A Baker’s Dozen of Grateful-For Things

Another Thanksgiving has filled my belly...and my heart.

Here’s a baker’s dozen of the good stuff for which I give thanks:

1. Opening my parents’* front door Wednesday night to the smells of turkey in the oven, apple pie resting on the stove top and homemade Chex mix on the kitchen table. Bliss.

2. My new job and how much I like it. Like any good thing in one’s life, it makes all the other good things even better.

3. Being able to spend the whole holiday weekend with my family. (I wasn’t sure what the paid holiday situation would be at the new job so I was thrilled to learn it was Thursday and Friday.)

4. My mother-in-law’s good health...and her incredible scalloped corn.

5. My mom getting in the kitchen to bake her Cream Cheese Pumpkin Roll. What a surprise treat! You can see it’s half gone in the forefront of the photo.

6. My sister- and mother-in-law hosting the holiday as usual and cooking a delicious spread.

7. How funny people in my family are - they had me laughing to tears.

8. My brother suggesting breakfast Saturday morning.

9. My dear husband, the whipped cream on my life.

10. Shopping at dawn on Black Friday with my dad and B and getting all new socks and a gorgeous, soft scarf I wore all day.

11. Running into old friends and family during that cold, dark morning and enjoying the conversations more than the door busters. What I went for turned out to not be on sale anyway!

12. Equally enjoyable was eating my second turkey dinner, napping and then spending the rest of the evening on the couch watching TV with my parents and B.

13. All the barriers that have been torn asunder this year. Doors I kept pushing on gave way and then others popped open surprisingly - maybe because they finally realized it was a better state of being: open.

I hope your Thanksgiving was a filling as mine.

*My parents just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. Cheers, Mom and Dad!

Turkey For You, and Turkey For Me

I hope you all had a wonderful, tolerable or at least uneventful Thanksgiving. Mine was filled with family which was fun, but also tiring. B and I are back in our quiet abode which we spent the whole day in except for working out this morning and a quick drive to the store for milk this afternoon. In between we watched movies under blankets and ate leftovers. Oh, and I almost drove by our house on the way back because B put up some Christmas lights, and I'm used to looking for the dark spot. I like the dark spot. I like that B put up the lights more.

I got to try the Wii this weekend and that was fun. The response of the controllers is amazing. I rate bowling as the most fun, but I didn't get to try tennis. Golf is just as boring as it is in real life and boxing, while highly entertaining, is incredibly difficult to tell what you are doing.

The food which I had been looking forward to for weeks did not disappoint. The stuffing and the pumpkin pie (to me, the only things you really need at Thanksgiving) were perfect. Of course, I love squash, too - boiled and mashed and no funny business. My Dad's was perfect. It was a hybrid of whatever he's thrown on the compost pile; this squash started growing and it was a beautiful orange and sweet without adding a thing.