My email is still acting up, FaceBook is being a Grinch, and Amazon wants to charge for blogs. All that tsuris aside, I have a lot to say thanks for:
Health, which we don’t appreciate until it’s challenged.
Happy family life (uh, ditto).
A good job at a place where people like and trust each other enough to send around baby pictures and corny jokes — the stuff that says “we are more than our tasks.”
Six bags of candied ginger from Trader Joe’s (I eat one piece every day — candied ginger has never tasted so good).
Two cats who fight over us every night.
My local writing friends, who give my life-chair its fourth leg, to make it stable and true.
Having three literary essays published this year, and one other very wonderful pat on the head I’ll share with you later when it is more official.
The opportunity to teach writing last Friday — combining two of my loves, teaching and writing — in a class that was one of my best teaching experiences in a very long time. MPOW gave me release time to do this (I negotiated this before starting my new job — so give thanks for knowing how to negotiate).
A friendly city agency helping me with a variance for the shed I want to build in our backyard… I may need to call it Karen’s Folly, after all the fuss I have to go through to make this happen, but as hobbies go it’s fairly harmless (though the more time I spend on this project, the more ambitious my end-game gets).
The miracle of two-day mail, which is often four-day mail in Tallahassee but still means nothing we want is ever terribly out of reach.
For that matter, mail-order Peet’s coffee, and kind staff from my Former Place Of Work, who gave me a year’s subscription to Peet’s as a going-away present. I am just now finishing the last pound they sent me!
Finding wonderful real-McCoy tacos en route to Atlanta at Taqueria Jesus Maria in Omega, Georgia, and then having tacos there again two days later, on the return trip, and then having amazing fish tacos in Panama City last Friday… good Mexican food makes me feel better about life in general.
All of you, reading blogs and email and Twitter and FaceBook and whatnot, and every good thing that has happened to you since the last Thanksgiving.
May your tofurkey/turducken/brined-bird/whatever-dinner be a chance to reconnect with those you love… but not for so long they make you nutty. Happy holidays!
Posted on this day, other years:
- Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - 2006
- Upgrading away... - 2006
- Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, Second Edition - 2006
- The ALA Handbook of Organization - 2005
- Hayden on the Patriot Act - 2003
How do you manage to restrict yourself to only one piece of candied ginger per day? That’s impressive. I get the same ones (from TJ’s) and have to hide them after a while in order to not eat a ton of them!
-cvj
I remind myself that the nearest TJ’s is 300 miles away!
Sounds like some TJ care packages might be in order! I stock up every month or so when I’m working in CT. Shipments could be arranged? But then the need for that discipline of eating one a day would be gone. And discipline is a good thing….
[…] Much to be Thankful For […]