Warning: Gushing ahead. Forgive me in advance for the gooey prose you are about to read, but I'm still basking in the afterglow of Thanksgiving gratitude and the truth is, every once in a while I can't help myself. All the sappiness builds up in me and just I have to go Hallmark.

Why fight it, I say.

I have so much gratitude itching inside me right now it's going to spill right over into the next post. I can feel it.

Plus, it's just plain nice to break from whining about the don't have's, and the things I've given up and monotony of struggle. Blah, blah, blah, blahty-blah.

This is what I do have:

I have two of the coolest kids anywhere for daughters and I have time with them everyday. Even when I don't really want it.

I have a husband who takes them out of the house for hours every chance he gets because he likes hanging with them. And also because he understands now the finer points of maintaining my mental health.

I have two bathrooms. Let me say that again. I have two bathrooms with two toilets that flush. No waiting.

I have central heat and a lovely fir-tree view out my office windows. (And I have an office.) 

I have two healthy parents who I will never understand, but whom I know support me unconditionally even when they think my decisions are crazy-insane.

I have friendships with roots that run so deep and roots grown so inextricably through each other that those friends have become my family.

I have access to archive.org and streaming audio of almost every Grateful Dead show ever played. And I had the good fortune to attend 30-some of those shows, in varying states of consciousness, before Jerry Garcia died.

I have my family living all in one house, healthy, in a way that is possible only because I once left.

And I have (or will have after the holidays) noise-cancelling headphones to block them out. No price, not even $400, is too high to pay for a little piece of quiet.

I have, after only 39 years, learned how to learn and can now spend the rest of my years growing.

And every once in a while I have the wisdom to step back and give thanks.