A funny conversation I had with my sister-in-law has left me thinking.

I was at Costco hoping to get the few things I hadn’t gotten in Friday’s insanity. I needed rice, flour, and tortillas and they had been entirely out of those things on Friday night, so I went in this morning. She got there a little while after me, and we chatted for a bit.

She noticed I had flour in my cart and said “I keep hearing people say they need flour and I just keep thinking…what do you do with flour? Why do you need flour?”

I think I probably got a weird look on my face before I could stop it.

“Well,” I said, “you know, for, like, when you make rolls or biscuits to go with dinner? Or maybe I will make a pie, or cookies, or…”

I paused for a second because she was looking at me in surprise.

“I mean, I guess I just bake things.”

It’s true. Even if it’s not a holiday, I bake quite often. I make cookies of some sort about twice a month. Banana bread if there are browning bananas. Sometimes we have homemade pizza.

My sister-in-law is divorced. She works at a hospital and is also going to nursing school. Even if she wasn’t so busy, if she didn’t ever bake that is just fine. Not everyone enjoys it or wants to or is obsessed with homemade cookies.

It’s just a thing I enjoy doing so I choose to do it.

But as I drove home I thought more about the conversation, and what it says about my life.

I probably complain a lot. Too much. I get frustrated with Kendell working from home and my lack of solitude. I get annoyed that while I have two degrees and feel like I am a relatively intelligent person, my career is one I can participate in only because my husband has a great job; if I had to support my family on my librarian salary, even if I worked full time, I couldn’t do it. I get bogged down by depression and man I am tired of my knees being stiff. My family has gone through a lot of hard things, medical crises, depression, injuries, mistakes, heartache, death. My marriage is, quite frankly, often a struggle. I never have felt like I found a tribe; I have individual friends but certainly not a social life.

My life isn’t perfect.

But still. I have time to bake things that are entirely unnecessary. No one needs chocolate chip cookies. You can eat a meal without a hot roll (even soup although Kendell would disagree). Pasta without garlic cheese sticks is still delicious. Homemade pizza is fun but a pie from Domino’s or Marco’s is cheaper and easier.

But I still bake things. I have a kitchen with a stove and a refrigerator. I have a Bosch to help me with the process. I have eggs and flour and a stockpile of chocolate chips and a back-up bottle of vanilla.

Because my husband has a good job, I can indulge myself and work (PART TIME!) at a job I love.

Because I work part time, I can decide on a Thursday afternoon to go on three-hour hike with my husband just because his afternoon calls were cancelled.

I have time to make things—baking, yes, but also scrapbook layouts and quilts. I spend time writing a blog that no one reads, for hellssake.

I read novels in the bathtub.

I get to run and to go to the gym. Some mornings I sleep in until 8:00 a.m. Some mornings I go outside and talk to my trees before spending time pulling weeds and pruning rosebushes.

I’ve been blessed that for literally my whole life, save a one-year stint when Kendell was unemployed, I’ve had health insurance and access to medical care.

Just that—just that.

Some of my blessings have come through choices. I chose to go to school in my twenties, even with little kids (Haley was one when I started working on my English degree, and I had Jake and was pregnant with Nathan by the time I graduated; when I got my Education degree I had three kids under the age of six). I worked hard  in school (despite the prevalent idea that English degrees are easy) and I didn’t have much support; almost all of my homework was done while the kids were napping or after they went to bed. Kendell chose to have a career in the tech industry, which generally does OK. We have our house because we chose to jump into a mortgage a year after we were married, when I was only 21 and a 30-year anything seemed entirely overwhelming.

But I could make that choice to work on my education because I had grants and some money saved. Also because I had parents who taught me for my entire life that I should go to college. Kendell can have a tech career because we happen to live where there are plenty of tech companies. We could get a mortgage because housing was affordable then.

Some of it is work and choices, but some of it is just luck. Some of it is just how it worked out.

So that conversation? It was a nudge. A nudge to remember and to see: my life is pretty damn good. I don’t write that in a bragging way as I know how much of it really is just luck. I’m not hungry. I have a home and a family and a job. I have time and space to do the things I love.

Thank you, Universe, for the nudge to see. You are right. I am blessed.