That time of year

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in America, where people gather to eat, watch football, and generally have a dress rehearsal for the family get-togethers at Christmas. Typically, my lovely wife and I try to take this time to hide away from the rest of the world for a nice, quiet meal by ourselves and our cats. We like to think that we are doing this as a last-chance togetherness moment before the insanity of Christmas, but we are just introverts who dread the Little House/Big Number syndrome, where you are stuffed in a house with a zillion members of family and not enough chairs or breathing space. After about three hours, you don't feel sociable anymore. You feel greasy and light-headed. You want to leave, but you can't because, well, you came with your folks and they have the keys and hey why can't you just grin and bear it.

Because our families are in different parts of the U.S., my wife and I are stuck with the task of traveling, an ordeal growing more hideous every year, especially since yours truly is on a government watch list. Since before wife and I were married (and doing that luscious living-in-sin thing), we would switch of Christmas and Thanksgiving, jetting to one family or the other, rotating the destination every year. Last year, wife and I caught a break. We had a Thanksgiving to ourselves and we spent it cooling down and reconnecting. We love our families, but we enjoy our quiet time together, away from work and the social dance that is being with family.

So, tomorrow, we are having Thanksgiving, but we are having family over, a cousin who is alone up in Seattle after transferring in to a new job. Of course we'll take her in. It's family, and eventually Thanksgiving is about family, whether it's 2 or 20 around the table. After all, you gonna eat all that Turkey by yourself?

Things I'm thankful for, in no order.
*My wife and cats
*I have a home, job with benefits, health
*Friends, family
*Respectable amount of sanity
*Outlets to maintain said sanity
*The ability to start every morning being a little bit better than where I was yesterday.

So, to you and yours, Happy Thanksgiving.