Day 328; Thanksgiving Week: Saturday

On this Saturday of Thanksgiving Week, I'm thankful for: 

• Cinnamon rolls and coffee. It may not be the breakfast of champions, but it sure goes down like a winner. 

• Text messaging. How else could one request and receive specific answers to specific questions so quickly without having to get off the couch to make the effort or utter a word? 

• Stocking caps. In my advanced, balding years, I've come to rely on the stocking cap all day long as much as I've come to rely on socks, underwear, T-shirts, and my other clothes. In fact, I'd argue my stocking caps (yes, I own multiple ones to match my ever-changing mood) serve a more important purpose. They keep my head warm. 

• Patience. Without you, dear friend, I'd be nowhere. I'd be a raving lunatic. I'd be sitting in a jail cell. I'd be a freak of insanity. You sweet patience, keep me in the game that is living daily life. I can't thank you enough.  

• The words, music, and learning that have been bestowed on me by Bob Dylan, my all-time favorite music master. Dylan has always been there by my side, guiding me, showing me the way, helping to take life more seriously and less seriously. For opening doors to see new worlds but also being content where I already reside. For thinking big but seeing small. For reflecting but being care-free. During the years, I've undoubtedly listened to Bob Dylan more than to any other musician. I own more music by Dylan than any other musician. I've seen Dylan in concert more than any other musician. I'm always thankful for his presence in the world, but today I'll make the gratitude public. 

Day 327: Thanksgiving Week: Friday

On this Friday of Thanksgiving week, I'm thankful for:

• Reminders of Nebraska vs. Oklahoma football from years gone by. What a rivalry. What great moments in time. What a time for a kid who was crazy about sports to grow up. The day of Thanksgiving during my youth was marked by Nebraska vs. Oklahoma on the gridiron. The men and boys got their pheasant hunting in early and then headed home in time for kickoff. Osborne vs. Switzer. Good vs. Evil. Bragging right for Big 8 supremacy at stake. Red vs. crimson. The farm boys vs. the thugs. Literally the day every Nebraska fan waited the entire year for. The day of Thanksgiving was when families and friends gathered around one television in the living room with heaping mounds of Thanksgiving leftovers in front of them and yelled, screamed, cried, and cursed at the four quarters of this football that commenced to be played out. Billy Sims. J.C. Watts. Keith Jackson. I.M. Hipp. Jarvis Redwine. The list goes on and on. It was the day when you fought for a spot in front of the television. When you didn't dare to sit in certain spots on the couch or chair, the domains of the elderly citizens who had paid their dues to sit there. Football just doesn't feel like that any longer. It doesn't feel as magically. It doesn't feel as life affirming. It doesn't feel as necessary. I suppose that's a good thing because priorities should take over and put football down farther on the list. But I'm so thankful for having grown up in a small town in Nebraska during that era of college football, when the entire state came to a standstill for a few hours on a Friday afternoon, we let the great Keith Jackson or Chris Schenkel take over on the mic and guide us the rest of the way. I'll never forget the look, feel, and smells of those Fridays. They were special, indeed. 

• Christmas lights and the motivation of my wife to get them strung. Thanks to her, our house is lit up like, well, a Christmas tree, and we're reveling in the Christmas spirit. We're the first on the block to be doing so, and this most certainly is the first time we can lay just a claim. I'm absolutely overflowing with pride. We fricking' rock the Christmas bells, neighborhood.  

• A deck of cards. 

• Hot chocolate. 

• The quiet moments that manage to creep in and pour themselves over me. I need them, and I welcome them. They come too far in between, but when they arrive, I always have my arms wide open and ready to greet them. 

• The comforting spirit that is Willie Nelson. 

Day 326: Thanksgiving Week: Thursday

On this Thursday of Thanksgiving Week, I'm thankful for:

The pilgrims who traveled the Atlantic and set up shop. (I'm not thankful, however, for what ultimately became the tragic demise of a proud and honorable people who were pushed aside as a consequence.)

