Things I am thankful for

I am so grateful for some smaller things this year. (Thanks go to pinkrhino for this nudge.) A quick list of things I'm glad for:

1. Soap. With lovely warm water, it lathers well, and, best of all, I haven't gotten sick this fall because of it. Almost every winter, I get sick, but this year, I am breathing easily. Every breath feels so good on some of these chill days. Every stride reminds me that I could go do things, make things, and still be standing happily at the end of it. Everything feels like potential -- because of something as small as soap.
   
   All over the CityTech campus, they have installed pumps of alcohol along with reminders everywhere to wash your hands, and everyone has seen this and made use of the system. So everyone has the gift of health. Because of soap and alcohol.
   
   Quoting Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto, there was a health study in a third-world country, where people were overrun by impetigo (a bacterial skin infection), diarrhea, and a series of other illnesses. Healthcare workers got Proctor & Gamble to deliver various kinds of premium soap, with antibacterial stuff and without, and regardless of the type of soap, they told people to wash more and more specifically -- before prepping food, after the bathroom, with full lather and rubbing. Rates of illness dropped by half. Half! That is insane. This might be a rate that is up there with getting a flu shot.
   
   
2. Shelter. It is really cold outside -- pleasantly chill, for those of us with winter coats, and we knitters who have carefully made sure to have beautiful, soft merino/alpaca gloves and neckwarmers and dry socks that resist water. I even made a comment to sir_graeme and muskatgumi about how easy it should be to get food if you were homeless, because bakeries regularly just throw out their bagels and such, if they haven't sold at the end of the day.
   
   But then I think about people who haven't the emotional or intellectual resources to figure that sort of thing out, and if you don't have a coat... I saw someone wadded up in newspapers the other day, shivering, and his dirty fingers were alternately too red and whitish, which made the healthcare professional in me want to cringe. (Trapped air is very warm, which is why you see homeless folk with piles of newspapers around them -- wool is way better at it than newspaper, but some people take what they get.) I thought, "Good god, they have homeless shelters in this city."
   
   Shelters have waiting lists, though. Shelters don't always accommodate people with mental health issues. They are short on funding.
   
   So the reminder of what it would be like to be without shelter -- without my current mind and coat -- is a little like the reminder of what it's like once you've climbed a mountain. You're glad you never fell down very far, and then you're exhilarated to be at the top and to have ramen for lunch.
   
   
3. On a less basic level, I was in the grocery store the other day, and there were these still-beautiful, winking red-and-green apples, piled up more haphazardly than usual. They were sort of precariously perched, and it reminded me: apples are an autumnual fruit, but they were still there. And I was glad for modern transport and delayed cycles, so that I could have one perfect, crisp, sweet apple with a wedge of sharp cheddar. I was glad that I could have my fruit, shipped in from who knows where -- clementines, sharply orange in their small crates, pineapples, mangoes, exotic things like that.
   
   
4. Bread. It is a marvel. Fresh-baked from the oven, it is yeasty, with a teensy bit of crust, and it is soft and filled with sourdough flavor. I have been trying to be a little more meat-consuming lately, and bread is what fills the holes. To most of the United States, "bread" is what you buy from the supermarket -- it's tasteless, overly chewy wonderbread or mealy whole wheat without any of the flavor of the whole nuts and grains inside of it. But here, bread is baked that morning -- it is aromatic, and it binds our household together. With some butter, or some roasted, savory-sweet garlic that is sensual like anything, it is the perfect food.
   
   
5. Perfect yarn. Modern yarn -- soft, filled with exotic fibers like alpaca and cashmere -- are a far cry from the scratchy woolies of yesteryear, and they make knitting into something that used to be really important (making clothes, selling them to feed your children) into something that is a luxury pasttime, thanks to planes that ship things from far-off places like the mountains that bred goats so that we could pull their beards so we could get a little bit of cashmere.
   
   I love this luxury so much. I made a handpainted, mottled-and-surprisingly-gradient neckwarmer in shades of pink and purple and red, and these alpaca fibers -- imported from far away, dyed in colors that used to be royally hard to find -- are gracing my mother's neck and face, keeping her shielded, far away from the dangers of winter. I made my grandmother a mohair, light-as-air scarf that glittered in the light, in colors deeper than rubies and wine.
   
   
6. Circles in which you can share your extremes of thought. I went to a class with regyt yesterday, and while it is disconcerting to only share stories about one side of yourself, that one side is important to share. Without it, we can't be as free to be sexy, expressive, creative, whatever, because people don't have the information, the peer support, the role models that they need.
   
   I have been grumpy before, complaining that the internet only captures pieces of ourselves. (Of course, I guess I forgot the bit where we only share pieces of ourselves *anywhere*.) And it may indeed be true that only bits and pieces of ourselves leak out -- but the bits that we do get down on our electronic screens are important. They inspire others.
   

That's just a little bit of what's been on my mind lately -- so much gratitude for small factors and conveniences, and wonder, too, at how amazing it really all is.

Attempting to overcome perfectionism

I saw sunflowereyed today, and she has the coolest purple glasses. Her green eyes sparkle in them, behind the shimmering lenses and fringed by the wisps of elfin hair she currently sports. I wanted a camera. I also saw: a lady with the most awful, eyesearingly pink hat imaginable (it was so awful it was photogenic), sunflowereyed's exceedingly enthusiastic puppy's nose, and turquoise salt scattered on the street, making a small, haphazard elf circle on the black pavement.

I wanted to break out the camera, but I've been afraid to take photos because of the amount of investment in Photoshop that I feel I have to do in order to really put up good shots. I have been overrun by perfectionism, the sense that these ordinary things are "not good enough" somehow to love, even though I clearly do love them. So I'm describing it all here for you, but...

underwatercolor and other photographers, what would you do?