Passing the gratitude pie

It's that time of year when people get sappy and start professing their love and gratitude for one and other.  Soon, the wife and I will be sitting with her family around their Thanksgiving table, confessing our deepest feelings, passing the kleenex around as the love flows out faster than the rush on Twinkies at the end of last week.

Well, they will be doing that.  I'll be sitting at the table listening, smiling, nodding.  Then, when it's my turn, I'll just say one or two lines about how thankful I am to be there and then I'll pass the love fest along.

Now, before you call me an unempathetic, callous, ungrateful Scrooge, hear me out.  After all, you're thankful for me, aren't you? I'm grateful for you.  It's not that I'm ungrateful--heck, I am one of the more grateful people that I know. I really do have so much to say, to share, to express at times like the wife's family gathering. I really am blessed with a ridiculously amazing life. It's just that I am not the kind of person who is going to ooze feelings all over the Thanksgiving table in a large group of people.

Besides, I hate being vulnerable and I am not going to be vulnerable before the pumpkin pie is passed.... and, dessert is not served until well after the love fest had been completed.

Pass the home-made pie earlier and you might get a few more words out of me.

That said, I am grateful for many things of which I will share with you in this blog.  I will keep it superficial.  Very superficial.  I'll save the sappy for the next blog entry....or, perhaps for the Thanksgiving feast.

I am grateful that I won the football pool one time this year.
I am grateful that my football pool "crash and burn" didn't start until Week 10--an all time personal best.
I am grateful for rent-a-cars, as they make the wife very happy on cold, snowy weekends (so she doesn't have to drive her Mustang).
I am grateful for a new work cell phone, as with my previous work phone I couldn't hear a damn thing, the caller couldn't hear me, I had to stand outside when I'm at my office in order to get reception, I dropped calls all the time (never good for times someone is in crisis) and I didn't get my messages.
I am grateful that Freckles eye boogers are much less nasty via the use of various eye products.
I'm glad Lucy got an "A+" on her dental check up.
I am grateful that our holiday cards are done and ready for action.
I am grateful that it is almost impossible to destroy a tungsten ring.  (If you've ever seen what I "do" to my jewelry, you'd understand how important this is).
I am thankful that my Xena calendar purchase featured an autographed photo by Lucy Lawless.
I am grateful that it might not be the end of Twinkies, after all.

Mostly, I am grateful that I do not have to make Thanksgiving dinner. 

Perhaps my next blog will be sappy.  Perhaps not.  Suffice it to say that I am a very grateful bitch.  "See" you on Thanksgiving Day, when I will recall the Great Turkey Disaster of the 1990s!