Thankful tree, take 2

I thoroughly enjoyed making the thankful tree last year, so today we did it again. I had to, it is on the list of "Monday chores" for getting ready to host Thanksgiving this week.

I now present to you Jack's list of things he is thankful for, in the order he mentioned them:

1. my scooter
2. food
3. chicken [Technically, items 2. and 3. were presented as "food and chicken and stuff." -ed.]
4. shows [A repeat item! What can I say, the kid loves TV.]
5. Mommy [Daddy didn't make the cut, but don't feel bad, because he's the thing Jack is thankful for at school.]
6. apples
7. my bed
8. fishing [Note: he has never been fishing.]
9. my helmet
10. our house
11. my family
12. the color yellow
13. corn on the cob

For contrast, here is my list, which I made in order to subtly suggest to him things that might be good to put on the tree:

1. the dishwasher
2. our house
3. Jack
4. Nora
5. Daddy
6. clothes
7. the internet [What? I'm also putting on things I'm actually thankful for, after all.]
8. my bed
9. pancakes
10. Grammy and Papa
11. clementines

I also made a list on Nora's behalf. It includes one item.
1. my baby

Andrew made his list when he got home:
1. gum
2. superbowl parties
3. the Merritt parkway

Now Andrew's list needs a bit of explanation. First, Jack requested that he put on gum. I think because Jack is planning to buy gum for Andrew's birthday present, and he wanted to be sure he really does like it. "Well, I guess I am thankful for gum," conceded Andrew. As for the other two, well, Andrew and I met at a superbowl party and got engaged on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut on the way back to grad school/ his job.

Excuse me, I have something in my eye.

Blathering on

I remember visiting a friend at another school when I was a freshman in college. One of her roommates had her computer on, and she was looking up something on the web. I gazed in awe at her computer screen and said, “You mean you can use your computer to see things on other computers?” I found the idea mysterious and thrilling, but if I had no way of knowing then what “the web” would come to mean to me.

I am a social being. I need to talk to people, grown-up people, and I need to talk to them every day or I will go crazy and start talking to my plants. And I don’t even have any plants because I can’t grow plants; they all just die. So what I’m saying here is that if I didn’t have the internet, I would be a crazed, wild-eyed lunatic talking to dead and/or nonexistent houseplants. It wouldn’t be good, is what I’m saying.

Sure, sure, I could call people. But calling people requires a time commitment; and what’s more, it requires a coordinated time commitment with another person. TWO people have to be able to speak and listen to a series of complete sentences, and right in a row! On the internet, it doesn’t matter if you have to stop mid-sentence to cut gum out of someone’s hair, and it doesn’t matter if your friend’s reply comes three hours later.

I don’t even know what to say about attending The Blathering this weekend. I originally planned to write something along the lines of how I had wonderful time and how fantastic it was to meet all these women in person. But then Elizabeth went and wrote down everything I think, and expressed it far better than I ever could. So I’ll just say that I can’t imagine my life today without my friends in the computer. I think I speak for myself AND my theoretical dead houseplants when I say thank you. Thank you all for writing and tweeting and going to Chicago to eat and drink and blather on.