Thanksgiving Thoughts

Happy Thanksgiving, Family and Friends. We all seem to take stock at Thanksgiving and I've read gratitude lists with everything on them from a warm place to sleep, food to eat, an Xbox and even TiVo. And they're all good. I think its ok to be grateful for the luxury of material things you enjoy.

For me, it's not important what you may be thankful for or about, it is that you actually are in living in the moment long enough to be in a state of thankfulness.

Tonight as I reflect, I am thankful that I live in a country where blithering idiots can speak their mind and I can ignore them.

I am thankful for my bills because they remind me on trying days that I have my dream job that allows me to pay those bills.

I am thankful for the sounds of The Viking's C-Pap and the snoring. One day I may not hear them.

I'm thankful for the challenges life has presented me and that I wasn't behind the barn door when resourcefulness was being handed out.

I'm thankful for the luxury of introspection.

I'm thankful for the amazing strength of friendships discovered in unexpected places.

And, ok... I'm also grateful for TiVo, chocolate, chai latte for my Keurig, men who wink and the Internet. I'm just as shallow as everyone else.

In my email today I got a one liner that says it beautifully:

Thanksgiving is good; Thanks living is better.

Mother Natures Finery

In New England, Mother Nature rails agains the encroaching winter like a fiesty, willful teenager. She dresses in her flamboyant, firey reds and dazzling oranges as though she is defiantly daring winter to rob her of her finery.

Ultimately, she knows she will be donning her gray and white robes but she won't give in silently, she wants you to remember her in brazen splendor.

Fall in New England reminds me of Scarlett O'Hara dressing up in grand style sewn from her mama's green velvet drapes, masquerading as the once elegant lady she was, preparing to ask for help from the Yankees. Tara may be a thousand miles away from New Hampshire, but for me, that's fall in New England.

Here in Texas, Mother Nature shows us a different aspect of her glory. Like a grand old Victorian lady who cherishes her memories of younger, wilder days but knows there is nothing to gain by challenging the inevitable, she presents a maturity earned by experience. No less beautiful, but tempered.



She dresses herself in deep mossy greens, coppery russets and butterscotchy golden hues as she prepares to meet the winter. Grasses turn a soft faded honey as they prepare to rest. Gracefully, she accepts her subtley colored brown cloak. She wears it lightly.




I heard it said recently that no one would ever come to Texas for the beauty of the fall foliage.

Beauty, I believe, is where you find it.