I am thankful for...

Two posts in one day... what you get when I get to the airport so early.

Anyway, I figured that a tribute to all the things I'm thankful for is something I have to do, some kind of generic rite of passage that each blog should contain. Plus I was a little inspired by my Starbucks cup (even more generic, ick). I had my kids start with the prompt above, so I guess I'll use that.

I am thankful for...

Family: the people I can count on to say the only things more ridiculous than the things my kids say. The people that inspire everything I do, for better or worse. My family is hilarious and I'm so lucky to have them. It's weird to be doing this now, without them around me, because usually this conversation is reserved for Thanksgiving dinner, fueled by glasses of wine and food comas. At this time there's oil all over the kitchen floor from my dad's careless oiling of the paper bag ritual for the turkey (top secret family recipe). There's leftover bagels in the trash and hot cocoa spills on the porch, splotches that eerily resemble blood splatters from a murder scene. It's not a murder scene, just the transition to the Pie and Glove race early in the morning, when my sister and I are still sleeping off our Thanksgiving Eve hangovers. The circular discussion usually centers on things we are jokingly thankful for- "Dad, for holding my hair back," "late night Doritos," "Not getting arrested"- because what we're really most thankful for doesn't need to be said. One year my grandmother really killed the buzz by exclaiming after her thankful speech that she prayed every day that we would stop drinking. Everyone but my 15 year old autistic cousin had a drink in their hand. Oh well.

Friends: another cliche one, one that I can't really talk about because my friends and I are so weird that anyone reading about us would just be confused. But I couldn't be more thankful for finding people that I can be a weirdo with, that appreciate my horrible jokes and my strange tendencies, and that can answer back with horrible jokes and strange tendencies of their own.

Lovers: that's you, Jack. So actually I guess it's just "Lover." Your first name mention in my blog... you should feel special. That's all ya get though.

My School and Support People: I would have been face first in the bush outside of creepy-downstairs-neighbor-Randy's balcony if it wasn't for all the staff at my school and in TFA who listen to me cry like a baby and complain and freak out and have meltdowns. Thanks for choosing (or not choosing, some of the people I vent to are only there because I corner them... hah) to calm me down and help me out.

My Kids: I don't know when it happened, but now my kids are really MY kids. As much as they drive me crazy and I want to run out of the room on them, they have really brought a lot of good things into my life. Stress, anxiety... oh wait, right. GOOD things. I spend 5 hours straight with them, and they make me laugh almost as much as my friends and family can. They try to impress me, they do things behind my back, they put things in their mouth that they aren't supposed to, but in the end they teach me something new every single day whether it's about myself or about people in general. And they're learning. Almost all of them are meeting their goals for this time of the year, and I'm pretty grateful for that (my sanity is grateful for that, too).

For their Thanksgiving prompts, most of my kids talked about their moms and dads, their cousins or pets. Some of them talked about God (this is the South, after all). One kid, though, talked about something else.

He said, "I am thankful for learning how to read. My teacher taught me how to read. It was fun. Now I'm a good reader. A real good reader."

Unfortunately, I still haven't taught him how to write so it looked more like this: "I am thankful for lrng how to red. My TCR tote me how to red. IT wuZ FUN. NoW I'm a GuD ReDR. RiL Gud RedR."

I didn't let him take it home... kept it for myself, for those days I do feel like throwing myself out of my classroom window. Maybe he's the biggest suck up in the class, the one always pulling on my arm to tell me he's being a good helper, the one asking my TA to tell me that he was "very focused," the one who loudly proclaims, "Please share the crayons with me and be a good friend," just to try and please me. It's still something I'm thankful for.