Eleven Things The Writer In Me Is Thankful For

Honourable Mention: Michael Bay, for ridding us of that pesky drive toward nostalgia.

1) Supportive Peeps. Family, friends, cats, that other cat who comes to sit on our deck in the morning…thanks for being you. And for not clawing my eyes out while I sleep.

2) Good Books. For the inspiration. Or the maddening, liver-gnawing jealousy that can pass for it sometimes.

3) Bad Books. For making me feel better about myself.

4) Coffee. For giving me the energy I need to vibrate at exactly 4.346 x 10^6534 times a second. No, 4.347 now. 4.346. 4.347. 4.346.

5) Scotch. For being scotch.

6) Music. For giving my days a rhythm, a rhyme, and a beat that I can dance to.

7) The Comment Block and Twitter Mute Buttons. For making it possible for me to ignore all the mouth-breathing pieces of shit that demand that I send them tit pics.*

8) Fountain Pens. For being elegant, timeless, and sharp enough to stab people.

9) October. For being the prettiest damn month I’ve ever seen.

10) The Delete Key. For destroying the evidence of my mistakes.

11) Readers. For making this whole writing thing seem a little less like a crazy person ranting into the void.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for?

*I like to imagine all the creepy randos that demand tit pics of me are all locked in a tiny little Rapunzel tower together every time I hit one of these buttons. The only way out is to be a decent human being, so they’re never going to see daylight again.

Monday Challenge: Things Long Lost

Probably doesn’t cure migraines, but ask me if I give a fuck. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s Thanksgiving weekend*, the traditional celebration where we stuff ourselves with as much food as possible in the hopes of surviving yet another Canadian winter. As you sit down to your feast, please, take the time to evaluate your neighbours as a possible food source for the months to come. It’s not rude; it’s tradition.

*Fact checks on Wikipedia* Oh. Well. It seems we celebrate things a little differently in my family. To each their own, I suppose.

So, according to this, the real point of the holiday is to give thanks for things that you have.** But, because this is me—and possibly because as of this writing I’m into day three of a marathon migraine***—we’re going to do something else.

Monday Challenge: Write about something you’re grateful that you lost. We lose things all the time; it’s a species trait. Keys, names, weight, baggage, faith, the way, the number of that guy from the bar last night. Stuff disappears from our lives and into the vast wormhole of Now Where Did I Put That? Some of it deliberately.

So, today, think of something that you no longer have. Some thing whose weight you no longer have to carry. Some thing whose loss improves your life.

Ready? Go. I’m going to go stake out the neighbours house again. Or maybe eat an entire pecan pie.

*Here in Canada it is, anyway. Those of you who come from the United States, I guess it’s just another fucking Monday for you.
**This year, in no particular order, I am thankful for the following: the people I love, hot sweet tea, October nights, sex, whiskey, the cats and their murderous ways, the existence of brownies and nachos, and that natural twenty I rolled the other night in an RPG.
***Secretly training for the New York Migraine.