My name is Pat, and I am powerless over...

I have just spent time reading over all my "Gratitude Posts." (See sidebar.)  I feel pretty good.

I write acceptably well, but there tends to be a lot of overlap in the lists.  This is not surprising, since I wrote them at disparate times and without referring to previous iterations.  I am grateful for certain things on an ongoing basis, and it strikes me that while most of the repeated items are pretty significant in the world -- my family, art, love, life, the ocean, the color blue -- various stripes of Starbucks Venti flavored mochas are not.

It makes me not want even to think about how much money I have given the Starbucks Corporation.