My Lenten calendar yesterday asked me to tell someone what I am grateful for. Why not you, Internet? The list could go on forever, so I will do one thing for each day of Lent. These are not in order of importance, but in order of my random brain.
1. My sweet husband, for whom I still have a serious case of newlywed mentionitis.
2. Plain chocolate McVitie's.
3. The air traffic control system.
4. The students in my NYU class.
5. My mom.
6. My dad.
7. My sister, who is awesome and always makes me laugh, & her husband and son.
8. Pigeons (except the ones nesting in the exterior heating grate of our apartment).
9. My apartment.
10. My best friend, Katy, who has a picture book coming out next month (about which more soon).
11-17. Melissa Anelli, Emily Clement, Donna Freitas, Rachel Griffiths, Mallory Kass, Ted Salk, Jill Santopolo.
18. My aunts, uncles, & cousins.
19. Ketchup.
20. Good picture books in rhyme.
21. Marla Frazee's illustrations.
22. The chance to teach my class, & to teach at various workshops around the country.
23. My authors and illustrators, particularly at the moment Vicky Alvear Shecter, who took me to a Waffle House & an antiquities museum in Atlanta this weekend.
24. The ability to run distances.
25. Good health in general.
26. Pencils & their sharpeners.
27. Kindness.
28. NPR, particularly WNYC.
29. Park Slope United Methodist.
30. The New Yorker.
31. The miracle that is my iPhone -- a miniature supercomputer in my hand, on which I'm writing this whole post.
32. Fruit & nut chocolate bars.
33. A glass of wine at the end of a day.
34. The song "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)"
35. The work of Jane Austen, Jennifer Crusie, Patrick O'Brian, Dorothy Sayers, J. K. Rowling, Rainbow Rowell, and Hilary McKay.
36-37. The novel Americanah by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, and Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, who introduced me to it.
38. Hotel breakfast buffets.
39. People who think before they speak and are capable of quiet.
40. Sweet potatoes, roasted, baked, and fried, in fries, tater tots, and sushi.