On Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is officially over, which is a-okay with me. Let the real holiday begin. Some people feel like Thanksgiving gets a bad rap...a mini-holiday smashed between Halloween and Christmas and the meaning of Thanksgiving is overlooked. I agree. Sort of. I have had a lot of time to think about this, what with being delinquint and negligent with keeping up with the blogging and all.

I was at my spin class Wednesday night, and glad of it, because although the idea of running a 5k on Thanksgiving for the food pantry is a nice idea and I did it happily last year with lots of donations, this year there was snow on the ground and it was raining, and I DON'T DO COLD. So, I'll make an extra donation to the food pantry another time. Anyway, backing up from the stream of consciousness, I was at my spin class Wednesday and the instructor was all like, "You'll thank me for this tomorrow when you're gorging yourself on all your Thanksgiving food...blah blah blah."

And then it hit me. I don't really like Thanksgiving food. I know it's weird, but I don't.

Not that it's my mom's cooking, because it's not. She makes one helluva mean turkey. But I did look around yesterday and was all like, "Well, no, I don't like mashed potatoes ( I NEVER EVER EVER HAVE, my mom can vouch for that one), I don't like sweet potatoes (I've never liked those either), and we don't do that green bean casserole thing (my mom said she made it once when we were little and NOBODY in the family liked it, so that's not really me being picky, we just weren't none of us borned with them tastebuds), and I really can't stand either pumpkin pie OR pecan pie"-I've never been a fan.

I do rather enjoy the turkey (sans gravy. I don't like gravy either), and the cheesy veggie dish, and my ultimate favorite thing is the fresh cranberries my mom makes, which isn't really a sauce but I think can technically be labeled as a 'chutney'.

I was laughing at cycling when the instructor was going on about how we would thank her and explained how I don't really like Thanksgiving food to the guy next to me. He asked what kind of food I do like, at which point I had to tell him I could make do with a good burger and beer. And not a wimpy Miller Lite or Bud Light beer either. Hit me up with a good sturdy home brew and I am in heaven, and that is the truth. I think he thought I was going to say, "Oh, I'm happy with a salad" but that's not true...so when I expostulated on my burger fetish he said I was alright in his book. Well, that's good news I suppose.

And so what am I thankful for? Well, it's easy to be thankful for everything you're supposed to be thankful for, because if you're not you're just ungrateful. So the little things I am thankful for are:

* Morning Wii time. If I can squeeze in an extra half hour of sleep courtesy of the Mario brothers, I'm good.

* The fact that the kids can pretty much use the t.v. remote on their own so that I don't have to drop everything to find their favorite channels. Ditto on that for them knowing their numbers and which numbers to punch on the remote.

*A husband who likes morning coffee as much as I do. The fact that he's home drinking it with me 5 days a week is a plus too.

* My Binny's extra savings card. Comes in handy, yessiree.

*Kids who enjoy the outdoors. How many times can I yell "Stop running in this house and just GO OUTSIDE!"?

*No visits to the E.R. for the kids this year for stitches, broken bones, or any other war wounds they have inflicted on each other in some bizarre boy manufactured special capacity (and I am knocking on every piece of wood in this house for this one).

*Nyquil. There are just times when it's a good mommy's helper when you know you're all on your own the next day with all 3 kids.

* That first grade is a full day of school.

*That preshool is only a half day and I get to spend extra time with the little ones.

* Job security for the hubby. Nobody is sure what exactly he does for a living, but we're all glad that he does it.

And the list goes on. I'll add more as they come to me, for now I'm exhausted. We actually got up and braved the crowds this a.m. and got our deals on at the stores. We are almost done Christmas shopping!

Yay-O!