Day Twenty-six--When you give thanks and have pie.

This morning, I woke up feeling like a new person. (LIKE a new person--not feeling a new person---just in case anyone read that and wondered if I was tramping out on my husband.)

The NaNo novel is done, and I'M excited to do rewrites. Yay!!! There will be some hacking and slashing. There will be a bit of adding and embellishing... but most of all, today, there will be pie. The sister aka Heidi has promised me glorious banana cream pie. Yummmmm.

Today, I'm thankful for the husband's job and my two wonderful kids who can also be slightly annoying. I'm thankful for the husband and all he does to help our little family stay afloat. We'll have been married twelve years next month and I'm thankful for the good and bad years and that we've grown together. I can't even begin to tell you all the wonderful little things he does every day just because he is the person that he is.

I'm thankful for one car that magically decided to turn off its "check engine" light after three years. I'm not sure why it was on. I'm not sure why it's off--I just know when to be thankful for the little things.

I'm thankful for a wonderful friend in real life who makes me laugh about crappy things. I'm thankful for cyber friends who are so genuine. I'm thankful for my family and how close we all are.

I'm thankful for a belief in God and religion and the knowledge that belief doesn't make me a sheep--but a person that has made a choice to believe in something greater than human frailty and a finite existence and I'm right--and I know I'm right. Truth is stronger than fiction--even if it sometimes also seems stranger than fiction. I know that I'm raising my children in a way that I can respect and accept. I'm grateful to live in a place with the freedom to make these choices, and I'm grateful that my parents raised me to respect the choices of others.

Even with all the stress that comes with it, I'm thankful for the rush and thrill I get from being a writer. I like the feeling I get when I reread something I've written and it feels alive and real and I think, "I did that. I brought that to life. I made that." I like telling the stories in my head and having the characters get their time in the light. I'm grateful for the weird quirky characters that make me smile like Honor... and Reeve, and the Master, and Beth/Juliet, and Devi, and Jake... and Asher... and Scorch. I'm honestly grateful that my memory is so wickedly horrible that I laugh at jokes every single time. I woke up this morning with a few thoughts on things to add to Scorched in the final two chapters--and I'm grateful for that too. These stories feel like living, breathing things to me and it feels nice to be a part of that.

I'm grateful for the moral upbringing I had which has instilled in me the desire to write stories that I can share with my kids someday. I'm grateful that there are other people out there still willing to write stories that I don't feel ashamed to read and recommend and quote from and talk about.

A special thank you to Shelley for writing a children's book that made me smile and call my mom right away.

Another thank you to Diana for writing Sinister which started my day out right today.

I'm grateful... very grateful to be alive today and surrounded by people that I love and who love me. I'm grateful for a laptop to take with me today so I can be surrounded by the characters I've created and sneak in a little editing. (Shhhhh... Everyone will fall asleep after turkey anyway.)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!