The 9th Annual Gratitude List: 2 Fast, 2 Furious

j/k, this list is not particularly fast nor furious (we save that for Festivus), but much like my seasonal Facebook albums (ahem, see, “All I Do is Win(ter)” and “Fall-o The Leader”), I’m running out of clever names for these. But since I do believe in the power of gratitude, the list must go on. Anyway, it seems like Thanksgiving was just yesterday, when in fact, it was a week ago. So we are, as per usual, somewhat overdue for the Annual Gratitude List (hold for applause).

Once again, with no regard for repeats, here are some things I’m grateful for this year:

Inside Family Jokes Ours include “Later!!!” and “I know where this goes so I will put it away” and an ex-boyfriend whose name I can’t mention here because what if he sees it and knows my family has a recurring joke where they make fun of what a loser he is and I reminisce about what a perfect love we had. (You’re perfect, <name redacted>, don’t ever change a single thing!) Most of the jokes wouldn’t seem funny to you but they are hilarious to four specific people in this world, and I love that for us.

The “NEW DRIVER: PLEASE BE PATIENT” bumper sticker on the car Hazy drives Of course, it’s nice to have people give my 16-year old new driver some grace while she learns to drive, but tbh, it’s also pretty nice for this old lady driver too. It takes a special kind of dick to honk at a “new driver” for a simple driving mistake like stealing their spot in the Whole Foods JP parking lot. Helloooo, new driver here! Beep beep, GFY too.

This article my friend Cara sent me which reminded me of all the reasons I shouldn’t be scared to host casual get togethers. Even though it wasn’t anything groundbreaking, seeing all the rationale put together like that really opened my mind. The weekend after Cara sent me this, we had George’s baseball friends’ parents over for a casual game night and it was super fun and not stressful.

My social chairs. In college, I was in a sorority (ITB/secret handshake to my KKG sisters) and my friend Jess and I were the social chairs one year. Our job was basically to plan the parties for the house and it was a blast. But when you’re an adult, you don’t have a social chair, unless you’re Frank the Tank in Old School or you’re ME. I’m lucky enough to have my friends Rosa, Sarah, and Alice to keep my calendar booked. Rosa’s main area of expertise is dancing (Man Ray on Saturday nights) and music (we’ve seen the Cure tribute band, Staring at the Sea, so many times I’m pretty sure the lead singer has a restraining order against us). Sarah specializes in larger scale parties, like our monthly Supper Club and a recent Big Top Murder Mystery Party (in which yours truly got murdered – by a clown, no less. The humanity!). Alice is known for her impromptu get togethers; she could’ve written the article about low-key gatherings. She will literally text us at 6 pm and be like, “I’ll be home alone tonight at 8 pm and I bought too much salmon. Feel free to come over and bring sides/dessert.” She is my idol.

The homemade granola recipe our dear friend Lynnie gave me. We lost her in late 2023 and I think of her every time I make her granola. Even though I pretty much know the recipe by memory now, I like to look at it in my phone notes because it starts with “Here you go sweetie” with a little heart emoji and it reminds me how absolutely lovely she was.

My longtime mentors: Tim, Tony, and Rizz. These are people who have supported my career at its highest (Unexpectedly True Stories) and lowest points (the sizzle reel for the 2019 Insurance Sales Meeting tied with the Leadership Team rap video), helped me get jobs, given me thoughtful, one of a kind advice, and helped shape the creative director I am today. Tim helped me get my current job, Tony is a celebrated author who recently asked me to write the blurb on his latest novel, and Rizz still sends me funny things on Instagram all the time. And while I dream of a world where we have more female mentors (womentors?) in the creative world of advertising, I’m still grateful for these exceptional feminist men.

New traditions Growing up, we had several memorable family traditions. Like, for example, my dad made our entire tone-deaf family sing Christmas carols before we could open our Christmas gifts and my mom makes us her signature gingerbread cookies in the number shapes corresponding to our ages every year on our birthdays. Now, we get to make new traditions. Some of my favorites include Thanksgiving and/or Christmas eve with our sister family the Chans, making thematic baskets (Boo baskets last Halloween and Brr baskets this winter), with the Franck ladies, and Kowloon Friendsgiving, which is hopefully the start of an annual tradition (minus one unfortunate incident in the Party Bus which we won’t talk about).

The Wife House™ Marie and I invented the Wife House™ as a dream concept, I believe when we were in Maine for the summer with our families and getting annoyed with our husbands over stupid shit. Wouldn’t it be nice, we imagined, if we had a place where just the wives lived, where no one stacked the dishwasher like a jabroni or bought Stonyfield French Vanilla yogurt when you wanted Wegman’s Plain Greek yogurt and then tried to gaslight you by saying that’s what you said you wanted. It’s not that we don’t want our husbands and kids, we just want our own space, where all the food is well planned out and everyone’s down for an impromptu dance party anytime a good Biggie song comes on. Well, I’m proud to say we manifested the Wife House™ this year and it was everything we’d dreamed it’d be. There was dancing. There was outstanding food. There was karaoke. There was forest foraging and hiking. There was sauna time and cold plunges. There was a competitive puzzle off. There was lots and lots of orange wine and even more laughing. So much laughing.

The ™ symbol. I know I’m not using it properly, but I use it liberally, most often for Yard Wine™ (the outdoor drinking gatherings I started during Covid) and Trust Watch™ (the network I activate if Matty ever “forgets” to put on his wedding band or something equally suss), and most recently, for the aforementioned Wife House™. I just think it makes things funnier and more official sounding.

