This is my entry for LJ Idol, Friends and Rivals (therealljidol). The top for week 0.5 (halfway between Week 0 and Week 1) is "The Giving of Thanks."




My son, Kung Fu Panda, sits in the bathtub singing as he stacks plastic shapes into a rocket. "Three, two, one... blast off!" he says, then lifts the blocks into the air with a whooshing noise. I am thankful for sitting here, watching him from the toilet, a laptop balanced on crossed legs, my back poked by hard porcelain.

I am thankful for the cloud of white cat hairs scruffed onto my laptop desk by my one healthy, well-behaved, clean kitty.

I am thankful for radio stations that spit static on the long ride from Central Pennsylvania to home, and for my son whining in the back seat that he misses his cousins.

I am thankful for clothes that are tight one moment and loose the next, for a body that can't decide what size it wants to be but contains a heart that beats fervently.

I am thankful for the employer who told my husband two months ago that he would eliminate his position at the end of November, then signed him to a much smaller support contract. I am thankful for the new employer, waiting in the wings with a tantalizing second interview (this Tuesday) and hopes of new stability to come.

I am thankful that, despite all the chaos left behind in my late mother's house, she tucked our family mementos -- photos, her writings, her art -- into carefully selected safe hideaways.

I am thankful for a family that can come together from all corners of the country and spend two weeks together, grieving, supporting, sharing and remembering.

I am thankful for a Thanksgiving table where the food was a pale memory of Mom's cooking but the faces around the table were those of my greatest living loves.

I am thankful for every inconvenient, troubling, annoying, nagging aspect of my life, for underneath that web of dust pulses the vivid, peaceful, glorious beauty of every single moment.

Blurry sunset from the passenger side