Gratitude 39

I am so grateful for my recliner chair.  I have had it now for over a year, since October 2015.  I didn't intend to get a recliner, just a second, alternative comfy chair, at a relatively affordable price, especially for the comfort of visitors.  So, I spent a few months looking around.  Second hand was not an option.  There have been so many nightmares with bedbugs hitch hiking in second hand soft furniture that this is a risk I simply refuse to take.  And, yes, Gentle Reader, my apartment has already had those repulsive little vampires, already documented on these pages and happily dead and gone since July last year.  Never again!

I spent over two hundred bucks on this chair.  I got it at London Drugs.  It isn't too impressive looking.  It's kind of a cold dark gray colour, like office furniture.  The multi-hued afghan my late friend, Doreen, made for me many years ago covers it beautifully.  When it was delivered, by a rather impatient delivery guy, it arrived in a box and I basically had to assemble it myself, Ikea style.  It wasn't difficult.  While I was unpacking it I wondered about getting a footstool, and why I hadn't just looked for a recliner, instead.  I put the chair together, sat on it for its maiden voyage, leaned back and...Surprise!

I have spent much of the later half of this afternoon leaning back in my dear recliner, sometimes napping, sometimes reading the local community papers, listening to CBC, sipping hot chocolate made from scratch, and munching on Gruyere cheese and Breton crackers.  I was feeling a bit tired and fragile when I arrived home.  I don't know why.  Sometimes my clients supervisors, and idiots in public places, can really get to me.  I did have a horrible bus driver on the way home, but I think I might have felt a bit better had I said thank you as I disboarded, as I usually do, but this was such a lousy, inconsiderate and grumpy driver that I really didn't want to cast pearls before swine.  Even if I am casting pearls before swine when I say thank you to ungrateful swine, perhaps I am the swine who really benefits from that simple act of kindness, even if it is wasted, at least I can feel better.  Dontcha think, Gentle Reader?

I still think that gratitude is undervalued, and even should be shown to the undeserving, perhaps as a subtle but kind way of communicating.  I am also grateful for the beautiful day today, and if you are wondering why I am indoors on such a lovely spring day, do keep in mind that before, in between and following my professional assignments today I have walked, outside, in some lovely neighbourhoods, at least eight miles.  And for this I always give thanks.