Thankful

Despite feeling stressed and tired and a little irritable, there are so many things that I am thankful for this year. Here are a few things in no particular order:
• The boy is FINALLY fully potty trained.
• Friends and family (even the family members that make me insane).
• A husband who respects my opinion even if he doesn’t always agree with me.
• Hugs and snuggles with a cute three year-old.
• My family is healthy, relatively happy, and we have enough food to eat.
• We have a roof over our heads at night.
• We have decent health insurance.
• Only 2 more years with Dubya screwing up this country.
• I didn’t vote for him.
• Key Republican indictments and/or investigations.

I’m sure there are others that I’m just not thinking of right now. Things have been crazy at our house lately. The husband decided to go ahead and bust up the rest of the tile in the kitchen right before Thanksgiving so we’ve had a ton of dust that I was not prepared to deal with as part of my pre-Thanksgiving cleaning regimen. In addition, I’ve been trying to squeeze in a little time to work on finishing up a baby sweater for my cousin. I’m to my favorite part of the sweater: seaming and weaving in ends. And since I loathe seaming and weaving, I keep setting it aside for other things. In addition to stressing over the excess dust in the house, I’m stressing over having the in-laws over for Thanksgiving because they sort of take over when they get here and then there’s a competition thing that we get into that makes me crazy. For example, we’ll talk before hand and decide on the menu and who’s willing to bring which dishes. Among other things, I usually volunteer to do the pumpkin pie because I use my grandmother’s recipe and it’s awesome. And EVERY SINGLE YEAR my mother-in-law brings a frozen, store-bought pumpkin pie when she knows that I’ve already baked two homemade ones. And EVERY SINGLE YEAR, they wind up taking their frozen pie home because nobody eats it. Oh, and we also have to have the same menu every year because that’s the way it’s always been done since the beginning of time. If I want to have a different side dish or if I want to do a fried turkey instead of a roasted one, she will go ahead and do the traditional side dish and roasted turkey anyway because one must never deviate from the menu. I could go on and on, but I will spare you. Anyway, I try to ignore it and bite my tongue or consume mass quantities of wine to make it more bearable because they are my husband’s family and guests in our home, but I feel less willing to do that this year. Maybe it’s the pregnancy (and I can’t drink the wine this year) or maybe it’s the fact that I’m just tired of the games that are always played, but I warned my husband that if I see a frozen pie, I’m going to spend the evening by myself in the bedroom.

But wait, there’s more! Christmas is just a month away and then it will happen AGAIN! Please send prayers or good thoughts this way that I make it through the entire holiday season without seriously injuring someone.

Just to clarify, things haven’t always been this way with the in-laws. They used to be the most wonderful people and I was the one among my friends who lucked out and got the “good” in-laws. But in recent years things have changed for one reason or another, and there’s not even a specific event that I can pinpoint as the cause for the change. It may be simply that we are all growing in a different direction. Regardless, I will try to put aside our differences and endure being around them for the sake of my husband and kids. And if they ever find out about this blog or get internet access at home, this post is totally getting edited…

I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!