Today, I am grateful for sunshine warm enough to go without a coat in late January.

I am grateful for the gift of hearing a cardinal sing at the top of his lungs this morning when I opened the garage door, and then I spotted him in the very top of the tree next to the driveway.

I am grateful that the post office had one last book of Peanuts Christmas stamps. I will save them because I can.

I am grateful for my daughters. All of them. I have many that I have collected over the years. My biological girls, my stepdaughter, my former students, my friends’ daughters, and my CASA girl.

And I am grateful to have walked out of the office building at the same time an older Japanese businessman was leaving, an entourage of seven US/Japanese employees following behind him to wish him well in his travels. They all walked to the limo parked out front, spoke a lot in language I do not know, and then he bowed to them, and they all bowed to him. It looked so respectful and kind and it pretty much made my heart smile to have witnessed this interaction.