Thankful For What We Have

Like one, very old computer. Brad has been the only person using this computer for his school work and study and "The hunting game".  That is, until last night when we decided to see if it would actually still send a command to the printer and create a successful copy. Driven by sheer need and too much pride to ask one of our better equipped children to help, we gave it a try.  I even got Word to work. And the printer even had enough ink in it to make seventeen copies of our needed document. Wow! The computer is an old laptop using Windows XP? Really? I don't know, I think so. Amazing. The whole keyboard is functional. But we have it ponied to a newer screen on the side because the laptop screen is cracked or smudged. That's one of the things I am deciding to be thankful for. 

I took these pictures with my new Android and loaded them to a new post from there and saved it. Then I came over here to the old computer and logged into blogspot and found the draft.  Lo and behold I can edit/write/post.  Thankful for that, too.

And for the rain. It's the middle of August and the lawn and garden are lovely, green and beautiful.

   

This picture does not really show off this row of flowers properly. I am inordinately proud of this but I have to give the credit to where it is due. Many years ago we were at Lester and Katie's house to Sunday lunch and she had a row of foundation flowers done exactly like this with the red mulch and the same variety of flowers. I have never forgotten how elegant they were. These are a perfect, too.

  

Contentment had completely eluded me the last couple of days. Our basement bedroom bugs me. We can hardly keep it decently dry and the spiders love that. Looking up cottage master bedrooms on Pinterest wasn't helping much. Imagine that! But I did see one picture that inspired me to go down there and take my cleaning stuff and vacuum sweeper along. You never know what a good cleaning will do besides reduce the spider population. One thing led to another and I soon had clean surfaces, fresh dresser scarves and tidy-ness. Except that rusting, dusty stove looked terrible. I don't know why it has taken me so long to realize that a little stove blacking and a lot of elbow grease would restore our beautiful fireplace to loveliness again. It's the old discontentment problem. And I believe I have found the cure for it. Oh sure, I would still love to have a new, north-woodsy, decorated master bedroom with floor to ceiling windows and white carpet and a huge stone fireplace with a carefully appointed bathroom attached. But the truth is, even then I'd have to decide when enough is enough and be content. I can save Elv a lot of money and headache just by getting straight to the point, today. It's not half bad anyway, after it's been cleaned and rejuvenated. 

                                          Church picnic on the patio at our house. It was great fun.