Giving thanks for the little things

            In elementary school, Thanksgiving activities required us to dress up like a Pilgrim and write down everything we were thankful for.

            The list had to include all the big blessings – family, health, faith. I am extremely thankful for those for sure, but there are small blessings that make the days go by a lot smoother.

            To that end, here's my sideline list of what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving:

            - Cupcakes. I can indulge my sweet tooth without blowing my entire diet.

            - Free long distance on my cell phone. I remember the days of watching the clock to make sure we didn't talk too long because of the expense of long distance. Not anymore.

            - Cable. At least 500 channels and, as Bruce Springsteen said, there's nothing on. Unless you  catch reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show."

            - Milk Chocolate. Some candy manufacturers still see the benefit in making pure unadulterated milk chocolate. Some killjoys are trying to convince us that bitter chocolate is better, but who are they kidding. Pass me a Hershey's Kiss any day of the week.

            - Children's laughter. A child laughing with unadulterated joy is the best remedy for anything that ails you. Try and keep a smile off your face when listening to a 6-year-old howl with delight as a puppy licks her face. Yeah, just try.

            - Leftovers on Thanksgiving. Nothing beats a plate filled with home-made turkey and dressing, except that second plate Thanksgiving night.

            - Ignorant people. Idiots remind us to be thankful for the smart people who cross our path.

            - The bathtub. It's a lot quicker to take a shower, but there's nothing like a leisurely soak in the tub after a long day.

            - Balloons. A bouquet of colorful balloons signals somebody has something to celebrate.

            - Cotton. Sure cotton shirts have to be ironed, they wrinkle and occasionally shrink. But nothing, as the commercial says, beats the touch and feel of 100 percent cotton.

            - Back-yard vegetable gardens. As a city girl, I haven't a clue how to start or maintain a garden. But when a neighbor shares his or her bounty with me, I am forever thankful I know what a genuine tomato, squash and cucumber tastes like.

            - Campfires. The Texas drought went on for so long, I'd almost forgotten how relaxing it is to sit next to a crackling fire late at night.

            - Books. I don't care if it's an electronic book, a book on CD or a paper book. Nothing is better at washing away cares and troubles than losing one's self in a book.

            - The library. The world is literally at your fingertips either by visiting a library or downloading books from your home computer. For free.

            - Automatic transmissions. Some people don't think it's really driving unless you're pushing on the clutch and downshifting. Been there. Done that. Give me the luxury of putting my car in "D" any day of the week.

            - Dogs and cats. I'm not an animal person. We didn't have pets growing up and I never sought out having a pet. But with a son who adores animals, there was no way we weren't getting him a dog. And despite my griping about dog spit, I don't know what I'd do without the comfort and company of ole Channell. She's a keeper.

            None of these items would earn me an "A" in Mrs. Krenzer's class, but they sure do make daily living a lot less hassle free. And for that, I am thankful.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.  

It's never too late for compassion

                The classroom door opened unexpectedly, and Sister Adrian, the principal at our Catholic elementary school, made an announcement.

                "Everyone on your knees and pray," she said. "The president has been killed."

                It was 50 years ago that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was gunned down by an assassin's bullet and, with that one heinous act, a vibrant young president was forever silenced.

                Five years later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed. Two months later, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.

                The entire world was stunned. America's leaders, those with vision and perseverance, were being silenced even though their speeches and writings revealed men who believed in a peaceful way to end hatred and prejudice.

                They understood the country was experiencing turbulent times. When King was accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, he spoke of the violence in America and how destructive prejudice and hatred was to this country.

                "Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love," he said.

                Young Bobby Kennedy echoed King. In 1961, Bobby wrote "All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity."

                Even though these words were written over 50 years ago, I want to believe they weren't written in vain. We have the chance to continue these messages of peace, and doing so doesn't require legislative action or a full-out political onslaught to put them into action.

                Regular folks like you and me start simply. We do something nice for someone every day.

                I'm not coming up with some radical new invention or idea, and it hardly seems like doing something nice for someone could radically change the world. It might not, but it's a good place to start.

                The seeds have already been sewn. Starting every November, people on Facebook post a daily thanks every day up to Thanksgiving. Posts range from a healthy family to new boots to a good job.

                Let's take that movement a step further and put our words into action.

                Write a letter to that cousin, sister or brother who keeps the family together, the ones who quietly tend to the gravestones and make sure the grandparents are driven to events. They're seldom thanked for those small acts of kindness.

                There's the co-worker who always fills the coffee pot back up, organizes the flower fund and comes by to check on you after you've been out sick. They go out of their way to make the work place a little more like home. When's the last time we thanked them?

                The neighbor who picks up our newspapers when we're out of town, a friend who keeps calling when you've been out of touch for a while or the kids next door who put a smile on your face when they're outside playing.

                Pay for the people behind you in the drive through. Thank your spouse for the countless nice things they do that we take for granted after years of marriage.

                Send a card to a niece or nephew and include a couple of bucks. Resist the urge to tell someone off and, instead, say something nice to somebody who's having a tough day.

                Seize the opportunity to show kindness and make a point to thank those whose kindness makes the world a better place.

                We're not organizing peace rallies in the nation's capitol nor are we leading peaceful marches. We're simply trying to improve the world one kind act at a time.

                I think Bobby, Jack and Martin would like that.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

A girl can dream, can't she?

            While flipping through a magazine, I stopped to look at a spread showcasing the upcoming spring fashions. It seems the hoity-toity crowd is pushing the fashion envelope this year.   

