And then it was November.

 Um, guys? Thanksgiving is in a WEEK. Like, 7 days. What? WHAT?! It's like someone slipped something into my beer at a frat party and I slept through 2012. Only, I don't drink. Or go to frat parties. And also, why would someone bother with drugging me? A dark, quiet room and a catheter and I'd be out until Bug graduates from Kindergarten.

I've been thinking a lot about blessings. I guess that's pretty typical this time of year, but it's been especially poignant for me this season. Yesterday, I cried all the way through this video.



Just a glimpse of the devastation these families are facing was enough to make me squeeze my babies and send up a silent prayer of thanks for my electricity. And while it's a painfully obvious observation, it strikes me that it's all from a storm-- a random, unpredictable, and completely uncontrollable force of nature with no rhyme or reason for it.

 In my line of work, I have the unique opportunity to regularly see families on what is, to put it mildly, a really bad day. Folks roll through those doors bleeding and broken, and (if we're lucky) crying out in pain. I am so ill-equipped to heal them. Sometimes, the hurt isn't on the outside. There is no cut to stitch or bone to set because what is broken is inside, in the brain or the soul or wherever our ability to cope with the world lives, and I can't fix that in the ER, either. So I leave all of this to the practiced fixer-uppers, and instead, turn my attention to their loved ones, because most everyone has a mother or a child or a wife or a best friend (and really, it's worse when they don't) and it's my job to look them square in the eye and tell them that they will make it through this, over and over again and convincingly enough until they believe me.

It's easier, a little, when it feels like there's a reason. When we can look at each other in those yellow gowns while we peel off the gloves and think, Well, he really should not have done that, and move on with our lives, confident that we'll never be there because we would not make such poor choices.

And then there is a storm, or an earthquake, or someone else makes a bad decision a little too close to where we are standing, or something just plain awful and accidental happens for no good reason at all and there we are. (In my case, naked in front of my coworkers on a stretcher, and that'd be really embarrassing.)

It is what it is, right?

And all of this to say: I AM SO BLESSED. I am happy. I am healthy. I am well.

I have the most beautiful children.

(And just to eliminate any discussion on the issue:)

I have a strong, handsome, wonderfully funny husband who I love with all my heart and soul. 

(Further proof:)

I have fantastic friends (like the ones who took these pictures) and family and a foundation that tells me way down deep in the core of me that even when things aren't OK in the moment, they are going to be OK someday, always and forever.

And the long and short of it is that I am so blessed, and so lucky to have the chance to celebrate that next week with family, friends, food, and football. My life is so, so good.

Like, SO GOOD.

Aaaaaaand, end overly dramatic Thanksgiving post.