Grati-freakin-tude

I regularly put myself to sleep fantasizing about some random billionaire leaving me...well, a billion dollars. Because it's a fantasy, so don't clutch your pearls and be all "a billion dollars? Well, that's a bit much for l'il ol' me!"

I'm super detailed about it, too. Like, I think about how I would transfer the money to our family members tax free. It's all very intricate. There are also beach houses and houseboats involved.

In the end, though, I realize where the real blessings lie.

I'm thankful for dead leaves, cardboard boxes and a malfunctioning smartphone. They have been the triggers for some very sweet memories over the last ten days or so.

(1) My kids were playing "sleep in the box" and Caroline actually fell asleep in the box. Because Caroline.


(2) During our Thanksgiving visit to Salt Lake, my mom had all these leaves on her lawn. Dang if that wasn't one of the most magical hours of my life. P.S. Miss you, Dad!





(3) Tyler and I were going to run a 5K at Thanksgiving Point this year. But I kept putting it off because it was $50 (and then $80), and doesn't everybody procrastinate in the hope that things will somehow magically become different than they are? It makes so much sense.

Two days before Thanksgiving I told Tyler I was going to register, by damn. He suggested we save the money and run our own 5K.



So we did. My dear little mother-in-law watched our kids and we struck out. I have never been able to run, not my whole life, without (1) listening to music that motivates me (2) to a tempo that matches my pace. That is how much of a wimp I am about running.

Except that a mile in, my phone inexplicably turned off. We were bound and determined to run our 5K, so Tyler talked to me. And I talked back. Somehow I was able to do it, and for a moment we were one of those married couples that runs and talks together. Instead of what we usually are, which is one of those married couples that flops on the bed and looks at our smartphones together. (I will emphatically defend our right, nay, our obligation to do the second thing for as long as I draw breath).

The sun was shining, the roads were flat, and I was chatting with my husband. My life, with all its chaos, is beautifully punctuated by moments like these. I am grateful, so grateful for them.

I'm pretty sure history is starting to think the Pilgrims were jerks. (Also, Columbus). But Happy Thanksgiving, anyway.

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