“So much has been given to me; I have no time to ponder over that which has been denied.”
Helen Keller
In appropriate Thanksgiving fashion I thought I would talk about what I’m grateful for. Here are just a few:
1. Thanksgiving and Holidays in General
There is something about the winter holidays that just gets me so excited. I think it may be the license we all get this time of year to be just a little more cheesy than usual. You may have to bear with me as a spew gouda. Wow, that does sound bad. Oooz? Shmear? why are all cheese appropriate adjectives so nasty sounding? Personally I find a good cheese quite delightful.
Christmas cheese. See. Delightful!
Because we were unable to visit family this year, Colin and I decided to go low key for Thanksgiving. Since we’ve been eating every. meal on the coffee table since September, I thought it would be a little silly to do a whole Thanksgiving spread just for us. Instead, we went to an early showing of The Muppets (Colin’s all time favorite stuffed goof balls) and dinner at Cracker Barrel.
As a wax cheesy and sentimental today, there is no better ball of brie than The Muppets. I know they’re a fuzzy big eyed creatures perfectly designed to pacify and enchant your wiley toddlers. I know this. I know and I don’t care. Don’t adults need to be pacified and enchanted? Yes. Definitely yes.
2.This Guy
Before the movie, we prepared to stuff ourselves with more candy than a piñata by going for a walk in the park (yeah, those equal out calorie-wise). At the first crunch-crunch of his feet on the pavement Colin got a look on his face that can only be described as sheer delight. It started off slowly enough: crunch crunch drag drag crunch crunch shuffle shuffle crunch crunch kick kick KICK KICK KICK! In no time at all we we got the image seen here. Of course, there was no coaxing from me at all….
That’s what I love about this guy. He delights in the small things. Since he generally hates to be the center of attention, you wont often catch him making a big fuss and gathering a crowd. But if you watch closely he’ll show you all the fun and beautiful things you were missing all along.
That’s how he is with service too. I remember once I broke the zipper pull on the top of my purse and spent the next week or so slowly inching the zipper shut with my fingernails. One day I was sitting on the couch blabbering away in my usual fashion and as we were leaving I grabbed my purse, zipped it up, and headed for the door. I zipped it up. I was halfway to the door when I had to do a double take. I had just zipped it straight across without thinking. Somehow, wordlessly, the zipper pull had re-appeared in perfect repair.
That magic thing that keeps things always working: That’s Colin.
The thousand times I’ve woken up covered in a blanket that I never grabbed. The magic stacked-and-wrapped sandwich in the fridge when I know I only have five minutes for lunch. The extra alarm clock that sounds just after I’ve shut mine off. The path shoveled in the snow to a cleanly de-iced car. All the suddenly working electronics, renewed library books, clean sink—it’s all him.
I’m thankful for him every day. Sometimes I forget, and he always finds a way to remind me.
3. Friends Like These
This is a little game of “spot the fakers”—a new baby shower classic
This is the closest picture I could find to all of us together. It’s a little bit of an older picture. Both the actually pregnant moms have 2 kids now. All of us fakers were just showing (pun intended) our support for the baby shower. The only one that’s missing is Stiffy, but he’s behind the camera. He was “showing” his support too—which I’m sure only further confused people looking at the shower pictures on facebook. I would almost give my right arm to have a video of Stiff leading pregnancy yoga in his trendy turban. Sometime I will have to write about the “epic” parties we threw. This was definitely one for the books.
Every now and again you get friends in life where your relationship is so easy it’s almost a given. That’s what these ladies are like, no matter what happens or where we all move, any time we get together we instantly pick up from where we left off. Every time we get together we make each other fall on the floor laughing. Literally in one case where Abby and I broke my dorm room bed from laughing too hard. I’m thankful for soft floors and storing enough crap under my bed to break a fall.
Some people collect red shoes. I collect red heads. Not weird right?
Here’s another friendly picture. This time of year I always think of these friends for the reason of one majestic beast: the turkey. Late one night when we and I were teenagers we headed to Sheets at midnight for Nachos ‘cause that’s just what you do sometimes. For some reason we had been making a ton of turkey noises and had this thought:
What if you made turkey noises all the time?
What if it was uncontrollable like laughing, shuttering, or sneezing?
What if you did it every time you got cold?
Thus the “cold turkey” impressions followed. It was one of those things that’s not really funny, but at the same time it REALLY REALLY is. Shortly to follow came the flirty turkey, pompous turkey, turkey-caught-in-the-act, and best of all the angry turkey. There are not words that can describe the roll-on-the-floor-ability of Emily’s angry turkey. Of all things this Thanksgiving season. I’m thankful for the angry turkey. I may have recounted this story last year…and I will probably do it for every Thanksgiving to come.
4. Family
This is the Family 3-4 years ago at Thanksgiving. Yeah, we kind a fill a room. I think we were close to 30 people that year. My family has children and my aunt has five—add in grandma, children, and a few significant others and boom—thirty foot table has suddenly become a necessity. I’m pretty sure all the adults regress about 10 years whenever we eat together. Even now, Mom still counts the minutes it takes for the conversation to disintegrate into “potty talk”—“15 minutes. That’s a record!” It’s always faster if Robert is there. I can think of nowhere else that I would be that comfortable. I love my family.
With Colin traveling so much this year I have experienced something new: being home alone. I’m pretty sure it never happened to me before. I’ve always had family or roommates to keep things moving. What did I discover about being along?
I hate it more than sticking toothpicks in my eyeballs.
Alright, maybe not that much. But it still makes me wicked uncomfortable.
I should mention here that I am a particularly bad sleeper. I don’t mean that I am restless, I mean that I am sleep crazy. Usually for a few minutes after I wake up I am still acting in my dream. Once woke up completely startled because I thought someone had broken into our house and was watching TV (one of the three channels on our sweet 10 inch). I shook Colin awake and insisted that he go look. As it turned out we had left a DVD in the drive that had restarted a few hours after we left it. I also pulled a knife from our top kitchen drawer because I thought someone was breaking into our apartment (on the third story). What I’m trying to say here is thank you family for never letting me kill myself or anyone else in my sleep.
I love my big fat white family (pretty sure we’re not Greek).
Also, I love my grandma who sent me this picture one Thanksgiving:
You guys are the best. Happy Thanksgiving!