I’m not going to write about what I’m thankful for, because it’s Thanksgiving and why play that game? Just look where it got the Native Americans. Instead, I’m going to list five things I’m not thankful for, and I invite you to do the same. Not because we want to gripe, but for the fun of behaving Un-American. Actually, it might make us more grateful, once we get this stuff off our chests. So you see, I really am getting into the Thanksgiving spirit.
Five Things I’m Not Thankful For:
1) High Cholesterol – I’m tired of avoiding shrimp cocktail, drinking soy milk, eating fake eggs, and turning down dessert—or at least reducing it to one scoop of ice cream instead of two. Last year, my doctor said that with my bad cholesterol at 180-something, I could have a heart attack any moment. Sometimes I have fun guessing which moment it might be. My favorites are: a) while talking to an audience about the spirit of adventure, b) right before telling someone the punchline of a joke, c) while laughing. Through diet and exercise, I lowered my bad cholesterol to 150-something. Then I went on a three-week vacation in Mexico, and played flan roulette. I had another blood test Monday: the stuff in the vials looked red, without a single flan globule, so maybe I’ll pass.
2) Laundry – It’s not that I hate the work, it’s just that I get easily distracted while waiting, and sometimes forget I’m doing laundry at all. That means I sometimes end up with smelly wet clothes, or wrinkly dry clothes, or in my desire to avoid the whole issue—no underwear and no pants. It’s kind of embarrassing in the morning when Dale says, “Do you want to walk to get a cup of coffee?” and I have to admit, “I have no pants.” I refuse to go to a coffee joint in a skirt when my hair and makeup aren’t done. Instead, I wear my crazy-lady pants. They’re a baggy, orange-pink-magenta-green-and-gold plaid with drawstring bottoms (see above). I refuse to let you see me wearing them, as you will be convinced I’m a crazy lady. Be careful when you promise yourself you’ll just wear something around the house. You never know what you might be driven to do come laundry day.
3) Industrial Gray Carpet in My Kitchen – Ten years ago we bought a fixer-upper that had a large kitchen with potential, but we have since failed to help our kitchen reach its potential. We can’t do the kitchen until Dale finishes his disgusting bathroom. So far, he has removed the mold and with luck should be done with the remodel by my third book release. I’m happy to report I’m making progress on my second book. But back to the kitchen carpet: it’s hard to sweep, and we’re not exactly a vacuuming family, so we sometimes step on crumbs from foods we don’t remember eating. At our house, the three-second rule could be fatal.
4) Daylight Saving Time – Daylight saving time was initially intended to save energy. It does not save energy. People simply change the hours when they use it. DST just makes it seem darker earlier, when winter already makes it darker earlier. Of course, we still get the same amount of daylight, no matter what the clocks say, but Dale and I are late risers, so we like our sun at the end of the day. Everyone knows daylight saving is pointless. So why does the government insist we keep doing it? Probably because that’s the way we’ve always done it. Except that’s not the way anybody did it before 1784, when Benjamin Franklin invented it. I admire many of Franklin’s inventions, but not this one. Someday it will be marked as the first step in our slow slide into facism—daylight saving facism.
5) Aging – I keep scaring myself in the mirror, expecting to see a perky, smooth-complected, single-chinned version of me, only to be haunted by my grandma. I just finished reading the Nancy Mitford novel, Love in a Cold Climate, in which a character of 18 refers to her older cousins this way: they were old now, fifty or something, and life would soon be over for them. Bitch. She’s fictional, so I’ll call her whatever I want.
Just as I suspected, writing all that down made me feel more thankful, because it was a struggle just to list five trivial things I’m not thankful for. Life is good. Hope yours is too. Happy Thanksgiving!