My family and friends and their talents, wisdom, advice, listening ears, perseverance, humor, grit, and existence.

The stillness of the morning.

The calmness of the night.

The fortune to have too much food in front of me and my loved ones.

A comfy chair to contemplate in.

The fine cooking and hospitality of my mother-in-law.

Cheesecake.

Coffee to wash the cheesecake down.

Laughing. Songs. Singing. Smiles.

Discipline to not get suckered into a debate about politics.

The sweet, soulful stylings of Marvin Gaye.

Day 325: Thanksgiving Week: Wednesday

On this Wednesday of Thanksgiving week, I’m thankful:

• That tomorrow and the next day I don’t have to work.

•  For living to see another Thanksgiving Day.

• For pie.

• For potatoes.

• For the turkeys who unwillingly sacrificed their lives for the gluttonous joy of human carnivores like myself. (I’m sincerely sorry, turkey.)  

• For the memories from childhood of watching “Willy Wonka” on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving morning. God, I love me some Gene Wilder and his sarcastic, biting tongue as Willy Wonka (“Stop, don’t, come back”), but it’s Charlie Bucket that has long held a dear place in my heart. I, too, had a paper route as a boy, and damn if I didn’t have a love affair with chocolate that I’m proud to say endures still. But most of all, I understood early on and appreciated the message that “Willy Wonka” offered up that good things can happen to anyone, no matter how many grandparents are sleeping in one bed in your house, no matter how god-awful the gruel you sip out of your spoon appearred to taste, and no matter bad Grandpa Joe’s damn tobacco must have stunk up that tiny room. God bless you, Charlie Bucket. 

• For parades on TV.

• For board games.

• For Arlo Guthrie and the image he's given me year after year of Alice’s Restaurant.

• For my much-viewed copy of “The Last Waltz,” filmed on Thanksgiving and meant to always be played loud.

Day 324: Thanksgiving Week: Tuesday

On this Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, I'm thankful for: 

• The smell of Turkey floating ever-so closer to my nostrils as Thursday approaches

• The motivation and ability to run, but also the ability to run on a trail that's surrounded by nature and not a steady stream of buzzing cars driven by drivers with awkward, gawking stares and apartment complexes, businesses, and other edifices far less impressive and visually satisfying as trees, wild grasses, and long flowing hills that melt into the horizon

• Family members who willingly say "I love you" and mean it

• The hugs and kisses of my little girl 

• Popcorn in the break room

• Gatorade at the ready 

• The kindest custodian I can imagine existing and who never ceases to brighten my day with her bright smile and amazing, energetic aura 

• Hot showers 

• The complex, hypnotizing, seductive, compelling, challenging, and engrossing beauty that is John Coltrane  

Day 323: Thanksgiving Week: Monday

On this Monday of Thanksgiving Week, I’m thankful:

• For the coffee I poured down my gullet and the lifelong love affair that we’ve shared.

• That I don’t live in the Gaza Strip and that my children have not had to know what it means to grow up in a violent, unsteady environment in which tension is seemingly entrenched at DEFCON 1.

•  That I got to play my guitar over lunch—the only nourishment I need some days. 

• For the friends who made the effort to communicate.

• For the photographs that were sent to me, allowing me to take part in the moments of time captured, if only in a visual sense.

• For being reminded of this quote from Voltaire: “It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”

• For AC/DC and the glorious existence that is one Angus Young.

• That above all, my beautiful wife has returned home after a week away. Her absence was never a “you don’t know what you've got until it’s gone” experience; I already knew what I had. The experience was “I want back what isn’t here, right now.” 

Day 322: Peace

Sometimes, I wonder when was the last day on earth that there was complete and utter peace. How many years ago must have that been. Certainly before man. I wonder if such a day occurring again is possible. I can't imagine. I'll keep hoping and praying, though.