Thanks...giving

Today is exactly 3 months after JB and I moved in to this new place in Washington. I'm so glad he's living up here with  me. We get to do fun stuff on the weekends. He helped me through the last push of school (which I still haven't heard OFFICIAL word back from, but I'm no longer doing work for it) and I am so happy to have him back in my life. I'm thankful I have gotten to spend so much time with him this year, since around July of this year. I felt an immense sadness without him in my life.

I'm thankful for the view I have in this apartment. I love looking out at the horizon and Puget Sound every day. I love seeing the seagulls flying outside. I love seeing Mount Rainier in the mornings, looming over everything.

I'm thankful to be done with school. I'm REALLY thankful to be done with school. I still haven't quite adjusted to the new schedule (i.e., lack of constant work 24-7), but I feel like I'm finally getting there. I've only had 5 weekends "free" after finishing everything for the PhD.

• The first weekend was also right after I went back to work, so I was really just doing errands and catching up on everything to get ready for work and stuff. 
• The next weekend I went to the beach and had an awesome 3-day weekend in an oceanfront room. I pretty much did nothing except write my book, go on long walks on the beach, and have parties with JB. He said he hoped our room would have a mini bar so he could have all the snacks he wanted, so before we went down there I put together a mini bar for him - chips, bean dip, multiple kinds of pop, pringles, sour gummy worms, peanut butter M&Ms, etc. I made him his own mini bar and he LOVED it :).
• The third and fourth free weekends I spent just been trying to recover. I was cleaning and organizing the house, trying to catch up on bills and budgeting, getting back into exercising regularly, spending more time cooking and eating well.
• Last weekend (Thanksgiving break) I went to Portland and spent 2 days with the family. We went to 2 movies in the theater in one day (hah!), Gravity and Thor 2. Both were high quality and really entertaining. I also played on my parents' piano when I was there and it made me so happy. I'm going to start that up again soon as JB brought up the keyboard that we bought when we lived in OH. Today I feel like I've FINALLY started to come back to normal. I felt some urges to start meeting people again, and I went on a big house cleaning kick yesterday and this morning. I feel like I'm at the very beginning of "leveling out" in terms of recovery. I'm not there yet, but I finally feel like I'm STARTING to be myself again. I'm thankful for that.

I'm thankful for my job. I make pretty good money for only working 40-43 hours a week there. I have freedom to choose which projects I would like to work on, and I REALLY enjoy the projects. I am really interested in the ones I'm working on now and I love the work more than any full-time job I've had. 

I'm thankful for the future plans I plan to accomplish. Hiking, traveling, comic cons, costume parties, playing banjo, playing piano, getting a dog soon, having close friends, writing and publishing a fantasy book for fun, time to watch movies, concerts, video games, photography, etc. I'm really excited about it all and the fact that I've already made plans for some of it. :)