Thanksgiving Thanks

I’m thankful…
.. Mom was just released from the hospital
.. Dad’s tests were negative
.. My kids are happy and healthy and smart and cute (still wonder where they came from)
.. My wife is still with me
.. (and for that I must thank the people that invented the DVR)
.. that despite the rotten economy, I’m still able to pay the bills and put food on the table..
…that I can spend time with my bro and family for Thanksgiving
… (But that we don’t live close enough for the resulting insanity to be too frequent…)
… that I’m gonna be able to eat all the turkey I can stuff down my gullet tonight…
… that my bro has a new HD flatscreen to watch 3 DVR speeded up NFL games today
.. and that BlazersEdge exists

Thanksgiving, 2003… My wife and I had just finished a four-month RV ride across the country (following our termination from Digital Equipment Corp, we decided to boogie), and settled into an RV park in Troutdale for the winter… My wife came out here to windsurf on vacation twice, and I just wanted to live somewhere but New England, so… why not live where you play, so there we were.

Unfortunately, neither of us realized that the wind ALSO blew down the Columbia in the winter time… It was c-o-l-d that winter, and the night before Thanksgiving it was so cold that we slept with winter clothes on, all 3 comforters on top of us, and every piece of clothing we had in the RV on top of that… It was so cold that when I got up to go the bathroom that morning, my bare feet slid on a small layer of ice in the can… Worse, flushing wasn’t accompanied by any whoosing water noise… Yup, like that classic, Christmas vacation, “the sh!tter’s full”… more precisely, full and frozen…

The reason, as it turns out, was that the water tank was too low… So, I started my Thanksgiving morning lying on the ground with my winter coat on, shivering, holding a hair dryer to the on-board septic tank and lines… for about an hour… I then started to fill up the tank, and heard that wonderful sound of running water…

About this time, my parents called to wish us a “Happy” Thanksgiving, so of course I was relating my start to the day… Then, our call was interrupted by my wife screaming “DAVE! WATER! EVERYWHERE!”…

If you recall from two paragraphs earlier, I was filling up the tank… Well, it was now full… so full, that the frigid plastic tank burst, resulting in a geyser spewing up from (of course) under our bed. Our entire collection of anything warm was now soaking wet… I hung up and yanked that infernal hose out of the tank spigot, and began to pile our soggy belongings outside… It was still below freezing, so we spent the rest of the morning lugging wet, heavy belongings to the tiny dryer in the park’s bathroom a few hundred yards away…

But at least it was Thanksgiving, right?

My favorite day of the year, combining three of my favorite things: lots (and I mean LOTS) of turkey, football, and beer… We only knew 1 person in town, and she graciously invited us over to her friend’s house for the big feast. We were so stressed from the morning’s events that we left the house without the hors d’ouvres and beer… So we arrived at the stranger’s house bringing… nothing…

But everything seemed fine, as we regaled our guests with the above, drank their beer, and sat down to the feast. I demurely took one slice of white meat, being a proper guest, and dug in… Absolutely planning for helpings two and three, and maybe four… To this day, I have no idea why, but after the bird took one trip around the table, the host scooped it up, and put it away… Never. To be seen. Again…

For the first and hopefully only time in my life, I left Thanksgiving dinner hungry…

So that’s my Thanksgoving story… So today, I’m thankful that my brother and his wife will let me eat as much turkey as I can stuff in my expanding belly…and that I’m no longer living in an RV in Troutdale…

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!