11) you

I hope you had a great Turkey Day. I've studiously avoided doing anything productive on the internet for the last seven days. Instead, I've made a point of checking my email every single time I'm within 10 feet of the computer. Why? I'm pretty sure I'm addicted. Admission is the first step to recovery. Why is it that I feel an irresistible compulsion to check my email within 2 minutes of arriving at home, coming from work? I just checked my email less than 10 minutes ago and yet... I must check again. Thank goodness I don't have an iphone or something equally enabling.

Speaking of being thankful, I'd like to mention some things that I'm thankful for as a belated ode to Thanksgiving. Lots of people do this, and I figure it might be good to get these things down in writing.

1) House. I'm not talking about my brick and mortar attempt at fulfilling my basic human need of "Shelter". I'm thankful for House - the show. I guess if you really want to get specific, I'm thankful that we had the money to splurge a bit on one of Target's Black Friday sales to pick up the first three seasons of House. I'm becoming more than a little fond of the curmudgeonly cripple and his facial scruff. So far, two thumbs up. Also - it makes a great background for Christmas Decorating.

2) Felt. I'm thankful for those beautiful sheets of thick sew-able non-fraying color. Felt is perfect - You can do almost anything with it. 2 dimensions... 3 dimensions... casual... classy... And it's all fun to sew. I find almost nothing quite so satisfying as finishing a line of perfect blanket stitching on the edge of a tiny felt stocking.

3) Gmail's new "Themes". My day is cheerier now that my gmail account is draped in turquoise with scalloped edges and little ice cream cones that smile at me. It makes me want to squeeze gmail's little cheeks and baby talk to it.

4) Chop down your own Christmas Tree Farms. A small part of me feels that these Christmas Tree Farms are wrong. Growing trees just to be chopped down and used for nothing more than adorning the inside of a house for a month? My brain spits out the word consumerism with distaste and derision. It is hypocritical derision because I am a consumer and even worse - I'm an American Consumer. I consume all the time. I have no idea exactly how large my "carbon footprint" is, and here I am chopping down a tree for fun. Could I be any more selfish?

Then again, I've never had a real tree for Christmas before. My family's tradition growing up was to go get this refridgerator sized box from the garage and carefull extract - branch by branch - the skeleton of our faux-tree. My brother and I would scamper back and forth, as though in a race, to get the next correctly-colored branch for my dad. Then he would carefully string up the lights, and we would start unpacking ornaments. We had a great time. It was a great tradition and I was not deprived.

However, this Saturday, my husband and I and a couple of our friends went to pick out and chop down our own Christmas trees and it was fun and comforting. The sky was blue, the air was cold, the trees were needly and fresh-smelling. I fell in love with one that was very much taller than Greg and even though he made me continue checking through the rest of the lot (subtly begging for a smaller tree), we ended up getting the behemoth. We have high ceilings so I was pretty sure it would fit, and I was right. It fits perfectly. It's beautiful and it smells good and now it is dripping with crystals, mirrors, and silver baubles.

5) Post Secret. I'm thankful for the weekly dose of reality and humanity that comes from this ingenious community art project. If you don't know about it already, look it up. I can't say more about it because although millions participate, it still feels private and I struggled even to mention it THIS publicly - because its existence feels like my very own intimate secret. You'll know what I mean if you find it.

6) Vampires. Aren't vampires great? The ability of vampires to fuel the imagination and parody culture is beautiful. I had a great time reading Anne Rice as a teen, and I indulged in some Laurell K. Hamilton. Vampire movies are popular... and this weekend I had the pleasure of catching the latest phenomenon, "Twilight". I haven't read the books yet, but I found the movie to be eye-catching and good. I rarely get to go out to the movies, so this was a nice treat.

7) Happy People. I am particularly thankful for all the people that inspire a primal urge within myself to pinch their cheeks, put them in my pocket and carry them around with me all the time.

8) Addictive Games.

9) I'm thankful for our working cars. I get upset when things don't work that should. Imagine how upsetting it would be for our car to stop. Now imagine how thankful I am that I don't feel the pressing need to put this in the top 25 of my worry list. Nice, huh?

10) This. This warmed my heart.



I'm thankful for thousands of things, and in this list I didn't even mention the most important ones. And while there are a few things that come to mind at the moment that bug me (Sneezing while I'm having my period for one), the world, in general, is a pretty cool place. Thanks for visiting my corner of it.