Giving Thanks

My husband and I got back to Ontario a few hours ago after spending the long weekend at my parents’ house in BC. We woke up before 5 a.m. We’re both incredibly tired and grumpy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Every time I leave Victoria (or NC), I’m reminded how hard it is to be so far from key support people when I’m finding it difficult to cope, yet I’m also reminded how lucky I am to have those support people in the first place.

I’m pretty good at focusing on the things that are currently going less than ideally in my life; I’m not as good at acknowledging what’s going right. I like to think that my tendency to dwell on the negative is human nature, but I’m willing to concede that it might be a personality flaw.

In any case, since it’s Thanksgiving here in Canada, I figured I should ride this sudden and unprecedented mini-wave of gratitude and, you know, give thanks. Here’s an abbreviated list of people and things for which I’m thankful.

• Immediate, acquired, and extended family.
• My steadfast, loyal, and loving husband.
• Friends, particularly the ones who appease me by laughing at my unfiltered stream of bad jokes.
• My emotional and financial safety net, which I am incredibly privileged to have.
• The Canadian medical system, of which I am a heavy and generally satisfied user.
• Comfort food, namely frozen yogurt, plain pitas, microwave dinners, and Reese’s Pieces.
• Sweatpants, which are both sick K and healthy K’s best buddy. (I own an impressive array of them, ranging from ratty UNC 2009 Championships pants to purple Roots sweats I bought for Purple Day last year.)
• Books, even if I’m not always able to effectively absorb the written word these days (stupid meds).
• Punctuation, especially parentheses.

Time for some Thanksgiving Pad Thai.