Category: Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another entry in my Grateful Heart Monday series, where gratitude is always the only focus of my writing, which for today is for the meal my partner Chris prepared this year for a few friends and I on Thanksgiving Day and the day trip we took together the next day for my first visit ever to the Columbus Zoo.

While my entry two days ago talked much about the sadness I felt during Thanksgiving weekend, I wanted to shift the focus today onto what gratitude I had during the same holiday weekend. Ironically, Chris and I weren’t even originally meant to be home for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. We had reservations at a bed and breakfast on the coast of Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, COVID thwarted that, which left us home for the holiday. But, instead of choosing to dine out locally as an alternative, we opted to have a hearty Thanksgiving meal in the cozy confines of our home instead.

Chris is a wonderful cook I must say. He truly has the patience and joy for it, while I, on the other hand, most certainly don’t. Which is precisely why I was filled with plenty of gratitude for the bountiful traditional Thanksgiving feast he prepared for the two of us and the two of our friends on Thanksgiving Day. His delicious meal ultimately reminded me of the ones my Grandmother prepared at her home for our family during my childhood. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that the 14lb turkey Chris cooked was perfectly prepared! Add in the homemade mac and cheese and deviled eggs that our friend Manny brought for the feast and the homemade pumpkin pie that our friend Frank brought to finish things off, I couldn’t be more grateful for the abundance of great food that day. And there was even a bonus piece of gratitude with the meal when our friend Denise stopped over later that night and brought us an incredibly tasty chocolate pie to enjoy, along with the pecan pie we had purchased at a local bakery.

As for the day after Thanksgiving, typically I hit a movie or two in the theater, dine out at some restaurant, and maybe even do a little shopping if motivated enough to catch one of those big sales. This year due to COVID, we decided to try something entirely different by taking a road trip from Toledo to the Columbus Zoo. Chris had never been there before, which was surprising to hear given he’s lived in Ohio his entire life. I had never been there either, so it was something new for the both of us. I was most definitely concerned though about both of our health issues, as lately our physical pain levels seem to be matching each other’s. He presently has been dealing with bone spurs in his lower back, which are going to be operated on in January, which is why he decided to get a motorized wheelchair once we arrived at the zoo. I, on the other hand, motivated myself to walk the entire zoo on foot. For as difficult as that was, I was grateful I did it, as it helped to elevate my spirit from what it had been that morning. Truth be told, I had almost let my pain fully govern my actions that morning by not going anywhere. Thus, I’m glad I didn’t listen to it because at the zoo, I saw many things I’d never seen before with the coolest one being a large tiger talking to Chris each time his motorized cart made this high pitch noise as he moved it backward. It was rather comical to witness. The second coolest thing I saw was a parent polar bear and its offspring playing quite roughly together. When the parent stood fully up on its legs, it was an amazing spectacle! And while our visit to the zoo wasn’t specifically to see the animals themselves, I enjoyed all of the species I saw. The true purpose our visit though was more so to see the holiday lights, which didn’t disappoint. Near the center of the zoo, there was a non-stop show of dazzling lights and music held around a large pond. It was probably the best lightshow I’ve ever seen since my days of visiting New York City and catching the lights on the side of Saks 5^th Avenue!

So, for as much as I’ve been struggling with sadness during this normally meant to be festive season, there was some gratitude within it as well. I’m truly grateful to my partner for his Thanksgiving meal this year and for our trip to the Columbus Zoo, as both helped to boost my mood, enough so to dedicate today’s Grateful Heart Monday to them both.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, a weekly series dedicated to the importance of expressing gratitude in my life, which for today is for finally getting my new website up and running and the person who made it all possible, my dear friend Debbie Coon.

