Happy Thanksgiving! I hope all my Canadian friends are enjoying this holiday Monday, and I hope you all – Canadian and beyond! – have had a beautiful weekend filled with delicious food and lots of love. I have so very much to be thankful for, not least of which was the Friday night with my parents. Due to my son’s work schedule, we headed up to visit on Friday, when my mom made an enormous dinner with three pies, and a chocolate cake for me, her spoiled daughter who does not like pie. We had a great night with lots of food, wine, and raucous dice games.

Last Monday one of my students brought up the quote “Gratitude is the first step to joy,” and I have been meditating on that all week. I have so much to be grateful for, the number one of which is my family; sometimes I just feel like my heart is going to explode thinking of it. Health, of course, is also a great source of gratitude. At my age, I am seeing more and more friends and acquaintances with health issues, both minor and, sadly, severe. One of my favourite Peloton instructors has a motivational phrase that goes along the lines of I woke up this morning, I put my feet on the ground, not everyone has that privilege. I am starting to completely understand why, when you talk to older people, the conversation veers towards all their friends who are sick and/or dead. Not to be grim, but the older we get the more of that we see, and so I am grateful, so very grateful, for my good health. I woke up this morning! I put my feet on the ground!

Good health is, of course, a broad umbrella. I have found that, with my kids going maskless most of the time, we are all like toddlers on their first foray into day care. Sniffles abound! But this is a minor complaint. In general, our health is good, and I hope tomorrow’s mammogram will confirm that as well.

It is, I will admit, that time in my cycle when my emotions are bigger and for me that means my feelings of gratitude for the mundane cannot be contained. But what better day to list such things than Thanksgiving?

Food, Glorious Food

Supply chain issues and my weird obsession with lemon juice and popcorn notwithstanding, isn’t it incredible that we can go into a grocery store at any time and purchase almost anything? Sure, prices are through the roof and yes, sriracha is still unavailable, but just think of the bounty and variety there for the taking. When I was a kid, the fruit that was available to me in the winter was restricted to bananas and apples, with the occasional bunch of green grapes and mandarin oranges at Christmas. Vegetables were largely frozen or canned, and that was that. Now look at the produce section. Strawberries! Available any time of the year! Somewhere in the world, there is a farmer who is growing strawberries, and Mother Nature is providing sunshine and rain for those strawberries, and people are picking them, and then people transport them, and then the lovely people at Superstore unload them into beautiful displays. So many factors go into our fruit and vegetables, and if I let myself think about it for just a moment, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude.

Now think of all the ways we can prepare food. A mere fifteen or twenty years ago, if I wanted to make a dish I would have to find a recipe in a cookbook, and figure things out. Now there are multitudes of recipes, for free, right in the literal palm of my hand, even the most obscure. A world of flavour at our disposal! Not that I’m great at following recipes, mind you, but inspiration has to come from somewhere.

Home, Sweet and Warm and With Running Water, Home

Maybe this is due to my son’s recent backcountry camping trip, but good lord, I am grateful for clean water. Isn’t it amazing that we can turn a tap and there is clean, safe water? Not only that but we can choose the temperature and it just HAPPENS. There is a water pipe system in place, a sewage system in place, there are people who treat water, and there are scientists who figured out what we need to do to have safe water, and here we are. Every shower and glass of water and load of laundry is a miracle of engineering and technology.

Not only is water heated with absolutely no effort from me except by turning the tap a certain way, but the house is also warm and snug. There’s no fire to stoke. There’s no fuel to haul. I touch the thermostat and the temperature adjusts. Isn’t that incredible? And if it doesn’t, I call Tony the Hot Plumber Who I Have a Bit of a Crush On, and he comes and fixes it. Within the DAY.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

A little while back, Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) mentioned how grateful she was for being able to drive, and I see her, and raise her. Yes, I am incredibly grateful to a) have learned to drive as a mere 16-year-old, b) have a reliable vehicle, and c) be able to afford to put gas in the car. There are many places where women cannot drive, and there are many who cannot afford a vehicle or gasoline. But more than that I am grateful to have two children who drive. Specifically, I am so grateful my son can drive himself to wrestling practice in the evenings so that two evenings a week I don’t have to keep my regular clothes on until 8:30, at which point I can finally don my jammies and go to bed.

The Awesome Power of Nature

A few years ago, my friend Taryn (HI TARYN) and I were hiking in the mountains when we came across a rushing stream, at which point Taryn said in a booming, PBS-nature-special-voice, “BEHOLD! THE AWESOME POWER OF NATURE!” This was a running joke between her and her husband, and when she shared it with me I started thinking of it every time I saw something pretty in nature. I thought of it every day this week as I walked or ran, with the leaves turning and the skies so blue. Isn’t it amazing? Crunchy leaves underneath our feet, indicating that the trees are preparing for their wintering, just as I am, by digging out my boots and sweaters.

Our Community, Big and Small

I absolutely love the community I live in. I can walk to any number of amenities – grateful for those amenities! – and the people here are generally wonderful. I love my friends, who are all so special in different ways, and I love our blogging community. When I started this blog in 2008, I was part of a lovely little community of bloggers, only one of whom – HI ALLISON – is still blogging today. The blogging world changed for a while – remember sponsored content? – but then a few years ago, I started to belong to a new community. This community strengthened during the pandemic, and I am so grateful for all of you.

If you’re reading this, yes! I am talking to you. I am grateful for YOU. Thank you for being here.

Weekly Reading

Barreling Forward. We all know I really enjoy short stories, and I enjoyed this collection by a new Canadian author. I feel like she might be from Newfoundland, her stories have that flavour, if you know what I mean. If you know, you know.

Lessons in Chemistry. I had heard good things about this and it did not disappoint! It was truly a delight to read BUT…I started it at that time in my cycle when my always-simmering rage about our patriarchal society and institutionalized misogyny boils over. Reading the first fifty pages, with the gross and sexist treatment of the lovely, brilliant scientist main character, my rage boiled all over the stove and left burned on crusts, almost impossible to scrub off. Happily, before I gave up on it and threw it across the room, a dog was introduced as a main character and I was charmed enough to keep reading. It’s a wonderful book that is ultimately about the power of women and the importance of lifting each other up. Oh, and that dogs are smart and wonderful.

This Will All Be Over Soon. I heard about this on a podcast and I thought it sounded interesting enough: it is a memoir by SNL’s Cecily Strong, about mourning the loss of her cousin and then experiencing the early days of the pandemic. The podcast mentioned it was written in diary form, but it reads like her actual diary, which is to say from a writing point of view, it is not great, Bob. It’s not terrible, and it’s a fast read, but I didn’t find it to be particularly compelling or interesting. It did, however, make me feel hopeful as it reminded me just how bleak and scary those early pandemic days were. Over the past ten months or so, almost everyone I know has been boosted and also has had Covid, as have I on both counts, and so I kind of forgot just how deadly and terrifying the virus was back in 2020. It was also interesting to read about experiencing Covid in NYC, which was a different experience, I think, from the rest of the continent. On the whole though, I did not enjoy this.

Fun fact about today’s title: I cannot say the words “first step” without mentally singing “ask her out and treat her like a layyyydayyyy.” It’s impossible! Sometimes I am able to stop there, but mostly my mind will go all the way through the old Eddie Rabbit song. It’s fun to be me! There’s always music. Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. xo