but what to say?

After some internal debate over what the 'theme' of my blog should be, I've settled on this: gratitude. Ideally, I'll find one thing to be grateful for every day (or every week as it may turn out) and blog about it. I can't claim that the idea is remotely original — in fact, my mom keeps a gratitude journal and I'm totally stealing the idea from her. That said, here is gratitude #1:

On my run tonight I passed this cute little house that has had a 'for rent' sign up for months. From the first time I saw this house, I wanted to live there. In fact, I made up a tune in my head with the digits of the phone number and sang it to myself all the way home. (When I called though, the rent was way too high — the man started negotiating pricing, but I panicked for some reason, made up an excuse about an imaginary roommate and hung up). But tonight, the sign was gone.

At first I was sad. I've had 'house lust' for the past year or so. I daydream about how nice it would be to live someplace with a big yard for my unborn dog, and a grill for barbecues, just generally someplace with over 600 square feet. But about a mile later, I ran past a house with about 16 bags of yard trimmings stacked in front, an abandoned rake and scattered pile of debris in the middle of the sidewalk. And I had to laugh. Occasional gardening would be nice — but bags and bags of twigs... not my thing. So today, I'm grateful for my teeny, tiny patio that only requires biannual sweeping. It was a gentle reminder that the grass is greener on the other side, sometimes quite literally.
[caption: some tulips in front of my apartment that I did not plant]