What You Got Here That's Worth Living For?

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With everything going on in the world right now, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about where we are and what we have. The whole concept of Thanksgiving has never been more apt, or more poignant. With bombs and guns and dead children washing up on strange shores, and petty arguments dominating our headlines at home...and we’re going to pause for a moment to gorge ourselves on food, accompanied by shitty debates with our, um, difficult family members, followed by gorging ourselves on the ugliest orgy of retail excess you can imagine, as we gouge each other in the eye to get to the last super-discounted game system in the store. It's all fairly depressing, really.

Thankful for Autumn decorations & the house to put them in
I’ve been watching the news – the worrisome, tragic and trivial – and I’ve been looking around. We have so much to be thankful for. So much with which we are blessed. So many riches we forget to see or appreciate or pause to really be grateful for.

So, here’s mine (in no particular order). Here are all the things I appreciate about my life and am sincerely thankful for:

The fact I live in such a beautiful place, with lovely weather and I didn’t have to dig out my car to get to work today

The infrastructure maintained by my tax dollars that allowed me to get to work safely, and just as safely home to my babies

My babies – my three vibrant, robust girls who are all blessed to be physically healthy and do reasonably well in school – I am so very lucky to have them, even when the middle one is shouting in frustration at her sister’s laptop

The fact that I can afford both the computer I’m writing on and my oldest daughter’s Chromebook (which is a great price, but still), as well as the high-speed internet we’re both using at the same time

Thankful for photogenic wine
Both of us Puff parents having jobs – while juggling two careers and three kids is very challenging at times, it is what makes it possible for us to have a house in a nice area and still be able to feed our kids

That we live in a safe area where my kids can walk to school, or play outside and we are not worried about bombs or war or gang violence

Grocery stores: Target, Lowes, Trader Joe's, and all of the other convenient stores that let us get whatever we want or need with very little effort – truly it is a blessing that we take for granted and is actually rare across the world…and for what they don’t have, Amazon

Free two-day shipping…really

My KitchenAid Stand Mixer – it was a gift from my sister and has changed my life in amazing ways; this is the season of maximum Puff family baking and the mixer is a WONDERFUL kitchen assistant

My smart phone – lets me make phone calls, save money with coupons, keeps my schedule, reminds me to do shit and let’s me blow off steam with fluffy bunny pictures on Pinterest whenever I feel on the verge of offing someone at work

Thankful for traveling dinosaurs that send me selfies from airplanes
Washers and dryers and dishwashers and indoor plumbing – I love you all, we couldn’t live without you

Having enough clothes that I occasionally need to weed them out and give some away

My reliable car that gets me to work, gets good gas mileage, is safe to drive and allows me to avoid plowing into large mammals, trees or ditches even when it rains (I am a smug Subaru driver, yes I am)

My life, my health, my family, my dogs, everything I have

This Thanksgiving, I am wallowing in wonder at how truly amazing my life is. How lucky I am to have been born here, into a family with good genetics, reasonable intelligence and an appreciation for education. How blessed I am that the stars and DNA lined up to give me such wonderful, robust and healthy children, who are also all lucky enough to be decent looking (which is a lot of Puff man’s doing really – thanks dude!). How amazing it is that we’re each alive for another beautiful day.

Tonight, the eve of Thanksgiving, my children will be tucked warm in their beds, stomachs full of the nutritious, yummy food we’re able to feed them. We will go to sleep knowing they are safe, and we will all get up and have another great day tomorrow. I am so very, very thankful for all of this.

And so, this Thanksgiving, I am gorging myself on appreciation and joy.

And stuffing.


Thankful we're not going to be eaten by a saber-tooth cat

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