I’m under a tight deadline right now and beg everyone’s patience if I repeat a blog I wrote in the summer of 08 on my Sizzling Pens Blog. It has a “thankful” theme and was one of my favorites:
July 12th, 2008
After virtually ignoring my kids, husband, and house for weeks while I lived in a deadline cave, I vowed to spend time with them once I turned in my manuscript. So, finally free at last, for the past couple of weeks I’ve devoted my days to taking my kids to movies and water parks, making nice dinners for hubby, and getting the house organized. One project was getting years worth of photos put into albums.
As I looked back on pictures from the past 20 years, I started feeling, well…old. Wow, I looked so much thinner and younger back then! I was newly wed, my kids were babies, my house was CLEAN. Ahhh, those golden years.
It’s easy to think of them that way. Now days my kids are sneering teens, I’m fat and menopausal, and my house needs new floors, new counter tops in the kitchen, new paint, er…dusting.
I find myself craving the day my kids move out and I have the house to myself and hubby again. I yearn for the day when my day IS my own again, when I’m not a 24 hour on-call chauffeur with the never-ending loads of dirty laundry and a perpetually full sink of dirty dishes.
But then I spend a day with my mom, who lives alone since my father’s death, and who is finding it harder to get around lately, and I realize I am never again going to be as young as I am right now. And maybe someday I’ll wish for these days back. When my day was full of people who needed me, and my kids’ safety and decisions for their future were still somewhat under my control. Once they go out into the world, maybe I’ll wish them back home, where I’m still a big part of their lives, and can kiss them goodnight in their beds every night, and know they’re safe when I go to bed.
I’m a country music fan and Trace Atkins has a song out called, You’re Gonna Miss This. The lyrics talk about how fast the days go by, and they’re so true. Sometimes, it seems like only yesterday I was holding my first newborn in my arms.
I don’t want to look back on my life and realize I missed the good stuff by always yearning for tomorrow. So, I’ll try not to wish these “golden days” away and enjoy the moment I’m living in now. Dirty laundry, sneering teens, and all.

What is something UNEXPECTED this year for which you are thankful?

Usually, I’m thankful that SOMEONE ELSE is making the food that is so fabulously arrayed before me. Usually, I’m thankful for my family and friends, my recent contracts, my generally wonderful life. Yadda yadda. Okay, so I’m blessed. But this year, something incredibly weird happened.

I’m thankful that I AM able to try and cook something this year. Yes, for my vegetarian daughter I’m going to try and cook a vegetable pot pie. The recipe was in Vegetarian Times to which we subscribe. But…you see, I don’t cook. Well, maybe microwave popcorn, but that’s the extent of it. In fact, I’m becoming something of a raw-ist not because of principle or anything like that. But because I’m too lazy to do more than pull spinach leaves out of a bag. Add some pre-shredded cheese and I’ve got dinner.

So the fact that I’m motivated to try to cook something as elaborate as pot pie…well, that is a shocker indeed. And kudos to whatever urge struck me hard enough to get off my duff and try. So THANK YOU to the mysterious urge. I’ll let you know later if the experiment causes other people to thank me for NOT doing this again next year.

UPDATE: Vegetarian Pot Pie was edible. Barely. Was welcomed to make it again for next year, so long as I’m not hurt when no one eats it. But I tried, so I feel like it was win!