Found a few things to be grateful for

After more than 450 columns, it was bound to happen.

A deadline and a blank mind.

I went in search of a writing prompt and found this: Write a story about a chicken that runs away from a farm.

Hmmmm.

Returned to the drawing board.

Remembered a fragment of a radio show I heard over the weekend on the importance of gratitude.

Decided that was a better direction than musing about an escapee chicken.

Here, then, are a few things for which I am grateful as 2021 takes its baby steps:

• I am grateful that my morning bowl of oatmeal was almost consumed when I dropped my iPad into it a couple of days ago.

• I am grateful that I have both an iPad and oatmeal, even as I understand that it is better for them to maintain a certain distance from each other.

• I am grateful that when I inadvertently kicked the metal leg of a bed frame earlier this week that my pinkie toe was only bruised and not broken as it has been at least twice in the past from similar bone-headed (or should that be bone-toed?) moves.

• I am grateful that I can walk upright and with enough speed to break a toe on something, even as I understand that it is not something I should keep repeating.

• I am grateful that when I was making an experimental holiday recipe that called for an entire cup of chopped cilantro that I instinctively knew that was too much and had the good sense to use less than half.

• I am grateful that I have a spouse who gamely — and yes, dare I say it, gratefully — eats all my experiments without complaint, even as I understand that holy-cow-we-both-love-cilantro-but-that-was-still-way-way-way-too-much.

• I am grateful that I have this weekly opportunity to share a few words with each of you.

• And, finally, I am grateful that none of those words had to be about a chicken who ran away from a farm, even as I understand that technically some of them were.

Happy 2021.

Betty Williamson is grateful she is not contending with chickens, runaway or otherwise. Reach her at:

[email protected]