Thanks?

Thanksgiving Eve.  (!)

Parenthetic excitement.

It's like the energy of such holidays exists between the lines these days.  Parenthood, home owner hood,  career maker hood, hot mama workin' it hood.  We're busy; we're tired.

It's 9:27 pm on the night before Thanksgiving and my husband had a mere half day of work.  Home early with bells on.  And by bells I mean bottles of libations and mixers clanging together in large brown bags in preparation of the official holiday season kickoff: Thanksgiving Eve.  Tasty adult bevs to wash down the short work week and to hydrate for delicious things to come.

Fast forward through this day of pre-festivity list kicking and here we sit: me with my apple cider, vodka and cinnamon and Nico with my flower blanket  on the couch passed out gurgling crickets.

He's cute.  But, he's passed out.  What a bust.  What, I'm buzzed?  No.

Yes.

I sit here reflecting on this scene... this... scene... And I remember previous Thanksgiving Eves at bars in Boston with fellow peers and friends enjoying one (three or four) too many cocktails and being slightly classy, slightly immature, slightly reckless twenty-somethings and I long for the occasion.    In a nostalgic, I wouldn't really go back there sort of way.  It was fun.  But there were consequences.  Hangover consequences.

This is not to say that tomorrow morning at 6:15 am I won't feel the familiar sluggish headache needing the whiff of Folders brewing with a few Motrin dissolving in the pot of coffee type regret for my cider cocktails, but the responsibility was not the same back then.  I could be an utterly useless douche nozzle all day totally incapacitated by the late night, lots of loud noises and the fun.  Then eat turkey dinner and be full and in a food stupor, drunk on gravy and spinney with pumpkin pies and lie on the couch all afternoon and all night watching movies and assuming a similar position to my husband's champion move tonight.

I'm telling you, 1/3 vodka, 2/3 apple cider and a Tinkerbell's sneeze worth of cinnamon dust and voila- A Thanksgiving cocktail.  Love it.  Another winning combo: hot husband, flower blankey, and a couch and we're all marinating.  We're all just gelling here, makin' it happen; makin' the memories.

Maybe one day in the 'older children' future, I'll long for the cozy days home with plenty of excuses to stay put.  Maybe I'll wish to be snuggled up with my laptop and my snoring husband instead of out somewhere foreign with strangers and bar covers.

Maybe the choice between snugly flower blankey covers and large 'roidey bouncer bar covers is one that's clear cut and easy to make.  Maybe the lines have already been drawn and my holiday excitement is happy to lay in between them for the moment.  Maybe then is then, now is now, and later will bring later.  All I know is there isn't a bar in the world that has my Nug sleeping in the room down the hall, my husband catching flies next to me and my laptop digesting my every thought right at my finger tips.

I'm not where I was, so let's all congratulate me for figuring that clearly "newsworthy" piece of information out.  But, all those nights out I was just looking for the person that was going to pass out early with me.  If I see it this way, I got what I wanted.  And for that, I give thanks.