The Sixth Annual Gratitude List

Is there an unofficial rule that one’s gratitude list gets posted later every year? Well, the beauty of unofficial rules is that since there’s no official body of approval, we can make them whatever we want! So, new unofficial rule: Thanksgiving is a loosely designed gratitude time period that lasts as long as want it to. If Magic 106.7 can start playing Christmas music in mid-November, we can keep giving thanks well into December. Second new unofficial rule: pants are optional! Try it! Third unofficial rule: Nachos every Thursday! I could do this all day, but we’re here for gratitude, guys, not unofficial rules about our gluttonous lifestyle. God, you’re fickle.

Anyway, as I’m a Gratitude Queen who’s written five of these posts with over 140 items (fine, there’s some overlap, #cheese), I’m gonna skip the usual suspects and try to dig deep for some things/people for which/whom I haven’t expressed gratitude yet.

So, let’s throw on some pants (or not – remember rule #2!) and do this. I’m grateful for:

• Other people’s dogs – I love all the dogs, but especially the puppies and the oldies and the mutts.

• Exodus Bagels, specifically the jalapeño-cheddar bagel with scallion cream cheese
• Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is Youuuuuuu – the only Christmas song I will allow my family to listen to in November
• Pearl, the bunny who lives in our yard
• Rocky & Rosie being unsuccessful (to date) at capturing and murdering Pearl
• My color-coded bookshelf

• Also my puzzle table
• The Cheesy Street Grill at the Wellesley hockey rink
• Libby, the library app
• Jonah, who photoshops our holiday cards (almost) every year even though he’s really busy running his own business and hasn’t been my work husband for like 10 years. Love you, Jojo!
• My bullet journal which lets me pretend to be an organized person, not the person writing their Thanksgiving Gratitude List 5 7 days after Thanksgiving.
• My newish job. It’s at an agency called McGarrah Jessee and it’s the most creative place I’ve ever worked. I forgot how much I love agency life and all its hijinx.

• Steph, my partner at work, who always seems to know the right thing to do and say
• Rao’s marinara sauce (I know it’s super easy to make marinara sauce from scratch, but you know what’s even easier? Opening a jar.)
• Sparkling Grüner Veltliner, which I didn’t even know existed until very recently.
• Classic candy bars like Snickers, Kit Kats and Twix that don’t give a shit about chocolate quality but still manage to be delicious.
• Savers – where 90% of my Thrift Wrapped content comes from.
• Clementines, which I put in my fruit-infused water bottle every day, so that I can chug spa water instead of plain water even though I haven’t been properly hydrated since I stopped working for Riz, my hydration nemesis and inspiration.
• The Chinese grocery store
• My bird feeder, Birdker King, and all its customers

• The immaculate trifecta that is T.J. Maxx/Marshalls/HomeGoods.

• Carbs
• My “Moo, b*tch, get out the hay” cow mug.
• Comedy writers
• My neighbor and friend, Rosa, who gives us gifts for no reason, watches our kids, walks our dogs, and always has some kind of fun thing for us to do
• The enemies-to-lovers romance genre (TV or audiobook)
• The “touch up my appearance” feature on Zoom
• Epsom Salts and Green Vitabath

And of course, I’m grateful for you, dear reader(s).

Happy continued Thanksgiving, happy early Hanukkah and Christmas (let’s slow our roll on those holiday cards, folks), and happy almost-Cadbury Creme Egg season.