A Thanksgiving Post-Mortem

            Thanksgiving is a great time to pause and reflect on what we are most thankful for.  I like this exercise, because it focuses on the positive, and there is enough naturally occurring negativity on this Earth to carry us through the other 364 days.  It is good that we have a whole day devoted to the positive.  (Or at least until about 4:45pm, when you start wishing you’d been born into someone else’s dysfunctional family because yours is about to force you to crash through a plate glass window just so the conversation topic will change from the detailed description of Aunt Mildred’s intestinal surgery and its aftermath.) The big things like health, family, friends, home, food, safety get all the press at Thanksgiving and are 94.7% more likely to be used in a round the table let’s-all-say-what-we-are-most-thankful-for-before-Uncle-Bernie-starts-ranting-like-he-does-every-year tradition.  I’m not knocking those things – I, too, am very thankful for my health, my family (even the really annoying members), my friends, the roof over my head, the 30 extra pounds of food in my belly, and the fact that I live in a country in which it is highly unlikely that I will get killed by rebel armies or forced into slavery.  It is just that those things are so obvious.

            A tiny little pebble in your shoe or a paper cut in an inconvenient location like the pad of your thumb can ruin your entire day (sometimes two).  Likewise, it is the little bitty things that make life so wonderful.  Having finally had a few days off of work in which to reflect, I offer you a list of a few of my favorites:

1. I am thankful for those little black binder clip things.  They are so much more reliable than paperclips, and don’t chew up the corners of my papers like staples do.
2. I am thankful for Kindle Fires and Nintendo DS game players, which have made long road trips with my young children tolerable.
3. I am thankful for the fact that whenever I want to I can turn on the tap and get hot water.
4. I am thankful for Velcro and its million convenient uses.
5. I am thankful for orange flavored Goody’s Powders which make instant headache relief taste tolerable.
6. I am thankful for stylish pants with elastic waistbands, for obvious reasons.
7. I am thankful for the ubiquitous and no-charge nature of drinking straws. 
8. I am thankful for hot chocolate, with and without marshmallows.
9. I am thankful for pansies, with their happy, colorful faces looking up at me all winter.

10.   I am thankful for flannel sheets, even though they make it much more difficult to get out of bed in the morning.

11.   I am thankful for cupcakes (no explanation necessary).

12.   I am thankful for the fact that my Kindle, my cell phone, and my husband’s cell phone all use the same charger.

13.   I am thankful for the ability to touch type about 100 words a minute, which is the only reason I have time to blog on the Patch.  It only takes me about 15 minutes to type a post.  I usually write them in the shower or in the car or standing in line somewhere.  By the time I sit down at the computer I am just transcribing what is already in my head.

14.  I am thankful for the little crunchy things that live in between the layers of a Carvel ice cream cake.  For that matter, I am also thankful for the creamy chocolate and vanilla layers that surround the little crunchy things.

15.   I am thankful that when people come over to my house they ignore the fact that it looks like the insurance agent is on his way after the natural disaster that just tragically hit.  Or at least they don’t say anything to me or make disgusted looking faces, and ignorance is bliss.

16.   I am thankful that coffee is legal, affordable, caffeinated, and socially acceptable.

I could go on forever, and probably 30 seconds after I post this I will think of a hundred things that both make me happy and/or are much funnier.  I will just leave you with this one more:  I am thankful for Sharon Swanepoel at the Patch who allows me to post these ridiculous blog posts whenever I get the urge, provides an outlet for the truly random things that crawl around my head, and doesn’t ever send me emails that say things like, “Really?  We’re wasting bandwidth on that drivel?  Please stop posting.  We don’t want to have to get a restraining order.”