Gratitude journal: Cheapest surgery ever

My dog had surgery to remove a wart from head today. The last time she had surgery, it was on her spine, and it was incredibly expensive. It drained our entire honeymoon savings account, which had been earned entirely through poker. The cost was in the thousands of dollars.

I had no idea how much today’s surgery would cost. Oddly enough, we had forgotten to ask during the initial visit to the veterinarian, perhaps because we have become numb to vet costs. Before their records were digitized, my veterinarian informed me that our dog had the thickest file in the practice.  We have spent so much money on our dog’s health that there have been times when the vet didn’t charge us for a visit or a medication simply out of the kindness of her heart.

As I drove over to pick up the yesterday, I decided upon a probable range for the cost for today’s surgery:

$200-$700.

Anywhere in that range and I would be happy.

The actual cost:

$149.

I danced a little jig as my dog and I made our way across the parking lot and to the car.

Gratitude journal: New shoes

Tonight I am grateful that my daughter finally agreed to wear a new pair of shoes today after months of insisting upon wearing the same old pair. This decision was made only after my wife and I engaged in some serious mental jujitsu with her, causing her to at last acknowledge that her old shoes were falling apart.

The joy of new shoes. This is what parenthood has brought to me.

Gratitude journal: Well timed stranger danger (and a little parental cruelty)

Tonight I am grateful for my daughter’s natural born instinct for stranger danger. As I was attempting to get her into the car yesterday, she discovered a brick walkway, a wooden bench, puffy clouds and a plane flying overhead that were eminently more appealing than the car seat, Cheerios and book that I had offered.

As I was debating the merits of leaving with her, a car pulled up behind mine and parked. A gentleman stepped out of the vehicle. Clara stopped running on the bricks and turned a wary eye toward the man.

“Hey, Clara,” I said. “We don’t know this man. Do you want to get in the car?”

She said yes, and a minute later we were off.

It might have been a little mean to emphasize the presence of the stranger and play upon her fears a bit, but I was hungry, it was cold, and I knew that it would work.

Well timed stranger danger. Perfect for getting your three year old into the car.

Gratitude journal: A daughter’s excitement

Tonight I am grateful for the moment when I step through the door of my home and my door runs to me, screaming, “Daddy!” She throws herself into my arms and we embrace, and then while I’m still holding her, she grabs my face with her little hands and begins telling me something important from her day.

Today is was a story about one of her friends at school. Sometimes it’s about the toys that she was playing with prior to my entry. Other times it’s about Elysha.

It is quite often the best sixty seconds of my day.

Gratitude journal: Unexpected empathy

Tonight I am grateful to my students, who knew better than to tease me or even mention the Super Bowl to me. Two kids came in offering me a hug, but not another word was spoken about the debacle. I overheard one girl telling a small group of kids that it would be unwise to tease me about the Patriots loss, so perhaps there was a bit of fear mixed in with their empathy, but either way, I was grateful for their understanding and compassion on what was honestly a difficult day for me.

Gratitude journal: A safe arrival, a game of poker and an honest-to-goodness resurrection

It’s been three days since I have expressed my gratitude in written form. It’s been fairly busy and crazy days.

On Thursday, I was grateful to be reunited with my brother after more than five years apart. I saw my brother at my mother’s funeral in 2007 and then did not see or hear from him again until this week. Family members attempted to locate him over the past five years without success, so two years ago, I began operating under the assumption that he was probably dead. His reappearance came as both a shock and a happy surprise.

I planned on writing a full account of the almost unbelievable confluence of events that led to our unexpected reunion, but I have instead decided to write the story with the hopes of placing it in a newspaper. I will write a brief account of the reunion in a future blog post but save the details for the newspaper piece.

On early Friday morning, I was grateful to arrive home safely after almost five hours of driving solo from New York City. I left the 92nd Street Y in lower Manhattan around 10:00 PM and spent more than an hour in standstill traffic on the West Side Highway before finally getting underway.

The drive through New York and Connecticut on the Merritt Parkway was not an easy one.  In constant danger of falling asleep at the wheel, I pulled off the road at every rest area along the way, parked the car until the glow of a street light, and ran around the parking lot until the combination of exercise and cold temperatures had reinvigorated me. When I finally arrived home just after 2:00 AM, I was thankful to have made it home in one piece.

On Saturday I was grateful for my ability to play poker, a game which allows both friends and strangers to gather around a table and spend hours eating, drinking, competing, and engaging in meaningful conversation.

