Lucy Lime

So I feel quite thankful at the moment. I have a lot to be happy/thankful for on a regular basis but today I am feeling especially verbal about it.

Thank you Mom for giving me some of the best, albeit unsolicited, advice on kids. Take your kids out to dinner with you. Get them used to eating at a table in a public place at a super-duper early age and they will know how to act at a restaurant. Too often you see kids screaming and making a spectacle of themselves (and their parents). My son will actually sit and eat and play at the table. Of course, he has an occasional meltdown but that is when he is sick or we have stretched him to his limit. I followed the advice "Your father and I took you and your brother out to eat as babies and got you used to the idea and never had a problem" and it worked.

Thank you Dad for being a Christmastime DORK. Each year when I stayed under my parents' roof, even as I was a married adult, I would wake up to this horrible shouting and clamor. Every Christmas morning my Dad would try to 'catch' Santa Clause as he left our house. Seriously. Dad would run around the perimeter of the house yelling "Wait, Santa! I'm gonna catch you!" Little yappy dogs would be chasing him, adding to the noise. He would also go inside and bang pots and pans around. He created this mass chaos only to fall to the ground in an exhausted heap once he say my brother or me come down the stairs. "Oh, I tried to catch him! You just missed him! He bested dear old Dad!" It is this silly little Christmas moment of mental illness that I fondly remember and greatly miss. This is the reason I might keep up the guise of Santa with my child(ren).

Thank you Iris for listening to me yap about all the great injustices and pains inflicted upon my person. I know that my incessant bitching has rendered you deaf, which in turn allows you to continue listing to my pointless chatter. I genuinely feel mush better when we hang up. A moment of clarity comes over my rattled mind.

Thank you Jeff for staying up until 4 in the morning a couple of weeks ago to surprise me with a clean house when I woke up. You rock. I'll get to other wonderful things you do later.

Thank you lymph node on my neck for swelling up and freaking me out. Totally needed that. As if this nasty cold was not enough.

Thank you Pippa for having and awesome British accent that mesmerizes me into silence.

Thank you Jeannine for introducing me to the wonders of those mini pizzas. Lunchtime is super easy now.