The Obligatory Post

I am thankful for glazed ham and other fine smoked pork products.

I am grateful for my Chevy Astro van with AWD. Mostly I am grateful for the fact that my deep and abiding love for my van has rekindled a long dead relationship with snow; I am coming to appreciate the winter wonderland of the north.

I am thankful for tampons and all sorts of modern feminine hygiene products.

I am grateful for the wide variety of food available, even in Alaska, even in the dead of winter. I'm sure my ancestors could not have made a chocolate haupia pie for Thanksgiving even if they had wanted to.

I am grateful for bedtimes and that every day ends.

I am grateful for Facebook and the easy way I can now breeze in and out of friends' lives with just a few keystrokes.

I am thankful that my husband loves bright sunny yellow (you'll never guess the color of the new flooring at the shop....) and I'm equally grateful that we currently have no home of our own to paint.

I love the rain. I love the fact that rain melts snow.

I love watching the winter storms, knowing I am warm and inside and dry and safe from all the fury of the outside.

I am thankful for family and for the joys of family living blocks away or hundreds of miles away. I am grateful for phones, computers and other technologies that make moves to Alaska less isolating than they were 50 years ago.

I am grateful that the power of the sun can now come in a small, convenient to carry box.

I am equally thankful for happy meds and pain killers, without with, I might just be single.

I am grateful for God and the fact that He has more patience for me than I do for myself.

I am grateful for blogging and for comments from random strangers. (ahem. hint. NUDGE.)

And I am grateful for tryptophan (although I wonder if they make it in pill form yet....).