Giving Thanks

It's Thanksgiving here in the True North Strong and Free. Canadian Thanksgiving, unlike American Thanksgiving, is in October and has nothing to do with Pilgrims. We just thought we'd like an opportunity to have a long weekend about 6 weeks after school begins, and a good excuse to eat ourselves into a food coma in sufficient time to recover enough for Christmas.

I am thankful for many things in my life:

• Velcro. Velcro is magical.
• Coffee. A legal drug, cheap and widely available. That first cup of coffee in the morning always, always gets a minute of my time to appreciate it.
• My PVR. Being able to record shows and pause them while watching them and then watch them without commericals is nothing short of fabulous. Plus, setting a PVR to record is so much freaking easier than VCRs used to be. Back in the day, you would take a half an hour to set up your VCR to record a show you really wanted to watch, and then you'd come home to find you'd managed to tape an hour of the Weather Channel. It would make you weep. With the PVR you do not have to pay the teenager next door to come over and  make sure you have everything set up ok. And, there's no annoying "12:00" flashing endlessly at you, either.
• Universal Health Care. My dad was pretty sick last year; he had three surgeries in 5 days, 3 stints in the ICU and spend four months in hospital. He had exceptional care; surgeons, nurses, respiratory therapists, physiotherapists, doctors, social workers and every specialist you could imagine, all wonderful.  And he's alive today because of that care. And we never had to worry for one second if we could afford it or not; all we had to pay for was the parking.
• My husband doesn't spit. I regularly see men walking down the street who hork up a loogie and spit it out on the sidewalk; its disgusting. I am ever so thankful that the man I married has no prediliction whatsoever to do this.
• I can read in a moving car. I know loads of people who get all woozy and nauseous when they read in a car, and I wasn't even aware that this was a problem until a little while ago. Reading in a car does not make me sick, and in fact, I think it probably makes me a considerably more pleasant passenger. For me, an 8-hour drive to Montreal is not an endless marathon of boredom, like it is for lots of people. but an uninterrupted and totally permissible excuse to read for hours at a time without feeling guilty because I am not cleaning the house.
• I haven't been bored in years. Between reading, scrapbooking, knitting, cooking, the internet and working, looking after a house and raising a family, I can't remember a time when I thought "what am I going to DO with myself today?"
• I lost 20 pounds since March. Because the weather is getting colder, I am putting on all sorts of clothes lately that I haven't had on in months. The immeasurable pleasure I get from zipping things up and having them fit never gets old.
• My iPhone. I love my phone. I love it. I use it endlessly: I text my daughters all the time (they might not think that's as wonderful as I do), I check my e-mail and my Facebook, I check the weather forcast, see where an address is located in the city, check the hours of a business, count the rows in my knitting, find out where the nearest Starbucks or Tim Hortons are, listen to music and find out where that plane going over my house is headed to. Occasionally I make phone calls on it.
• I have a very nice life for someone who doesn't work very hard.
• Nutella.