Had I been invited to a stranger’s house for dinner and conversation, I would have assumed that the invitee was a lunatic, but add a simple form of competition and the invitation becomes perfectly normal.

This is how guys operate. Give us something to do and we will happily spend hours together without complaint.

Thankfully, I am a good poker player, so I can usually make some money in the process, though this was not the case last night.

Still, I was happy to play.

Gratitude journal: Visiting the fish

Tonight I am grateful for the enormous aquariums positioned outside The Rainforest Café, a restaurant located in Westfarms Mall in Farmington, CT. My daughter adores those fish. Tonight she specifically requested to visit them, and wanting to dine out, we obliged.

As a parent, there’s nothing better than seeing joy plastered on your child’s face. Those tropical fish do it every time.

Gratitude journal (with a sprinkle of spite): Fountain soda and NOT COFFEE

Tonight I am grateful for the joy of the unexpected Diet Coke that was delivered to me this afternoon. It was having an especially challenging day at school, mostly the result of an unexpected deadline and significantly reduced time frame in order to meet the demand, when my colleague surprised me with a large, plastic cup of fountain soda from Burger King.

There’s something about a fountain soda that makes it far superior to any Diet Coke found in a can or bottle.

It was just what I needed. My mood improved almost immediately and I found myself better able to power through the rest of the day, easily meeting my unexpected deadline and teaching the hell out of the rest of my day.

Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference.

Perhaps this is how most people feel about about coffee, except I have never spoken ad nauseum about my love for, need for or addiction to fountain soda. This is the first time I have ever written about the subject, and it was not expressed by something like this:

Need. Fountain. Soda. Now.

Or this:

If I don’t get a fountain soda soon, look out!

Or this:

This is what I call a two cup, 64-ounce fountain soda day.   

So yeah, I was grateful for that fountain soda surprise today.

But more importantly, I’m also grateful that I’ve never spoken about coffee or any other beverage as if it is a legitimately interesting subject for discussion or something that anyone wants to hear.

Gratitude journal: Many hands thrust Budo and his friends into the light

Tonight I am grateful for the many, many people around the world who are working hard to put my next book, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, into readers’ hands. Today I exchanged emails with my Spanish translator, who wanted to better understand the intricacies of, among other things, bathroom bowling (the act in which you hold someone’s head in a toilet while flushing it). Her attention to detail and desire to get the translation right is greatly appreciated.

And from Australia comes this amusing tee-shirt design, which is planned along with a similar postcard campaign, as part of the launch of my book Down Under.

So many smart, creative and clever working on behalf of me and my characters leaves me feeling but humbled and incredibly fortunate this evening.

Gratitude journal: Unexpected reader response

Tonight I am grateful to the readers who take the time to write to me after reading my books. I received three emails today from readers who recently finished one or both of my books, which is a lot of responses for a single day but not uncommon at all. I probably hear from about half a dozen readers a week via email and Twitter, but today was an unexpected bounty of generosity and kindness. Before publishing my first book, I could have never imagined how often a reader will sit down and write an email to an author after reading his or her book. It was shocking. It both humbles me as an author and shames me as a reader, for I had never even thought of doing this until I began receiving reader responses myself.

Best of all, these emails always seem to arrive at just the right time:

The manuscript I am working on has hit a snag.

The revision process for a book is grinding on forever.

My plans for spending the entire day writing have been quashed by the unexpected events of life.

Fear of failure has begun to creep into my soul.

These are the moments that I often need a pick-me-up, and yesterday was one of those days.

These three emails came at just the right moment.

I am so grateful to these readers for their outpouring of support.

Gratitude journal: Recycled furniture

Someday my wife and I will spend the money to furnish our home with new furniture. This will probably happen when the children are a little older and less likely to ruin it. Maybe in our next home.

Until that time, I am grateful for the friends who have so generously passed on their furniture to us as they upgrade their own. There are a few items that we actually purchased in the house, but much of our furniture is comprised of hand-me-downs, including the items brought over by our friends today.

Gratitude journal: Patience

Tonight I am grateful to the patience that I have garnered over thirteen years of teaching and a lifetime of struggle. It was this storehouse of patience that allowed me to give our daughter the time she needed to calm down from a temper tantrum to end all temper tantrums. This was a knock-down, drag-out, floor-pounding event of epic proportions, centered upon Clara’s desire to wear her baby piggy shirt to bed even though it was covered in maple syrup.

