and the hummingbird is darting from the fuchsias to the twinberry and back again.

Life is good.