Giving Thanks (The Day After)

Well, holiday travel plans were a bust here, thanks to a snowstorm that actually didn't amount to much.  It was slated to whoosh its way right up our travel path and by the time we were sure it would be safe to leave on a nine hour drive, it was too late to be worth the effort.

So here we are.

With plans to attempt the family visit after spring thaw. 
Thankfully, my family is flexible about plans and nobody's feelings were hurt.  My mom has mellowed about such things over the years. 

I had started a "thirty things I'm thankful for" blog post, but you can be thankful I decided it was sappy and stupid and nobody wanted to read it.  A few worthy excerpts, though:

1.  The reason I'm writing this list at all, really.  I'm thankful that Woodwick Candle Company makes their candles out of a wax that is easily removed (with heavy shampoo and a comb) from an eight year old's hair.   And (with dish soap) from my living room rug. 

2.  Correspondingly, I am thankful that on a frigid cold day like today, I have a house.  Many don't.  And considering point one, it seems a good idea to be thankful to have a house and that my kid wasn't hurt.
.....
5.  I'm thankful for a friend who  needs to borrow my car tonight because it shows my kids what community and family are supposed to look like when we live so far from our own family.

6.  I am thankful that having been in Korea in the last 12 months excludes me from giving blood at the blood drive going on at my middle child's school.  For the next six months I can look sophisticated and global traveler-ish rather than looking like a chicken when the needles come around.  *squak!*

7.  I am thankful for the neighbor kid who started the job of plowing out my driveway, unrequested, and then disappeared before finishing or knocking on my door with puppydog eyes and hopes of payment.

.....

10.  I'm thankful for all the local friends who have offered to share their Thanksgiving with us if we are snowed in here.  Again, showing my kids what community looks like.  We have some awesome friends here... and I mean that word, awesome.

11.  I am thankful for the season which makes it possible to replace milk with egg nog in my favorite baking recipes.  Seriously, egg nog rocks.  Not as a drink (yuck) but as an ingredient.

12.  I'm thankful for coffee.  Always. 

13. My children and godchildren.

...

16. I'm thankful for sherry to put in the whipped cream for the pumpkin pie.  And for the fact that the bottle is way bigger than the recipe requires.

17.  I'm thankful for the clergy of this diocese.  Every one of them is amazing.  Especially the ones that read my blog!

18.  I'm thankful for fuzzy slippers.  Mmmmm.... seriously, right up there with coffee.

...

22.  I'm thankful for humor.  And funny stuff.  And optimism.  And thankfulness.

And this was where, thankfully, I stopped.  If you're writing about being thankful for thankfulness, you're the writing equivalent of "drunk, go home." 

So here I am, the day after.  The turkey lies shredded in my refrigerator.  The mashed potatoes have been polished off by my potato-loving-littlest kid.  Homework projects sadistically assigned by teachers to be done "over the break" (clearly someone's English teacher needs to study her vocabulary, as she has missed the meaning of the word "break") is well underway.  The snow has frozen over into a sled-o-rama in the front yard. 

And I, as is my custom, am nowhere near a mall.  I almost never set foot in malls anyway (maybe thrice in the past decade), but during "shopping season"... no way, no how.  I cannot imagine the mindset of the merchandise hungry extroverts who insist on storming the malls the day after Thanksgiving.  You couldn't pay me enough.

So here I am, nestled all snug in my house,
While visions of insanity cause me to grouse,

My children all studious, learning and fun,
are down in the basement making a spud gun.

And physics projects and book reports make me guffaw,
I'll stay inside a hermit, until the spring thaw.