Ten Reasons to Be Thankful Even if I Was Worried about the End of the World

1. California Decembers are still clement enough for geraniums to bloom. Red and green at Christmastime are apropos.

2. Even if the Fiscal Cliff thing were to come to pass, our lifestyle has put us outside the grid. We'd have little impact on our way of life, if any.

3. Our two favorite supermarkets have begun carrying potato chips cooked in olive oil -- this means I can eat them. (I can't eat the ones cooked in sunflower or canola oil, as they make me unpleasantly ill. ) Merry Christmas or Armageddon, I have had potato chips to snack on in the evening!

4. The longest night of the year will shortly be a thing of the past until a year from now. (Daylight Savings Time should be adopted year round. Night-time at 5pm is just stupid.)

5. In seven weeks, I'll be buying tomato plants for the garden. (God willing and the creek don't rise.)

6. My 6-month-old grand-daughter smiles broadly when she sees me, and she just cut her first tooth.

7. My 10-year-old grand-daughter is creative, well-spoken, and a welcome guest in other people's houses. And respectful, and loving.

8. We're getting lots of glorious rain this winter so far. Everything feels damp, but I can live with that. Fill those reservoirs! Max that Sierra snow-pack!

9. Our household is stable, and at peace with one another. Three generations living together can't always say that, but we can. We're a team, and it makes us strong.

10. The "Perfect Ten" is my marriage to Bernie. We've just celebrated 38 years since he asked me to marry him. I still remember how the world changed that day, and how I knew that I would never again feel alone, that I would always have him at my side, that we could conquer anything that life threw at us.

It was a kind of innocent assumption ... we never know how long we'll have with anyone, not really. But on the other hand, for 38 years, we were right.

Happy End of the Mayan Calendar!

Annoying 1 + Annoying 1 = Coolness!

The white geranium that I planted late last summer has survived the winter. I'm still not sure that a white geranium will look "right" when all the other geraniums are variations of reds, but I'm willing to give it a chance to get four feet tall and six feet across like the old-timer magentas and reds.

Over the geraniums in this wonderfully unseasonally early spring, a cloud of gnats swirls and darts.

I'm not fond of gnats -- like my mother before me, if a gnat decides to have a taste of my skin, days of pain and itching and swelling ensue. And so, seeing the gnats out over the geraniums makes me squint my eyes and wonder where the birds are that are supposed to be eating these buggies.

From inside the house, where Lillian has discovered dancing to XBox360, comes thumping music.

She's enjoying dancing, and that's all to the good. I'd dance, too, if my knee wasn't so painful from the exertion of horsey exercises in the arena yesterday. (Ow, in many muscles as well.) Nevertheless, I'm a quiet old granny who prefers the sound of the wind in the trees or the calls of birds to recorded music, by and large.

We sat on the front porch this evening, watching the sun lower in the sky. Lillian and her friend Megan were dancing to the XBox, and the thumping beat and music filtered out to us. In the glow of the late afternoon sun, the gnats were illuminated in their jittery swarm.

In an astonishing meld of living creatures and electronic music, the annoyances were transformed into an utterly delightful show. The gnats truly looked like they were dancing to the music, and they were very good at it. I could watch gnats dance to those tunes all day.

Go gnats! I can always wear insect repellant.