It’s Thanksgiving and I woke up thankful for many things. I am thankful for my sister, who googleyvideochatted with me first thing on this holiday morning and let me show her my cats, for whom I am also eternally thankful. I am thankful for another 80 degree day with plenty of sunshine but just enough clouds to keep me cool for a bike ride. I am thankful that a few years ago I figured out that it’s going to take about 20 minutes to get there–I can either sit in a car, frustrated at all the other cars, or I can get on a bicycle and flyyyyy through the air via my own little legs pedaling in rhythm (I’ve decided to go with the latter). I am thankful for R.’s cafe con leche that tastes like candy, even though it has only a mere smidge of brown sugar. I am thankful for the Fairgrounds and their opening day Thanksgiving festivities, and for women like the one pictured here at the paddock, wearing a hat she surely designed and made herself for this very day–the turkey’s a gambler, for sure. I am thankful for D., waiting in line and buying us a funnel cake to mangle while watching the horses come in. I am thankful for T. and R. who set up their Thanksgiving on the bayou and stopped me as I rode by, offering fish and wine and an impromptu poetry reading. I am thankful for my sister for giving me an electronical reading device and telling me to read that Wallace Stegner book so that I had a passage–about the divine nature of friendship–at the ready to share with the group. I am thankful for D. and M. and their family for taking me in for a second dinner and some far-too-exciting football. I am thankful for S. for her desperate football-related texts, my mom for her yearly “gobble gobble” phone message, my dad for knowing I needed a kind word as the Cowboys took the lead, J. for inviting me to swing by on my way home for some water and conversation. And I’m thankful for Cafe du Monde and their ridiculous beignets, available 24/7, and for Harrah’s, for letting me stay up way past my bedtime drinking screwdrivers and losing 20 bucks. And yes, I am thankful for the late night bike ride home, the kind where I feel like I might be the only one in the whole world and the streets belong just to me and my music. Oh, and I’m exceedingly thankful that I have tomorrow off for sleeping in and sleeping it off. I hope you had a most wonderful Thanksgiving too.