Because it is after midnight here (and long long after I SHOULD have gone to bed but what else is new), I have decided to write my Thanksgiving Day post.  This allows me to both hang out with my Mom, fiance and cat all day tomorrow without breaking from the pack to post and to not fail NaBloPoMo.

This year I have already written a few things that I am thankful for–my awesome fiance who forewent levelling his (@!*#$!!) WoW character to come comfort me at three in the morning when I could not sleep, my freelance work being stable enough to for me to pay my bills without having to don a coffee slinger’s apron and–it feels like there should be a third link here but I is tired. Also? Kind of too tired to link correctly.  Oh well.

For me, Thanksgiving is mostly about family.  This will seem odd to anybody who knew me growing up and who knows that the huge family get togethers were few and far between and maybe? that’s why I am so grateful for having a family who genuinely loves each other and enjoys the time we spend together (because it is a treat when we do it, not an annoying obligation).  My family is filled with wacky, crazy, goofy loving people and I am very thankful to know all the way down in my bones that even though I rarely see them or talk to them that every single one of them would drop everything for me if I ever asked them to.  I am really lucky to have that–and to be able to have that sort of faith at all, especially in today’s world is kind of amazing in itself.  There are few things in this world that I do not doubt and my family is one of them.

I am also grateful for my friend-family.  The girls (women now!) that I grew up with and who I’m lucky enough to still call my closest friends.  So many people I know shun their high school friends in favor of collegiate buddies and friends they make as adults.  My high school friends are still my best friends.  We went our separate ways after high school but as adults most of us (Kt being the globetrotter that she is) have settled in the same area–not on purpose, just through sheer…serendipity? Is that the word that goes here? I’m grateful that I get to watch my friend’s daughter grow up in real life and that we are all more than once a year e-mails or holiday cards to each other.  It’s rare that people stay so close or come back together as easily as we have, so it is definitely something to be grateful for.  In this vein I am also glad that in the last couple of years I have reconnected with my oldest friend in the world.  We met when I was nine and she was eight and kept in touch through letters and phone calls for years after I moved away.  We lost touch for a while during our initial post-college years but found each other again not long before Will and I moved to Portland.  She got married earlier this year and now she is my go-to person when I get wedding freak outs.  Today I realized that she and I have been friends for twenty one years.  That’s a lot!

And now, I will gratefully go crawl into my bed and sleep.  Happy Thanksgiving!