Count your Blessings

Just about everyone who gives advice to the eternally pessimistic eventually comes around to this: Count your blessings. Look at your life and be grateful.
At the risk of sounding like a completely horrible person, I have to admit that this is hard for me. First of all, I have a rule about not resorting to "it could be worse" as a fall back, and just about everything I can think of falls into this category. Yeah, it could be worse. But it isn't. So that thought is meaningless.
Then, the items I do come up with turn out to be two sided. My joy in our big garden plot morphs into worry about runoff from the chemicals the church next door uses on its grounds. My happiness at finally saving enough for full-season Kansas City Wizards tickets becomes concern that the economy could stop them from ever getting their new stadium built. I guess the problem is I think about things too long.
Now that I've been trying for about a month to be an optimist, I figure it's time. Time to make that list of things I'm grateful for. I'll just do the best I can and try not to linger too long or expect the list to be too perfect. After all, I'm new at this optimism stuff.

1. I'm grateful for the tight credit market/banking crisis because it may postpone the destruction of earth via a black hole.
When scientists cranked up the Large Hadron Collider last fall in Switzerland they did it over protests from some people that their attempt to study particle physics by smashing atoms could end in the creation of tiny black holes. Said holes could then join together into one big black hole that would eat us all. The economic downturn would slow some of the massive amount of money it takes to keep the thing going. (This is my assumption. I have absolutely no sources on this.)

2. At last rich people may be forced to shut up about themselves and quit flaunting their money at the rest of us.
The New York Times carried a story this week about a real estate broker who will give up her Rolls Royce--a part of her "brand"--because it looks too ostentatious. (Read about it here, for those of you with subscriptions.)

3.Deflation. Economists are all concerned it's a bad thing but I'm ecstatic some things are coming down in price. Especially gasoline. Seeing the price at $1.86 makes me smile every time I pass a station. (Then again, our electric utility wants a big rate hike and...Oh. Lingering too long.)

4.For years I've been toiling in the garden, canning and freezing everything I can get to grow. But I've had to keep quiet because...well because people tend not to like to hear about it. They think you're some kind of food snob, or that you think you're superior. (And let's be truthful. I am and I do.)
Now I find out from the Kansas City Star that there are lots of us. Enough that we're a movement and we have a name. Urban homesteaders. Yee haw!

5.And finally, I'm thankful my grandparents aren't around to see what's been happening. The Great Depression left them both ultra cautious, afraid of taking a risk on a dream or anything that wasn't "practical." Neither would speak their mind in a group for fear that word would get back to their employers or business contacts and they would be out of a job. I remember in the 1970s when the stock market had a bad day, hearing my grandfather bay, "Nooooo!" When I came in to see what was up, he was gripping his armchair tight and may even have had tears in his eyes. I can only imagine, if they were still around, how all this talk of "global meltdown" would affect him.

Five things to be thankful for. Only five?
Well, like I said, I'm still new to this.