Thanksgving 2012

I have many things to be thankful for. I hope you all do too. Here are 30 (in no particular order):

1. I am grateful for the sun, without which none of the rest of this would be possible.
2. I am grateful for water. For hot showers and baths, for cool water to drink.
3. I am grateful for blue skies and sunshine and fresh air and the smell of rain on the pavement in the middle of the night.
4. I am grateful to be alive. I don't believe that I would miss being alive if I were not, but I am alive, and I am thankful for it.
5. I am grateful for my body. It is not perfect, but it works, and it wakes up in the morning and it sleeps at night and digests what I feed it and moves where I want it to without pain.
6. I am grateful for my hands. Hands that can feel, and type, and hold books, and crochet, and make food, and hold the people I love.
7. I am grateful for my brain, for the ability to think and dream and solve problems and create.
8. I am grateful for food, and for knowing where my next meal will come from.
9. I am grateful for sleep, for the opportunity to allow my body and my mind to reboot and heal.
10. I am grateful for a warm, safe place to sleep.
11. I am grateful for public transit, so that I can reduce my carbon footprint and have time to read and not have to fight traffic, pump gas, find parking, etc.
12. I am grateful for my education, especially for the fact that I had access to a free, quality public education and that no one questioned my right to learn because of my gender.
13. I am grateful for my parents, who have never made me doubt for a second that they love me, and who taught me many things.
14. I am grateful for my Gentleman Friend, who is kind and loving and generous and looks after me.
15. I am grateful for my friends. They are smart, funny, kind, generous, wonderful people who take care of each other.
16. I am grateful for employment. I am lucky enough to have jobs that pay the bills and also allow me to do different things that I enjoy.
17. I am grateful for technology. For the Internet, for smart phones, for iPods, for Kindles; for safer cars and planes and trains; for protective equipment, for security systems, for diagnostic tools.
18. I am grateful for medicine. For painkillers, antibiotics, replacement joints, transplants, IUDs, chemotherapy.
19. I am grateful for democracy and suffrage, for the right to vote and have a say in what my government does.
20. I am grateful for protestors and agitators and people who fight for what they believe in. The people who risked their freedom and their lives to build a better, more just world, to take us one step further on the road to peace.
21. I am grateful for the people who have and do serve in the military, who risk their lives in defense of their country, and especially for those who made our democracy and independence possible.
22. I am grateful for first responders; for firemen, EMTs, and police. For the people who sacrifice their holidays and nights and weekends to take care of all of us.
23. I am grateful for the people who pave roads and collect garbage and mine coal; for all the people who do the dirty work of making our civilization run.
24. I am grateful not just for the food I eat, but for the people who got it to my plate; the migrant workers, the farmers, the truck drivers.
25. I am grateful for literature, and for literacy. For stories that comfort, for stories that challenge. For sweeping opera and short stories.
26. I am grateful for the visual arts. For paintings and sculptures and mobiles and that feeling of awe when something beautiful is in front of you.
27. I am grateful for the performing arts. For my early exposure to dance and music and theatre. For the way a song can capture perfectly how you feel, for the way dance can tell a story with no words, for the way a stage can keep you in someone's living room or take you on a journey around the world.
28. I am grateful to live in a city where I have access to world-class museums, theatres, restaurants and parks, and for the opportunity to enjoy them.
29. I am grateful for leisure time and days off. For the chance to spend a day alone in my pajamas watching movies as well as the chance to spend a day with the people I love.
30. I am grateful for the ability to be grateful. For the ability to see and appreciate the beauty in the world.