EMPS: Sometimes It's About Being Thankful for...Stuff.

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #65: Giving Thanks!, I suppose I could have showed you the Thanksgiving Pot Luck at St. Michael's this past Thursday, if I'd remembered to photograph it; or my beloved husband, if he allowed me to post pictures of him. I'm truly thankful for that pot luck at church, where I ate with friends and helped out in the kitchen, and got a plate of leftovers for my Wiccan friend who declined to attend, and would otherwise have been alone all day at Thanksgiving. And of course I'm thankful every day for my funny, cranky, smart, always-stimulating husband of thirty years (and counting).

But I didn't remember to take those Thanksgiving pics, and we didn't have much by way of turkey afterward, just enough for me to get a few meals of leftovers if I padded them out with Trader Joe's stuff and a frozen entree. Here's the box from that entree. Exciting, huh?

BUT! I'm also thankful for something material this year. You see, after 20 years without an accident, John has been rear-ended three times in the past six months -- and no, none of the accidents were his fault. He got a $2005 insurance settlement on the third accident, and was not inclined to spend it on fixing the car's trunk and taillight. Instead he's going to replace the dying hard drive on his Mac, and we got me a new computer. It's a desktop, for a change. John insisted that it's better than a laptop and likely to last longer. I still have my laptop for trips, at least until the motherboard finishes dying. So here it is: a $500 Gateway with 4 GB RAM and a 750 GB hard drive, plus an 18.5" monitor. John even admitted that it's faster than his Mac (when it's working), and the monitor is bigger. Windows 7 isn't compatible with my photo editor, so I was finally forced to upgrade to PhotoStudio 6. So I have working software again. Yay! It may be crass and material of me, but I'm thankful for my new computer.

And that's not all! We agonized for a good twenty minutes in front of four vacuum cleaners at Costco, ranging in price from $89 to $299. John tried opening the canister on the cheapest one to see how it worked, and fake dirt poured out onto the concrete floor! We ended up with the $139 Hoover. Now, if you're like me, you've probably had the experience of disappointing vacuum cleaners. You know: the demonstrators show the vacuum picking up fake dirt designed to be vacuumed easily, or maybe a bowling ball. But that's not what you need a vacuum to do, is it? You get it home, and does it pick up the dog hair? Probably not. But that's exactly what we needed it to do, and exactly why we stood there, agonizing.

But we picked one and took it home, and John tried it out even before we unpacked my computer. Amazingly, it picked up three canisters' worth of real dirt and dog hair(!) from the den alone! It works! It's wonderful! As wonderful as a vacuum cleaner can be, anyway.

So John is happy with that purchase - and that makes me thankful, too!

Karen