could be worse

That was the title of one of my favorite Weekly Reader Book Club books from my childhood. A thrifted copy is on the bookshelf right now but walking across the house to find it is entirely too much trouble tonight. Essentially, it's about a grandfather who retorts to everything his grandchildren tell him with, "could be worse." And then he has a terrific and scary adventure involving squid and paper airplanes and marmalade and pajamas or something (so it's been a while since I've actually read it) and when he tells the grandkids all about it at breakfast the next morning, what do you think they say?

I have a hard time flipping on the love switch on the fourteenth of February. I have a hard time flipping on the gratitude switch right now. It's a little, for me, like being asked to warm-up a crowd for the headliner when you were plucked out of the audience and have nothing rehearsed. Or that dream where you show up some place naked. Or a quiz on which you have not read the material. Quick! Tell me how much you love me! Think fast! What are you thankful for? It feels like pressure to me and I'm apt to run the other direction. Which means, I feel disappointed before the day even starts and I think, we've been together so long, don't you know I don't really like chocolate? Which means, I'm up so late so I can pre-cook a bunch of stuff for my sick-with-colds family to eat tomorrow and will anybody even appreciate it anyway?

I'm coming out of what has been a very long seven months. Thanksgiving, in that rockwellian fine china and pressed linen way, has never happened at my house and this year I am not ready to jump in and whip up our little family's slap dash version. So you know what I'm doing? I'm jumping in and whipping up our slap dash version. Because things have been rough. The road is still a little bumpy. But things could be so much worse.

It could be worse, but, in my world, it sure couldn't get too much better than this:

I really do have a lot for which to be thankful.