Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for...

This November, I'm thankful for the big things and for the little things. Most importantly, I'm thankful for my awesome husband/co-writer Tit Elingtin, my family, having a warm house and food, clean water, being able to read and write, having had the chance to go to school and freedom of speech. I'm thankful whenever someone reads one of my books. I’m grateful to live within walking distance of a library.

I'm grateful to live in the U.S., where various religious groups coexist peacefully most of the time. I was raised Catholic (it didn't stick), sometimes attend Episcopalian (Church of England) services, have one Jewish grandmother, observe the Pagan wheel of the year, revere a variety of goddesses and love Shiva. I cherish being free to practice the religious traditions that are meaningful to me. I cherish learning from a wide variety of philosophies and traditions.

At the risk of being labeled a crazy cat lady writer, I’m also thankful for my feline familiar, James the cat:

His face looks a little bit like a butterfly.

Every year at Thanksgiving time, I also like to take time to be grateful for the little things that make life so pleasant and interesting. There are many of them, so I could go on and on. In the interest of avoiding endless rambling, I decided to share just ten of my many, many favorite things. In no particular order, they are:

1 - Playing in the park with my nieces

2 - The music of Lady Gaga. It works well with many kinds of video, including the Powerpuff Girls.

[2024 Update: The Lady Gaga/Powerpuff Girls mashup video is no longer available on YouTube.]

3 - The Vampire Diaries Season 3. Pretty much anything with vampires, really. Or werewolves.

4 - Wuthering Heights (and its vampire version, Wuthering Bites).

5 - Green tea with pomegranate, pumpkin spice latte, and other hot beverages that make winter a little easier to take.

6 - Dark chocolate-covered cherries. Dark chocolate in general. Milk chocolate, occasionally.

7 - Draft Guinness

8 - The Simpsons. Maybe it’s because there’s a little bit of brainy, opinionated, nature-loving Lisa Simpson in me, but I like to have my near-daily Simpsons fix. Except on Saturday; that’s when I watch Futurama.

9 - The river view out my kitchen window, and the sound of the not-too-distant waterfall.

10 - Anything and everything having to do with my #1 celebrity crush, Christian Bale.



Have a blessed and peaceful Thanksgiving, and may you have many things to be grateful for. In case you don't visit my blog again next month, I'll say it now: have a wonderful Winter Solstice, a happy Hanukkah and a merry Christ(ian Bale)mas.

Now it's your turn. What's one thing you're thankful for?

Guinness photo by Aaron Keys, public domain image.

I'm Thankful For...

...My family, James the cat, having a warm house and food, clean water, being able to read and write and freedom of speech.

I'm also thankful for a lot of little things: Marta Acosta's Casa Dracula books, breakfast at Carol's diner, modernized movie versions of Shakespeare's plays, my new (used) set of encyclopedias of American women writers, little gigs I get from Craig's List, waffles with chocolate syrup, playing card games with my niece, Netflix movies, Shakira songs, The Simpsons (especially that Halloween parody of Twilight featuring the voice of Daniel Radcliffe), Vampire Diaries Season 2 (with werewolves!), green tea lattes at Borders, dark chocolate, French toast, chilaquiles con pollo y salsa verde, Poetic Monthly Magazine, veggie pizza, awesome stories in short e-books, draft Guinness at Main St. Grill, Wuthering Bites, that sex dream about Gerard Butler (even though I wasn't in it), Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, mulled wine, chocolate pastries from Panera, SexIs, the local pumpkin ice cream, and many more things.

I also have to say a special thanks to Robin Pope Cain. I won a $10 iTunes gift card by commenting on a blog post she wrote. Thanks, Robin! I used it to buy a movie soundtrack with an awesome Spanglish cover of "Hungry Like the Wolf," which I then used for my "Oliver's Good Night Kiss" book trailer.