The title for this muse hit me last year when I celebrated my last day of getting my hardcore chemo on the rocks. Among all the decorations, the 7th Graders in my daughter’s class had made me a poster that they all signed. It said, “Gra tit ude.” If only I could make this stuff up!

They didn’t mean it the way I read it, but it made me laugh. (I bet you’ll never be able to see that word in the same light again). And then I thought, I’ll get to that gratitude party when it’s all said and done.

Aren’t we always putting off gratitude? We reason with ourselves; it can wait until…And then something else will come up, and we’ll put it off some more until next time.

And next time never comes because we have something new to occupy our concerns. But then it’s Thanksgiving and we’re supposed to be thankful anyway. So, there’s always next year.

So let’s nip this in the (insert body part here), and be grateful and celebrate already.

Yes, even if you’re amid hardship. Or even if the event has long since passed and you should have celebrated like four months ago. And most especially if life keeps getting the best of you, and you can’t come up for air, and you need a break. How about a procrastination break with me?

You see, last year Alexandra made my video, My No-Bell Prize; they didn’t have a bell for me to ring, so I had to make my fun and ring my cell phone, and then cowbells while dancing to the theme song that you voted for me: Mamma Mia! If you never saw it, it’s celeb ringing life like no one’s every done before, if there was truly such a thing. My No-Bell Prize

It was the perfect fairy-tale ending. And they lived happily ever after. The End.

Though my happy ending was far from over, I had to go back to the chemo chair for, let’s say, a Shirley Temple every three weeks until September. So September was indeed my last chemo. Two operations later, still in the middle of getting the use of my arm back, don’t ask what my arm had to do with my breast cancer, I had forgotten all about my Nobel Prize–ringing that bell.

Alex wasn’t with me; I had no video idea prepared (I put great thought into playing the fool, it doesn’t always come naturally you know), no dance to dance, nothing. So it was utterly anti-climactic.

But then that title idea from last year hit me again. I’m graduating from PT this week, gulp, is she sure about that? Now I’m back to making a fool of myself regularly (and I can’t blame it on chemo anymore), so why not have that gratitude party that I had always been meaning to have? Let’s celebrate and have a good time just because! (Celebration was the runner up for my theme song last year).