It took her quite a while to finally calm herself, and a younger, less experienced version of myself would have tried to soothe her myself or pick her up and demand she finish getting ready for bed.

Instead, I allowed her to sit on the floor until she was ready to move past the tantrum on her own. As a result, our evening ended on a high note, with the reading of a book and a discussion about Clara’s pie-in-the-sky plans for her coming sibling.

Patience.

A precious commodity that I thankfully possess in great quantities. That is what I am most grateful for this evening.

Gratitude journal: Dental technology

Tonight I am grateful for advances in dental technology that allow me to still have my teeth today. In a 1988 car accident that left me temporarily dead, my bottom row of teeth were dislodged when my jaw struck the steering on my way into and through the windshield. The entire row of teeth were literally floating around in my mouth until dental surgeons wired them down in hopes that roots would re-establish themselves and I would be able to keep at least a few of them.

Yesterday’s dentist appointment confirmed once again that the surgery was a success. Since 1988 I have required just two root canals as a result of the accident. One was done a year after the accident and the other was done three days after my honeymoon. Every other tooth, except for the one I swallowed during the accident, is still healthy and strong.

Twenty-five years later, I find myself wishing I knew those surgeons’ names so I could thank them for their efforts.

Gratitude journal: Andy Mayo

Tonight I am grateful to Andy Mayo, the person who initially conceived of The Clowns, the rock opera for which I subsequently wrote the book. While I have enjoyed the writing process immensely and am proud of the work that we have produced, none of this would have ever happened without Andy. Though the plot and characters have changed significantly since his original conception, Andy was the one who gave the project structure and backbone.  He handed me the vessel into which I poured my words.

And that was just the beginning.

He wrote and recorded the music, initially singing all the parts himself until managing to assemble a stable of signers to fill the parts.

He forged a relationship with The Playhouse on Park, and he was the driving force behind getting our read-through produced.

He assembled and rehearsed the band.

He designed the posters, post cards and other promotional material for the read through.

He filled many of the seats during our two performances.

I’m sure he did things that I am not even aware of.

For my part, I changed the story a bit, created a new protagonist, fleshed out his original vision of the characters, wrote the dialogue, and apparently changed the show from a drama to a comedy in the process.

But that’s about it.

Andy was the person who made things happen.

Andy was the one who moved this project from imagination to action.

Tonight we met with the producers of the playhouse in order to receive feedback from the read-through and discuss the next stages of the project.  At one point, Andy requested a deadline from the producers, citing his inability to get me to work without one.

In that moment, I realized that Andy has not only been managing this project, but in many ways, he has been managing me as well. Keenly aware of my limited free time and multitude of projects on my plate (including teaching his daughter), he has somehow found a way to keep me focused and invested in this project when other things could have easily pulled me away.

I probably haven’t make things easy for Andy, and yet through it all, he has been positive, energetic, enthusiastic and the consummate partner.

The man has great passion for this project, and I am so grateful to have him on my team.

Or more appropriately, I am so grateful to be on his team.

Gratitude journal: A ticket and a kaleidoscope

I forgot to write a gratitude journal last night, so this post will include things from yesterday and today. Yesterday, I was grateful for my Patriots season ticket, which I hung around my neck as I emptied my rental car and returned it to Enterprise. The woman at the counter saw the ticket dangling from its plastic sheath and asked if I had attended the game on Sunday.

Five minutes later she told me that she was giving me a 25% discount on the cost of the rental.

“Patriots fans need to stick together,” she explained.

I was then driven to Pep Boys by another Enterprise employee who was also a Patriots fan. We talked about the game for the entire ride.

When I arrived at Pep Boys, I was met by the manager who I had been coordinating my repairs for the past several days. The job was two days overdue, and he knew that the delay had been forced to rent the car in order to attend the Patriots game on Sunday. He is also a Patriots fan, and after chatting with him about the game for fifteen minutes, he reduced my $2,300 head gasket repair bill by more than $400.

When his boss asked him about the reason for such a large discount, he said, “Customer satisfaction. And he’s a Patriots fan.”

Season tickets aren’t cheap, but they saved me a lot of money yesterday. In fact, they made up for almost half their cost.

Tonight I am grateful for my daughter’s love of her kaleidoscopes.

Clara listens to recorded books, uses an iPhone and iPad with surprising ease and even pounds away on our keyboards from time to time, but she is still mesmerized by something as simple as a kaleidoscope.

