i am thankful that when my car got pulled over for a random holiday-weekend safety blitz check, everything (including the horn my father fixed and the new muffler he put on last month) passed the test.
i am thankful that the cop did not give me the ticket for not wearing my glasses, because the lens is scratched and i can not see properly thru them, and i can not afford new ones.
i am thankful that none of the ten cops who were wandering around inspecting parts of my car appeared to notice that my tags are expired, because i can not afford to renew them.
i am thankful that none of the computer checks they must have been doing on my licence and plates inside their truck showed up my unpaid parking ticket, which i haven't taken care of because ... yeah, you guessed it.
i am thankful that this happened on the way *to* my parents house, not on my first trip home OR the drive back to retrieve the wallet i had left in my mother's car when i took my oldest niece to the store for cream soda for dinner so she could have 'wine' in her glass, because i obviously was sorely lacking a valid drivers' licence at that time.
i am thankful that my father handed me twenty dollars that i stuffed in my pocket on the way out the door, because otherwise i would have had no gas in the car to get back to their house and no bank card with which to obtain such.
from this point on, i refuse to partake in family holiday dinners. they bring me very bad times.
happy turkey day!
p.s. i am thankful that when my four-year-old niece randomly asked during dinner if we were eating a real turkey, that no one looked at me, hiding my face in my bowl of salad, and started shouting, "bad veggie! see what you've done?!" as i had no part in this realization and fully intend not to explain vegetarianism or animal rights to my nieces until they are old enough to understand properly.