Today I am grateful I woke up. Can you imagine how it would be for those around you if you did not? Yes, just the simple act of gaining consciousness in the morning is a blessing and miracle. Maybe you wish you didn’t wake up today. If that is the case, I am so sorry for you. But the fact you did wake up today means your life still has a purpose, a meaning, and that there is still work here for you to do, or a lesson to learn, or an obstacle to overcome. No one said it would be easy. And the only way to get through it, when it is hard, is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who has it worse than you do, and see if you can do something to ease their burdens. This is a sure path to perspective, and a way to get a little inner peace.

I am grateful I woke up, that my kids are healthy, smart, kind, and I am so proud of them both for the strong, powerful women they are growing into. I am grateful my mother is still mentally 100% fit, and also a kind, wonderful, giving, caring human being that I am grateful to be related to. I am grateful for the suggestion to get new shoes, which I did, and now my ankle seems to be hurting less. And I am grateful for my entire family, those who live far, and wide, and who are from different countries, and speak different languages, some who I get to see now and then, and others who I have not seen in many years but faithfully send cards at the holidays, I am grateful for them all.

Today is Black Friday the traditionally craziest shopping day of the year. You may not be aware, but it takes an entire team to get done everything I try to do in a day, week, or month. Between running Aspen Park Vet Hospital, to working hard to get the ResqRanch more well known, to taking care of the animals of the ranch, to running this YouTube channel, and a Shopify store, too, it takes a lot of time and people and sometimes these things are running more smoothly than others. My intention was to have a Black Friday sale in the Shopify store. The link is here https://m0ztfs-p7.myshopify.com/ I hope you will check it out. It was brought to my attention just yesterday that my links are not active and require copying and pasting into a new browser to get you there. One more thing to talk to my team about and see if we can correct that to make it easier to navigate to the shop in one click.

We also got a $300 anonymous donation yesterday, wow! Thank you so much to whoever you are! I guess I am making an impact on someone, even if at times I feel like I am making barely any progress at all…but let’s not go there today.

Instead, be sure to sign up for your slot for Pet Pictures with Santa, the link is here https://www.resqranch.org/pet-pics-with-santa-signup and we need elves to come help us decorate before the event, and to clean it all up after the event, if you are so inclined! Send us an email or call us at the hospital and we can give you more details on that.

​I sincerely hope to see you at our Santa event. I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday full of gratitude for the good things in life, and that you gained perspective and strength for how you wish your holiday’s to look next year, and every year thereafter. Have a wonderful day everyone, and be kind to yourself today. The dishes and clean up and laundry post the holidays, well, don’t let them stress you out. Take a moment today to be in the moment, reflect on what gratitude and the holidays mean to you, and visualize what you would like your life to be like if it could be anything at all, if the sky was the limit, because it is, if we will only take a moment to really think about that, and set our lives on an inevitable course with the destiny we create in our own minds.

Wishing you the most beautiful journeys and destinations today, you Animal Loving Angel, may all your dreams come true! Thanks for being here!
​
Check out my YouTube channel for a daily "Good Morning!" from the rescues and lots of free tips and training resources. https://www.youtube.com/@the1drq​