Blog Your Heart Challenge and Thankful November

One of my favorite blogs is Just Me, My Soldier and our 4 Little Chicks written by the sweet, funny and crafty Stephanie Howell. She has put forth a challenge to other bloggers to "blog your heart," a challenge to blog what's honest, what's real, what's in your heart. And me, I am never one to turn away from a blogging challenge, so here goes:

• I am tired. A lot. It's not my iron level or my thyroid or my blood sugars. At least I don't think so. It's life and not enough quiet time and lack of sleep and too little play. When I first started attending Dharma Zephyr, I had trouble understanding how people could fall asleep while meditating with the group. Now I fight the nods every single week. It's miserable.
• I am buried in paper. At work. On my desk at home. In my craft room. And I hate it. It gives me the shivers. I should put in effort to fix this problem, but I'm tired. (See #1.)
• Recently, my uncle passed away, furthering my desire to connect more with my extended family, to reach out to them, but I haven't. (See #1.)
• I have slowly started losing touch with the outside world. Two years ago, I read the paper cover to cover daily and Newsweek and Time every week. I followed politics (maybe too much). I was in touch. Not so much anymore. We quit Time, and I haven't even opened the last four issues of Newsweek. And you know what? I don't really care. (See #1.)
• I do, however, read crafting blogs and humor blogs and parenting blogs and educational blogs and psychology blogs and dharma blogs. On my phone. Before bed. When I should be sleeping. (See #1.) And I love it.

For this month, I want to focus on that which I feel gratitude for. Here are today's thankful November items:

1. A patient co-teacher
2. Watching Sean the Sheep with the whole family tonight
3. Spending yesterday doing puzzles with Sawyer
4. My parents and Jason's mom for taking care of Roz after school this week
5. My own courage to speak face-to-face with a higher up about what has been really bothering me
6. My higher up for his open-door policy and his ear and his calm demeanor as we disagreed
7. Photoshop Elements for finally running (even though it promptly crashed - at least it was running)
8. Spaghetti for dinner two nights in one week!
9. Time to create a syllabus for my seniors
10. Roz and Sawyer's pictures that they drew for me and their dad
11. A new dentist who didn't make me want to bolt out of the office and who understood all the concerns about my previous dentist. (That's a-whole-nother blog post.)

What are you thankful for?