Being able to do “big kid” stuff with my kids, like playing pool, playing poker, or watching Grey’s Anatomy. They are not particularly good at the first two, which means I get to play with them and win. Bonus! Hazy has started watching Grey’s from the beginning recently and I am enjoying watching it with her and getting to re-meet McDreamy and McSteamy and relive the moment when I realized that one organ replacement doctor was the lady Buffalo Bill wanted to make a skin suit out of in The Silence of the Lambs. Preciousssss!

TSA Pre check/Clear I got suckered into getting Clear and then I forgot to cancel it during the trial period, but now I kind of like it. It saves me a lot of time when I’m going to Austin all the time. The only time I don’t like it is when the signage is confusing and I rush into this line and wait behind 10 people and then they’re like, “Oh no, ma’am, you have Clear and Pre-Check, so you were meant to go in that other line, the one hidden behind this line with the little sign attached to the medium sign.” But I’ll save that for Festivus.

Random friendly drunk people Some people are mean drunks, some get a little harass-y, but I find that most people are super friendly drunks, especially at karaoke. I kind of love that special camaraderie that happens at a karaoke bar late night when everyone is like, “Woooohoooo!” when you pick a fun song to sing, even if you sing it horribly off-key. We went to our local dive bar the other night after Kowloon Friendsgiving™ and first we made best friends with this one guy and later this woman came up to me in the ridiculous prom dress my mother-in-law thrifted for me and said very dramatically, “You are STUNNING!”

My mother-in-law Did you not just read that she THRIFTED ME A PROM DRESS? I just love that she was like, “You know who would wear this over the top, floor length, sparkly prom dress? My middle-aged daughter-in-law!” And she was so, so right. Plus, it fit me perfectly, no alterations needed.

Conor, my professional stretcher at StretchMed It’s hard to describe Conor, but he’s kind of like a golden retriever-gym bro hybrid. He’s 25, extremely earnest and sweet, and loves his job as a stretcher. I see him every other week, and much like my family, we have a series of inside jokes and he remembers everything I ever tell him. One particular thing I like about Conor is that one of our inside jokes is about me being perfect. Conor tells the best jokes. Fun facts: Conor didn’t know who Def Leppard was and has never heard of the movie Old School.

Dammit I just said Robusto cheese last year, didn’t I? (Upon further inspection, I have mentioned cheese or nachos 7 times in 8 gratitude lists. What was I thinking that one year?)

People who are up for anything. Specifically, my friends Kristin, Dee, and Rosa. One time I texted Rosa at 11:11 pm on a Saturday night to see if she wanted to come to the local dive bar and then she just showed up a half hour later like it was no big deal. Do you want to go to a Sox game tonight? Do you want to go yell at marathon runners with megaphones? Do you want to try to crash this private party at the Quin? Do you want to drunk dial our friend Zach and tell him we’re at his office? Do you want to go take a picture of these randos? Do you want to go to see Staring at the Sea in Hull and do SoCo shots? Yes yes and yesssss to all of it.

My tennis crew – I play at two places: Sportsmen’s, where Dee and I try to make the Intermediate Clinic every Monday night, and Franklin Park Tennis Association, where I do Skills & Games clinics on Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons. Dee and I have wormed our way into the hearts of the crew at Sportsmen’s, including Matt, our disheveled instructor who we suspect finds us amusing, Mariya, who we thought hated us but has gradually come to love us and even invited us to see a band with her this weekend, and Cary/Gary, whose name we disagree on and so we try to say it with a soft C/hard G so he doesn’t realize. At FPTA, I’m proud to have moved to the “4th court,” where the more advanced players play, and where everyone has a cool name like Dirk, Beau, or Rain. Seriously, those are really their names.

My magic eyebrow serum. It’s called Grande Brow and I discovered it once in Sephora when I vaguely entered the eyebrows area, triggered some silent eyebrow product alarm, and this random, magical woman emerged out of the shadows and was like, “Are you looking for eyebrow serum? Because this stuff is amazing and I’m not even kidding, it miraculously grew my eyebrows back.” And dear reader, that crazy Sephora eyebrow aisle witch was 100% right. And I won’t get into it, but I have a sordid history with my eyebrows. Actually, I will get into it. Growing up, I had giant, bushy, fabulous Brooke Shields eyebrows. But then after college, giant bushy eyebrows weren’t cool, and I started plucking them, and I got a little OCD and I couldn’t stop, and all of a sudden I had a big bald spot and parts of my eyebrows refused to grow back. I went to this famous eyebrow stylist named Robyn Cosio, who literally wrote the book on eyebrows. It cost $60, which was the equivalent of $400 to me now. I could not afford this lady. She swept in, insulted me (“It’s going to take me at least 4 visits to even make you look okay.”), tinted my eyebrow area without my permission, mocked my uncertainty (“Oh Geoffrey, she thinks it’s too much!” <patronizing fake laugh>), and robbed me of my life savings ($60 is a lot when your dinner is often free hot dogs at Rudy’s, the dive bar with the giant pig out front). Anyway, she could not fix my eyebrows but Grande Brow did, so suck it Robyn Cosio! I’m gonna write a new book on eyebrows and it’s gonna basically be a short story about finding a magical woman in Sephora and listening to everything she says.

My family Matty, Hazy, GG, Rocky and Rosie, I may have sung “You Make My Dreams Come True” with that dude we drunkenly thought looked like John Oates, but it’s really you who do that. I love you so much, even when you make me yell, “Later!” when I meant to say “Earlier!” when you were ganging up on me. #ikyk

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xoxo