Appreciation

“I really appreciate it,” she murmured, smiling shyly as she finished tying the bright blue, gold and red leafed turban round her head.

PP nodded, spaced out and tired, but Turban Woman was right. The YMCA was something to appreciate. Esp. after these long arduous days of soothing students, fighting landlords, and cursing traffic.

Without the Y, PP would be completely insane. (Okay, she heard that!)

Yet appreciation is often something that is so clichéd and/ or overlooked in our lives today. Of course there’s the goddamn woo woo ‘affirmations’ where you’re supposed to write out what you appreciate about yourself. (I am beautiful. I am smart. I am loyal. I am stupid. Oh, maybe that last one isn’t really an affirmation, even though it often feels like it)



Hell, PP doesn’t appreciate anything about herself, unless it’s her ability to not appreciate.

Ah, but she gets muddled here.

“And you teach all day, too,” PP had answered Turban Woman, who’d given her another sly smile.

“Yes, I do. And that’s what really makes me appreciate it here. Often I don’t think I’m going to make it after a long day, but then when I do, I always am so glad that I did!”

She giggles softly, turning to her display of skin products laid out on the counter, selecting some eye thingee that PP has no clue about, and carefully applying it round her brows. She has such a calm almost mystical quality about her. Like she’s in another realm altogether and not in the Oakland YMCA’s locker room at 10 o’clock at night. Maybe teaching 8th grade science does that to a person?

Or maybe some people are just like this? Calm. Mystical. Appreciative.

Sigh.

PP wishes she could be more like this sometimes, but at others, well, she’s glad she’s got the gift of complaint.

It makes for a much better, blog, don’t you think?

So, when we’re all feeling like there’s nothing to do but gripe and whine and complain, we can remember TW’s nod to how there is much to appreciate.

Or at least pretend to.