It is Thanksgiving Day and we are sitting in our living room watching the National Dog Show on NBC while our pre-ordered dinners are reheating in the kitchen. We were supposed to be in Wilmington NC today celebrating the holiday with loved ones (and their Frenchie) but if you've followed this blog at all, you know that our excursions out of town don't often turn out well. In this case, we didn't even get the luggage loaded in the car before potential disaster struck, necessitating a last-minute cancellation and two holiday meals hastily ordered from the Publix deli. Of course, when we went to pick up the meals last night, there was no record of them ever being ordered and the lady in charge shrugged and (rather flippantly) said "sorry but you should have placed the order online instead of over the phone, that way there'd be proof you ordered it."

In spite of the fact that I was wearing a mask, my head went into full Michael Myers tilt and my eyes began flashing fire, which apparently negated any need for further verbiage as the woman suddenly underwent an immediate attitude realignment and pretended to remember that, oh yes, those dinners might have been placed in a different area with the baked goods. Five minutes later she triumphantly handed over the two meals that she claimed had been mislaid. Even though we knew she'd slipped into one of the Publix deli's nooks and crannies and surreptitiously thrown together the presumed-lost dinners herself, we accepted our orders graciously and feigned ignorance at the deli lady's slight of hand. (In case you're wondering, there was no name on the receipt stapled to the bag so there's no way she could have known the order was ours. But we appreciated the effort because the Publix deli lady saved the day.)

So, although it sucks that we can't spend the Thanksgiving holiday with two of our favorite people, we have plenty to be thankful for. True, 2022 has been a veritable shitstorm for pretty much everybody alive--for some more than others--and it's still not over, but there's--maybe--a light at the end of the tunnel. Will 2023 be any better? Well, there are still a few weeks to go before a rain of confetti washes away the detritus of 2022, so let's not jump the gun. I'm thankful for right now, for this day, for this moment. C and I are together and we have food on the table and love in our hearts. That sounds really mawkish, and I am certainly not a romantic prone to gushing sentiment but that's just how it is. C and I both know how lucky we are. And today, we are filled with gratitude. Do I sound like a Hallmark movie?