Many of you might not know that I have another website out there besides this one. It’s my personal website, www.andrewarthurdawson.com. I built it originally all the way back in 2012 using a very old tool on my hosting company that became outdated not more than a year after I had completed it. Beginning in late 2013, my hosting company started asking me each time I called technical support for help, whether I wanted to upgrade my personal site to their new tool. I always responded by asking them if the tool I was using was getting discontinued. The answer was consistently no. Years would pass until my site would become so outdated in technology and in appearance that the idea of updating it became one of utter dread. I simply avoided the subject and never dedicated any energy to it. More years would pass until finally this past spring, a tech support person from my hosting told me he was going to give me two free years of their website builder tool to help motivate me into migrating my site off the old tool into the new one. For as much as this became my first moment of gratitude in this process of upgrading my site, the next came when my dear friend Debbie, a genius when it comes to computer programming, offered to build it for me herself. In all honesty, I should have asked Debbie long ago to help me complete this, but my pride and ego of wanting to do it myself always got the best of me more times than I can count, even after my domain stopped getting listed on Google’s search results, all because it had gotten so outdated.

By the time Debbie started working on my new personal website, I wasn’t in any rush to complete the process given how long I had put the task off, as well as how long my hosting company had given me the tool for free. Even so, I gave Debbie some basic specifications and slowly, but surely, it started to come together. Unfortunately, I kept putting the task off of reviewing her work until I received a notice one day a few weeks ago from my hosting company that said my old tool that was still running my personal website was officially being discontinued on December 31^st. Suddenly, the timetable to getting this done had to be pushed to the top of my to-do list. After several days of review and making minor changes, Debbie and I were able to finalize my site. After doing so, we then contacted my hosting company, where they did the leg work of taking my old site down and moving the site Debbie had built for me onto the Internet.

While I honestly thought the whole process would have taken a ton of my time, in the end, it was an entirely painless process that actually took very little of my time. I’m so thankful for this and for the fact that the task is no longer looming over my head anymore. But I’m even more thankful and filled with plenty of gratitude today for having a true friend like Debbie who remained so very patient with me all along the way until the process was complete.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Welcome to another chapter of Grateful Heart Monday, where gratitude remains my only focus in my writing, which for today is for, of all things, having OCD!

Having been diagnosed long ago with obsessive-compulsive disorder, there have been many times over the years ever since where I’ve recognized how it plays into my thinking and my life. Sometimes having it is not the greatest of thing, like when I spend far too much time worrying about my health and doing things like staring at blemishes in the mirror repeatedly. But then there are other times when having this condition becomes a blessing solely for the energy it brings me to complete major tasks I undertake.

Getting my over-the-top Christmas decorations done outdoors is a great example of that. Daily maintaining my meticulous garden and yard during the warm seasons is another. But the example I want to delve into a little deeper that brought me immense gratitude began with me hearing a weather forecast and learning that my local area was going to be getting high winds up to 60 mph for most of Sunday just over a week ago now. When winds like that strike for an entire day as the forecast was calling for, I knew there would probably end up being major cleanup from all the debris it left behind in its wake, especially due to the many huge mounds of leaves in the street all around my home, as well as those still strewn across many of my neighbor’s yards. So, in all my OCD glory of thinking, I checked which direction the winds were going to be moving during the incoming storm to identify which piles of leaves and which yards would most likely dump the heaviest debris onto my own property. Once I figured that out, I woke up early the morning before the storm and began bagging up one pile of leaves after another and mowing one yard after another, until I had bagged at least 15 of those mega Hefty-type lawn and leaf bags and mowed five of my neighbor’s front yards.

I know there’s a pretty good chance you might actually be laughing at me right now about this or quite possibly shaking your head in dismay over my decision to embark upon such a task in the first place. But let me tell you, not only did my yard sustain far less debris during said wind storm, but so did a number of my neighbors’ yards as well, the majority of which thanked me for helping them out. One even gave me a big portion of new garbage bags because I had used so many of my own, while another gave me $5 and said thank you for my service. I honestly didn’t expect nor sought either and was very appreciative of it. While the job took just over 8 hours of time, and pushed me to my very breaking point with my health limits, something I normally wouldn’t do to myself, I’m overly thankful with the results of my actions and for my partner for lending me a big helping hand to complete my OCD-based task.

While I can most definitely attest that having OCD can often be a huge hindrance to my life, there are many times as well just like this, where it’s truly helped me to do things I normally would give up on before really even undertaking. So, in the end I’m grateful to OCD having made my life and my neighbors’ life much easier post-storm, which is why I’ve dedicated today’s Grateful Heart Monday to having a condition that I’ve chosen to see isn’t always a burden and instead is sometimes a gift.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson