Lawyerish: You Can Probably Guess What's on the List, Anyhow

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Before I go Oprah on you and list all the things for which I am grateful, I would like to register a general complaint against screwball holiday movies that make Christmas seem like an ordeal to end all ordeals. The premise is PLAYED. I realize that Hollywood likes to find a formula that works and stick with it (i.e., beat it to death), but I would like this particular formula to be buried once and for all.

There's just nothing new to say about some worldly and citified person/couple having to trek to the hinterlands to spend the holiday with their backwards and/or pathetically quirky family. And it's kind of offensive on some level, this concept of family time as harrowing and inconvenient and somehow BENEATH people of a certain socioeconomic/educational/professional echelon, and virtually every iteration of this theme engages in stereotyping of the most cartoonish order.

I feel like I might be veering wildly into Ann Coulter/Focus on the Family territory all of a sudden. Hmm.

So! Gratitude! Thankfulness! Things I cling to desperately as my life teeters on the brink of ruin!

Well. Y'all, I started writing a list, and it sounded so freaking cheesy and stupid. I KNOW I have lots to be grateful for, and I do appreciate all the things, big and little, that make my life good. I even take the time to reflect on them on an almost daily basis. I just sound like the world's biggest goofball when I try to put it into words.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!