A good reminder of the simple pleasures of life.

Gratitude journal: Patriots

Tonight I am grateful for the New England Patriots, who are once again heading to the Super Bowl after an emotionally draining game in Foxboro today. More than six hours after the game ended, I am finally home and still on edge.

It was an exciting game, but give me a blow out any day.

This will be the Patriots seventh Super Bowl in franchise history and their fifth in the previous decade. They have won three NFL titles thus far.

Impressive to say the least.

When I first became a fan of the Patriots, the team was not a winner. Games were held in the old Foxboro Stadium, which was little more than a concrete bowl surrounded by a dirt parking lot. Victories were few and far between, and the playoffs were a rarity indeed. In 1992, when I was living less than a mile from the stadium, the team went 1-15 and suffered through a locker room sex scandal that caused me to give up my season tickets.

There were more bad times than good during those years, and I suffered through many years of frustration.

Even when the team went to their first Super Bowl in 1986, they were embarrassed by the Chicago Bears.

I am extremely fortunate that the franchise has turned around and become one of the most winning teams in NFL history, and I count myself lucky to have been able to attend games on a regular basis for the last three years as a season ticket holder once again and prior to that on a less frequent but fairly consistent basis.

I will never forget the excitement and joy in watching the Patriots win the AFC championship tonight, and I am so grateful to have been there to witness this historic game.

Gratitude journal: Fraidy-cats

Tonight I am grateful to all the people of Connecticut who find it too dangerous or too inconvenient to leave their homes as the clouds overhead dump three or four inches of snow on our highways and streets. I get so much done during a snowstorm. Super markets, gas stations, banks, and restaurants are all devoid of the masses that would normally impede my progress, particularly on a Saturday.

Instead, I am left to complete my errands quickly and efficiently.

It’s like living through an apocalypse except for all the death and inconvenient closing of businesses.

Nick Bottom saves the day

Tonight I am thankful for Nick Bottom, the weaver-turned-actor from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. When every other joke or bit of amusement is flying over the heads of my fifth grader students, I can always rely on Nick Bottom’s amusing last name to garner a laugh and justify my claim that this play is a comedy.

Every time I say his name, regardless of how many times I’ve said it already, someone in the class snickers.

Which is shocking considering the teacher reading to them is named Mr. Dicks.

You’d think my students would become immune to amusing last names, but I guess this is Shakespeare. He’s a master.

Even when it comes to silly names.

Gratitude journal: My wife’s tears

Tonight I am grateful for my wife’s propensity to become teary-eyed when one of her students experiences success. Today I watched her eyes fill up with tears in front of my class after examining the recent scores of a student with whom we both work. She’s gone from classroom teacher to reading teacher and is now studying to become a teacher of students whose first language was something other than English.

Regardless of her teaching capacity or type of student, I don’t expect these emotional displays to end anytime soon.

Nor should they.

Gratitude for gloves and mittens

Tonight I am grateful for my gloves and mittens. I was reminded last night that I did not own gloves or mittens for much of my childhood. Instead, we wore socks on our hands in the winter.

Gloves and mittens were presumably too expensive for a family with a very limited means. We were also fairly irresponsible in terms of keeping track of our belongings as children.

Had we been given mittens (and perhaps we had been given them at some point), we would have likely lost them.

You’d think that kids who had so little would take better care of their things, but that just wasn’t the case. Having so little, we placed considerably less value on personal possessions.

Stuff never meant very much to us. So the lack of gloves and mittens seemed normal at the time.

It was normal.

But those socks never kept my hands warm or dry, no matter how many pairs I wore at one time.

Today I own a pair of $65 mittens. I wear them to Patriots games, and my hands are always toasty warm. I also own a pair of fur-lined gloves, a pair of gloves that can be used on a touch screen, and two other random pairs. I may even own driving gloves, though I’m not sure where they might be. I also have a pair of mittens that can be buttoned back in order to expose my fingers if needed.

Compared to my childhood, I am drunk on mittens and gloves.

More important, my children have enough mittens and gloves to keep her hands warm as well (as soon as she agrees to wear them on a regular basis).

Kids can be quite annoying when it comes to donning winter gear, as I have learned.

So tonight I am grateful for my bounty of winter garb. I made it through childhood just fine and have no complaints, but it’s nice to know that my daughter won’t be pulling long, white athletic socks over the sleeves of her coat in order to stay warm.