Thirty Days of Thanksgiving: Day 1

For the next thirty days-- the month of November-- I am going to post daily with something each day that I am thankful for.  I want to do this for several reasons.  First, Thanksgiving is my very favorite holiday.  I like Christmas fine.  Halloween is really fun and the "Halloween Season" seems to be extending to the entire month of October and lots more people decorate their yards and homes, and I like seeing all that.  I usually put up some decorations, too.  New Year's Eve doesn't thrill me (too many years working in restaurants on that night) and I feel the same about Valentine's Day (for the same reason).   Easter is nice, but not everyone "celebrates" Easter.

But Thanksgiving?  I love Thanksgiving.  It is the beginning of the winter holiday season, and people are usually in a pretty good mood.  I love food and cooking, and love all the tradition around what we have at the table.  I love that for many of us, Thanksgiving is a family-centered meal, but many of us invite friends to the table with us.  (I think that it is often easier to do this at a non-gift centered holiday because there is no uncomfortable-ness about 'should we get Person X a token gift to open'.)  And, I truly think that I have so much to be thankful for.  So this year I'm not containing it to one day.

Second, I want to get in a more regular habit of writing and posting.  I compose so many posts in my head that never make it online, and having a schedule will (hopefully) help me direct my thoughts.  And like most things, with practice it will become a habit.

And third, October was a difficult month for me to get through for many reasons.  Nursing school is hard, and there were moments I questioned my choice.  Mike is driving to a base over an hour away from our home for work every day, and that means that we haven't had as much time together.  We had to update our homestudy, which means that it has been a year since the last one (two years with our agency) and that was stressful.  There were a couple more things, too, all of which separately would have been nothing much but all together seemed so overwhelming.  Among everything difficult that is going on, I also have so so much in my life that is wonderful.

These posts are not going to be in any particular order.  Day 12 will not necessarily be a more important thing than Day 24, but for this the first day, I am going to start with the most important thing, something I am thankful for every day.  My husband, Mike.

I mean, how many people would agree to an Elvis wedding?  But seriously, Mike is my rock, my safe place. He allows me to be me.  He is, in the words of Julia Child, "the butter to my bread, the breath to my life."

I read somewhere that part of being successful in life is to marry the right person.  Well, I knew right from the start that I was marrying the right person.  I only had one worry on my wedding day:  that our Elvis would be fat.  No worries about Mike what so ever.  We've had struggles.  Who hasn't?  Our first three years of marriage we were apart more than together (he deployed a week after our wedding).  I know in my heart that this is the person I want sitting next to me in my porch rocking chair when I am eighty, and sitting next to me at our dinner table tonight, and all the days in between.