Grateful Thanksgiving Thursday

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you're all having a warm, comfortable, and content day with family, friends, and other loved ones around a table of yummy food.

I went ahead and wrote this earlier this week to automatically post today as I'm busy with cooking and my family. I'll regale you with stories of my husband's birthday celebration and my crazy in-laws tomorrow.

As I said yesterday, since I do a "grateful" post every Thursday, Thanksgiving seems like it comes every week for me (except for all the carbo-loading I'm about to do). I believe that counting my blessings has made a huge difference in my attitude about life-- now when "bad" things happen, I laugh, I see that silver lining first, popping out at me like it's glinting in the sun, and I'm able to flip the bad around on itself much easier now because I know that in spite of any negatives, I live a very blessed and happy life.

So here's my list for this first Grateful Thanksgiving Thursday:

1) Living in a country where we take a day to count our blessings. Although there are many of us here who don't fully appreciate the spirit of this day, I think the majority do take at least a minute to look around the table and think about how much each person means to them, about the food in front of them and the hard work it took both to provide and cook that food, about the roof over their heads and the clothes on their back, and feel grateful for it all. There are a lot of countries that are not so fortunate as ours, and there are a lot of people in the world who will never know the bounty that we all experience not just on Thanksgiving but on every day of our lives.

2) My parents. I'm not spending today with my family-- my parents have gone north to visit my dad's mom and sister since my grandmother can no longer drive, so I'm missing them today. As usual, though, I feel so grateful and blessed to have such wonderful parents. They continue to take wonderful care of me, and I'm happy to count them as true friends as well.

3) Stability. Despite the economy, despite what life tries to throw at me, my husband and I have a rock solid foundation, and we remain financially secure as well. I do not take this for granted, not now or ever.

4) Fall leaves. There's all kinds of orange, maroon, red, yellow, and even purple outside my window. Although Spring is my favorite season, Fall comes in as a close second. The crisp chill in the air feels rejuvenating.

5) A few days off. I took Wednesday off for my husband's birthday, plus Thursday and Friday are paid holidays, leading nicely into a weekend, giving me five days off in a row. The industry in which I work pretty much goes to sleep between Thanksgiving and the beginning of January as well, so I've got a good month here to catch up on internal work.

6) A good night with my husband's sister, her husband, and my husband's little brother. Although his little brother lives here and we spend a lot of time with him (he's just now 21, I've known him since he was 15) I hardly ever get to spend time with his sister. They're spending the night with us since they now live too far away to make this a day trip, and we'll be playing our Wii, digging out some board games, and drinking a couple bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau. I'm looking forward to getting to know her without parents around.

Our world can be such a bitter, sarcastic place. I'm happy to have an outlet for my positivity here on my blog. Even though I try to be joyful in everything I do, it's hard not to get bogged down in the mundane details of life. But instead of stumbling and crawling unhappily through the mud, I'm going to chose every day to run, jumping from puddle to puddle, laughing and splashing. Life may be messy, but I'm going to enjoy every bit of the mess.