I’m thankful for a lot this year – for Kristi, for family, for good business, for the luxury of living my life the way I always dreamed of, for unlimited long distance, for fresh squeezed orange juice. The list goes on.

Spending Thanksgiving this year with my family was very important to me – my parents aren’t getting any younger, and you never know. It could be the last one we all spend together, at least for a long while. So when Wednesday morning rolled around and I was forced to conclude that no, this isn’t just stress and exhaustion, I’m actually getting sick, I wasn’t happy about it. I don’t get sick often, so I never learned how to be a good sick person. I’m a downright cranky sick person. Especially when it screws up something like this.

I slept most of Wednesday. Kristi was incredibly frustrated that I was a mess but that I was 3000 miles away from her ability to do anything about it. The apartment gradually filled with used tissue. I finally called my parents late that afternoon and told them that I probably wouldn’t be able to make it – I had taken a shower earlier and had nearly fallen down from dizziness, so I probably wasn’t in the best condition to drive a car, much less be around healthy people.

A half hour later my parents were at my place with hot chicken soup, meds and herbal tea, and making plans to bring a Thanksgiving dinner over the following day.

After they left I went back and slept a few more hours, then got a bowl of soup. It helped a lot; I hadn’t had an appetite for anything since breakfast. Kristi called and we commiserated on our day, but by then I was already heading towards unconsciousness again; I dropped out and sweated through the night.

By Thanksgiving morning the fever had broken and I actually felt like getting up, getting some breakfast, maybe even going over for Thanksgiving. My parents and brother assured me that they didn’t care whether I was contagious; they cared a lot more that I was there, and getting better. So I went over and had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The day ended with Kristi and I reading the Count of Monte Cristo until it was time to go to sleep.

Today I’m mostly recovered, hawking phlegm but generally just getting it out of my system. I’m planning to rest out the weekend.

You know, I always kind of felt that it’s most important to be thankful for the little things. We’re thankful for the big things all the time, but we take the little things for granted and we shouldn’t. Health. Breathing. A wonderful woman. A decent meal. Good medications. A roof over your head. People who actually, truly care whether you live or die. And as always, unlimited long distance.

(My brother Chris dug this up on YouTube: the all-time funniest Thanksgiving sitcom sequence ever made, the great WKRP Turkey Promotion. No one’s ever topped it. And watch it all the way through – there’s a wonderfully creepy M&Ms commercial at the end.)

(Boy, that didn’t take long – 20th Century had the video pulled from YouTube. Just go over to YouTube.com and do a search for “WKRP Turkey”. You should find another there somewhere.)