And now the column where much thanks is given for the little things in life:<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0I\u2019m thankful that my dog can hold her pumpkin. Little pumpkins, left over from Halloween. They were part of a display on the dining room table. A nice, simple Thanksgiving display. Very nice. Then they started disappearing. One by one.
\n
\nI thought they were going bad. That they were being thrown away. I didn\u2019t pay it much attention. Not until I found a partially-gnawed one buried in a chair. And then a stem from another by the door. No remains. No skin. No seeds. Just a stem. Where was the rest of it? Could the dog have eaten the pumpkins? Do you know what it\u2019s like asking yourself a question like that? Three were missing. Three pumpkins! The size of baseballs. She was once a stray. Is that what she subsisted on? Halloween pumpkins!She had watched expectantly as we carved the big one. Like I had laid a turkey out on the floor. I thought it strange when she licked her lips. But she wouldn\u2019t eat a pumpkin, would she? Why would she eat a pumpkin?!?But she did. And now the question was when \u2014 or even how \u2014 would they reappear? You know \u2026 be \u201creintroduced\u201d to the world. We all waited. Expectantly. Could the dog hold her pumpkin, or were we in for a mess of massive proportions? Thankfully, she can. The backyard? Not so fortunate.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0I\u2019m thankful that my dog doesn\u2019t like onions. She must have thought she scored another pumpkin when she snatched one off the counter the other day. I found it by the door \u2026 intact. To her surprise, onions don\u2019t taste anything like pumpkins. I\u2019m certain she was disappointed.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0I\u2019m thankful that I remembered the smoked mullet in the back of the fridge. My dad brought some up the other weekend. \u201cWrapped it in two plastic bags and you can still smell it,\u201d he said with a snicker.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, that\u2019s great,\u201d I said, a plastic smile on my face. \u201cMind if I go bury it in the backyard?\u201d I didn\u2019t. I stuck it in Tupperware and sealed it with duct tape. Pushed it to the back of the fridge where we quickly forgot about it. It would have remained there for months. Eventually it would have meltdown like an overheating nuclear reactor. Burned a hole through the bottom of the fridge and deep into the Earth\u2019s core. We would have to demolish the house, and cap the ground with concrete lined with lead. No one would be allowed back for thousands of years.But I remembered it. It\u2019s gone now. The Tupperware burned. The fridge saved. I give thanks.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0I\u2019m thankful for so much \u2026 like chilly weather. That way I don\u2019t feel like an absolute lunatic playing Christmas music a week before <\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0I\u2019m thankful that my daughter can be tricked into hugs. That I figured this one out. \u201cDon\u2019t let me hug you, child,\u201d I say. \u201cI refuse to hug you. I wouldn\u2019t hug you ever \u2026 no way, no how.\u201d WHAM-O! I get a hug. Only took me seven years to figure that one out.<\/p>\n
\u2022 I\u2019m thankful that the bookshelf I hung above my computer hasn\u2019t toppled off the wall. I\u2019m also thankful that it\u2019s going to stay up there even though I\u2019m jinxing myself by writing this.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0I\u2019m thankful that my turkey defrosted in time. Or at least I hope it will. At the time of writing this, it still resembles Iceland. Frozen solid with less than 48 hours to go. Maybe I shouldn\u2019t give thanks yet.<\/p>\n
\u2022 I\u2019m thankful for whoever invented s\u2019mores and kettle corn and pecan pie with whiskey in it.<\/p>\n
\u2022 I\u2019m thankful that while I\u2019m turning 40 next year, nobody knows it. DOH!<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0I\u2019m thankful for the little tears I got when I heard my daughter sing in choir. Some song called, \u201cI\u2019m just a child.\u201d What happened to me? Where did that raw emotion well up from? One minute I\u2019m thinking about lunch, the next \u2026 WHAM-O! I\u2019m a puddle of goo.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0I\u2019m thankful for this column \u2026 most of the time \u2026 except when it\u2019s 5 a.m. in the morning \u2026 the day it\u2019s due \u2026 which is every time \u2026 and I\u2019m trying to focus \u2026 and I\u2019m trying to write it \u2026 but I can\u2019t \u2026 because all I want to do is go count the pumpkins \u2026 and give thanks that there\u2019s nothing gnawed \u2026 buried in a chair \u2026 or left on a rug. So much to be thankful for this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And now the column where much thanks is given for the little things in life: \u2022\u00a0I\u2019m thankful that my dog can hold her pumpkin. Little pumpkins, left over from Halloween. They were part of a display on the dining room table. A nice, simple Thanksgiving display. Very nice. Then they started disappearing. One by one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317,8],"tags":[430,429,428],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-nutshells","category-parenthoodandchildren","tag-giving-thanks","tag-thankful","tag-thanksgiving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":928,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions\/928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}