Grateful

     G is for Grateful.  I am a lucky lady with many things and people to be grateful for.  Even when I'm having a pity party I can snap myself out of it by just looking around me.  So many obvious things. Two days ago PH and I celebrated 42 years together.  We started out as just we two and are now a family of eleven. Our kids are healthy and employed, our grands are all brilliant and beautiful (of course.)  The list goes on,  we have our health, our heads, our home and so very many lifelong friends.

     Among those friends I can have a glass of wine with in person, I am so very grateful for my bloggy friends.  I started this blog a few years ago to meet quilters because I was living in that black hole of quilters I talked about in my Community post.  We were living in the country and it was lonely.  I always said of living there "I'm never bored but I AM lonely."  How could I be bored with thousands of books on the shelves and just as big of a quilt stash?  When you're working on something artsy you need feedback and ideas and brainstorming and laughing and sharing and chocolate and wine.

     One night I started clicking through Carol's sidebar of blogs from Attic Window Quilt Shop because the store was doing away with paper newsletters and Carol was handling their information through a blog. I found myself in Australia. 

     Now, ever since I was ten years old I've wanted to see Australia. But the plane ticket was always expensive enough to seem completely out of reach.  Still is.  Even more so now.  

     Carol lives very near me but we didn't meet in person for years. I start my day reading her announcements and show and tells for Attic Windows.  I reached out to her with bloggy questions and she was ever so available and helpful when I had panic questions about how to do something.  Like how do I get people to read me and follow me?  I didn't want to be talking to myself.  I do that all the time without the keyboard!

     The first Australian blog I found was Chookyblue's.  It was through her sidebar I discovered other people and more and more and then Snappy Friends, and I shyly asked if I could play along.  She, a quilty blogger and thus a welcoming person, said yes.  

     That started it. Chooky (not her real name, by the way) accepted my inclusion in Snappy Friends,  in the Christmas exchange, she always helped when I had other bloggy questions, like how to put something on my sidebar.  Get this,  one night she and I sat at our computers, on opposite sides of the earth, while she set up a new photo page for me!  Imagine!  I was giddy.  She's confided in me when times were hard and that honored me.

     There's Jenny, who along with her husband, taught me how to bone a turkey, and Liz and Peg and Julie and Maria and Jo and so many more!  

     Awhile ago I met Susan when she commented on a post.  She said something that made me think of this post for my 'G.'  Susan and I jumped off the cliff holding hands.  Never in my life have I met someone so completely like me, so much so I swear we were separated at birth.  I checked my side to see if there's a scar from the separation of my siamese twin.  She commented on one of my blogs and that was it.  Long sharings and discussions by email.

     Taking nothing away from my friends here, my lifelong friends, for I couldn't live without them, I am so very grateful for the friends I met on the other side of the world.