            See-through blouses and four-inch stiletto heels appear in almost every show. Call me naive, but I don't think that look, or dresses that have to be Velcroed to someone's body, work well at the grocery store.

            Despite that huge reality gap, I love watching fashion shows and I wouldn't miss the Academy Awards. Not because of the statues they give out but because I love seeing what the stars are wearing.

            This secret fascination with fashion is odd because my fashion barometer hovers around matching my sweat pants to my socks. Looking back, I believe this secret love affair started in my Aunt Bev's closet.

            Aunt Bev let my cousin, Cindy, and me spend hours in her huge walk-in closet where we'd try on hats and  pretend to drink tea wearing elbow-length white gloves. We'd spend all afternoon in front of her vanity, putting on powder and make up.

            But all children grow up, and I stopped playing make believe. My teen-age years came on the heels of the hippies, and my generation distanced ourselves from love beads and tie-dye shirts by embracing sensibility.

            We went to sleep with our hair curled around small, empty frozen orange juice cans so our hair would be straight and unaffected. Our make-up routine consisted of Maybelline mascara and a spritz of simple honeysuckle cologne.

            As far as clothing, a pair of bell-bottoms and a red, white and blue T-shirt worked like a charm. Sure there were some girls who loved dressing up.

            I wasn't one of them.

            At least on the outside.

            Hiding behind those overalls and huarache sandals was the heart of someone who remembered how glamorous it was to dress up in a flowing evening gown, satin slippers and elbow-length white gloves.

            Instead of memorizing the periodic table like the driven women of my generation, I secretly memorized all the haute couture fashion designers from the golden days of Hollywood.

            My favorite was Adrian who designed spectacular evening gowns sporting yards of ivory chiffon and soft , flowing organza. Edith Head, Christian Dior and Coco Chanel designed gowns that made every woman look like an elegant princess.

            I've watched the clip of Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire to "Cheek to Cheek" at least a dozen times because of the ostrich feathered dress she wears. I'll sit through any Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly movie, not for their acting skills, but to see their beautiful dresses.

            I can still picture every gown and outfit Kelly wore in "Rear Window" and "To Catch A Thief;" and even though few women are as thin as Hepburn, her dresses in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" remain icons of elegant beauty.

            I often wish there were occasions where I could pull on satin slippers and dance away my troubles. However, that's simply not practical.

            In my life, sweats and shorts do just fine and it doesn't matter if I spill anything on them or wear them until they're faded 10 shades lighter than the original. I don't need stiletto heels to go to the grocery store or clean the bathrooms.

            But a girl can still dream.

            Of waltzing around an elegant ballroom wearing yards of billowing ivory chiffon.

            Or playing dress-up in her aunt's closet, pretending to be a princess on the way to the ball.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Watch out for gators in the airport

            I'm a worrier. I worry about my family, my job and my friends. I worry about health care, the economy and the price of gas. I even worry about our dog.

            It doesn't take much to send me off into spasms of worry. Take for instance the latest you-won't-believe-this story – deadly spiders were found on a supermarket banana.

            Here's the tale:  A couple from London was forced to have their home fumigated after deadly spiders sprouted from a white spot on a banana the wife had just purchased. She thought it was a brown spot on the banana she was eating when she saw tiny spiders crawling on the banana's skin.

            Let's re-read that sentence – she was actually eating the banana when she saw the spiders. That means that these deadly Brazilian spiders – a species the Guinness World Records geniuses designated as the world's most venomous spider – was mere inches away from this woman's mouth.

            I immediately went in the kitchen and examined the bananas on the counter. Thank goodness they're only getting mushy, not breeding millions of killer spiders.

            In another news story, an alligator was found under an escalator at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Not the sweltering Miami airport, which would be totally believable, but in the frigid, 30-degree Chicago airport.

            In addition to terrorists and the long-term effects of having your body x-rayed, photographed and searched, now we have to worry about reptiles by the rental car desk.

            It's not like we worriers have been asleep at the wheel. Over the years, we've had plenty to worry about –watermelon seeds sprouting in our stomachs and a guy with a hook attacking us if we were in a parked car, making out with our boyfriend.

            So these new strange-but-true stories have to get in line behind the tried-and-true worrisome stories like Bigfoot which refuse to go away. The search for Bigfoot was popular when I was a kid and now three people in Oklahoma were arrested when out looking for the legendary Sasquatch.

            What's really incredible is that people think a hairy ape-like creature can stay undetected in the woods in these days and times. With my ordinary cell phone, I can access Google Earth and see my aunt's car parked in her driveway up in New York State. No way hulking "Harry-and-the-Hendersons" creatures are living in the woods without somebody finding them and convincing them to go on the Letterman Show.

            Although it's a fact that gigantic Asian carp – an invasive, destructive species of ravenous fish – have been found in the Great Lakes watershed, we now have to worry that the Asian carp will single handedly, well at least single fin-dedly, wipe out all the plankton and native fish in every lake in America.

            And let's not forget the real worries about infestations of the disgusting cockroach and the spread of vicious fire ants. Folks, a nuclear bomb could detonate south of the Mason Dixon line, and the only things left would be a gigantic mountain of fire ants alongside a nest of cockroaches crawling around on a three-foot deep growth of kudzu.

            Even with those disgusting things to fret over, I can honestly say there are some things I will never, ever worry about.

            Finding a chubacabra in my back yard.

            Crossing paths with the Abominable Snowman

            And spotting the Loch Ness monster in the Brazos River.

            I will, however, keep an eye out for those gators in the airport.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.