Hope, Thanks and Dogs.

It's Thanksgiving morning, and here I am with my organic, shade grown, fair-trade coffee, organic, locally baked bread, starting this blog and wondering what to write. One dog is eye-ing me expectantly; two more have staked out the path to the car. There are big hopes here for the morning, the day. A long walk? A run? Rabbits?

Thanks? Well maybe. But to these three dogs, I'm just staff, and often pretty dumb staff at that. Bygones are bygones in a dog's life. It's all about living life to the full, Now, In The Moment. It's all about Hope.

Like my comrades, I have hopes today, too. The immediate one is how the heck to fix the (organic, locally grown) sweet potatoes and (organic) salad so they meet the taste expectations of the entire family--from the college student who has never met a vegetable she considers paletable, to me, a compulsive salad foodie who scarfs up every left-over, neglected lettace-leaf abandoned on other plates.

But there are other hopes beyond leaving no lettace-leaf in the compost.

There is the hope that we'll all have food enough to eat this year. And thanks for the bounty of years past. There's hope for health, and thanks that we've all survived so far. And there's hope for the salmon and sea lions, and thanks that we haven't blown up the planet so far.

Thanks and hope seem the yin and yang of human consiousness. One needs the other. One feeds the other. To envison a future, we must acknowledging the gifts of the universe, of love and kindness and nurture and wisdom. Sometimes, hope comes first. More salad. Longer walks. Today, it should be thanks, acknowledging the path that brought us here in the first place.

Outside, I hear soft woofing and here, at the desk, the Border collie has shifted into herding mode. Where's the leash?

And oh, yes.

Thanks for the dogs, too!