Hey, Thanksgiving!

Tomorrow I will set off to share the road with a staggering number of other Americans as I make the trek to visit family. It's Thanksgiving, and that can only mean one thing: relatives and overconsumption. (Okay, that was two things.)

Three years ago, I posted a Thanksgiving-themed entry in which I listed some things I felt especially grateful for. It is, dare I say, a fine post, with many fine points, and I thought maybe I would just repost it...except that's not really a thing with Blogger. Instead, I'm going to copy off of myself.

This year, I am thankful I had an old Thanksgiving post in my archives that I could steal from.

I am thankful for the perspective granted by time.

I am thankful that I'm sitting here being thankful.

I'm thankful I don't have to deal with this crap.

I'm thankful for photosynthesis, and for large, calming bodies of water, and for the fact that I didn't have sit in on that one extra meeting today at work. I'm thankful for air-conditioning and for power steering. I'm thankful that after college I got into writing and not drugs or something. 

I'm thankful I was born after the development of spoken language, I'm thankful that my ability to feed myself isn't dependent upon the weather, and I'm thankful I live in the country that I do, the city that I do, and am surrounded by the people that I am. I'm thankful that I'm this age, and not any other age, and I'm thankful I've felt that way at every age I've ever been.

I'm thankful I live in a time when I (probably) will never be jailed under accusations of witchcraft, thankful I wasn't born into a culture of arranged marriages, thankful for the existence of mute buttons on television remotes. I'm thankful I got the polio vaccine instead of polio as a child, and I'm thankful that I should be able to run again next week. (My emotions are thankful for that, too.)

No.

I'm thankful I can write all of this out on a computer, where I can delete and rewrite until it sounds right in my head...

Maybe above all else, I'm thankful my parents instilled in me an almost psychotic sense of optimism, that never dies, even at times when perhaps it should, allowing me to write thankfulness posts when, due to my aforementioned run-starved emotions, I've spent the last week kind of just being angry.

I'm thankful for the life that I live.

I'm thankful for long-lasting lipgloss.

And let's not forget being thankful that Pilgrim fashion went out of style 400 years ago.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Witch image source. Pilgrim boy.