I'm Thankful

I am thankful for my job. A job that makes just enough for me and my family to squeak by and yet employment that is both honorable and that has a future.

I am thankful for my home. It is smaller than 700 square feet, with only two bedrooms for five people. It has brown shag carpeting from the eighties on the floors, a finicky septic tank, no yard, and obnoxious rent. Yet it is still a home.

I am thankful for my family. For my wife, especially, who always sees the potential in me that I never do, for my kids, who love me with abandon. For my parents and siblings, who give my life texture and tension,  insight and humor.

I am thankful for my country. A country with mediocre leadership and a shaky moral compass, skewed logic and overwrought emotions, but a country nonetheless.

I am thankful for a world that continues to spin, grow food, get warmer and colder, make snow, erupt, spew, destroy and renew. Weather that continues to startle and amaze, creatures and geology that continue to manifest themselves.

I am thankful for my faith. A faith that is only made stronger and more vocal in times of trial and crisis such as these. Catholicism has never been about the easy path, but it is about the good one.

And I am thankful for my God, the Maker and Sustainer of my job, home, family, country, world, and faith. Without Him I would be nothing. Literally.

Happy Thanksgiving, to all of my readers and everyone else.

An Un-Traditionally Traditional Thanksgiving

Last year, my wife and I decided that our Thanksgivings had become far too much about the food and the place settings and everything looking and feeling just right. The striving for a “traditional” Thanksgiving day itinerary was overwhelming the true purpose of the day. It ended up too many times with one woman doing all the cooking and with everyone else hanging out and enjoying themselves. The stress potential for that one woman was amazingly high.

So, instead of my wife cooking everything and decorating a table and everyone sitting down all at once to eat, we made the whole day a “life appreciation” day. That meant that we both cooked, tasted, ate in undefined “courses”, laughed, went out later to shop and have fun, and overall just reveled in being together and the fact that we had money to put such food into our bellies.