I’m thankful that when Thanksgiving Day turns out to be a day like this, I still have optimism enough to be thankful about something.

I had plans of course, more so than most people. I had two dinners to attend, instead of just one. One was with friends Rich, Joe, Jean and the Human Encyclopedia, 75 miles south of where I live, and the other was with family, an additional 50 miles south from there. I planned to drop the Human Encyclopedia off at Rich’s place, continue on to my family’s place for an early dinner and a reunion with some of my favorite cousins, and then drive back to Rich’s place for a late dinner and conversation.

However, it seems Murphy had other plans for me.

First of all, I’m thankful that I wasn’t held up in extremely heavy stop-and-go traffic that delayed me an entire hour or so because of an accident, for an accident would have been tragic on this holiday. No, I was held up in extremely heavy stop-and-go traffic that delayed me an entire hour or so because there were too many damn cars on the road and we were all subject to the inch-worm phenomenon.

I was late out the door, and the traffic made me even more late. Still, the delay could have been worse, so I’m also thankful that I wasn’t travelling on the northbound part of the freeway, which began to slow down at the checkpoint, just south of the tits of San Onofre, for no reason whatsoever since the checkpoint wasn’t checking, and was backed up and completely stopped for at least 20 miles after that.

And I do mean completely stopped. For no reason whatsoever.

To add thrills to my Thanksgiving Day, I watched the lights on my dashboard to make sure they weren’t acting funny. I’d noticed all week that the brake and battery lights would come on for no apparent reason. The car would run as normal, and Human Encyclopedia could find nothing wrong with it. Well, so be it. On the drive to dinner, the lights didn’t do their wacky thing, which was good, but the clock lights disappeared, which was bad. So,…

I’m thankful that when my car finally died on me after running solely on the battery for the entire trip, it chose to do so in the driveway of Rich’s house among friends, 75 miles from home, instead of somewhere on the freeway on the lonely drive to my family’s house, 100 or so miles from home.

Of course, with it being the holiday, there were no service centers open, just towing services to take your car over to the lots of closed service centers. So,…

I’m thankful that AAA‘s tow truck drivers are significantly smarter than their practically whispering dyslexic holiday emergency call takers, who apparently need all membership numbers, phone numbers, address information, and directions repeated at least 100 times before they write them down all wrong anyway and hand them over to the drivers. Ahem!

Anyway, my car was taken to the car hospital. Yes, even though earlier attempts had failed, the tow truck driver jump-started it fine with his nifty little power caddy, which meant that Human Encyclopedia could drive it there for me and the truck driver wouldn’t have to load it on his truck. Still, the car died again on the way to the service center, and as soon as H.E. got out of the car to get another jump start from the truck driver who followed, the sky poured rain on him. So,…

I’m thankful that I’m a reasonably cute young woman to whom men say, “I’ll take care of this problem with all its stresses and bad weather and needless pain in the arse. You just stay here, relax, look cute and have dinner.” Feminism? What?

Of course, with the car dying in the way that it did, the men surmised that it was either the alternator, the voltage regulator, the battery, or all three—the alternator being the favorite, of course, with the battery being the least likely. Which means…

I’m thankful that it’s not really the battery, which I’d gotten replaced not too long ago by spending a nice chunk of change, and that it’s most likely the alternator, which would cost me three times more but might actually stop all that intermittent electrical light funkiness that I’ve been having on and off this past year. Hell, maybe my car radio will work again after this.

Well, so I was stuck, and stuck good. I missed out on homemade filipino food, a piano performance practiced solely for me, and a chance to give out some rather belated birthday presents.

No matter. I’m thankful that I got to eat at least some tasty mushrooms with hearts of palm and some Greek salad, as I am not too fond of turkey and stuffing really, and I’m thankful that I had blueberry pie and two wonderful cups of strong coffee that helped me keep up with the very political, historical and very long world-aware conversation—that is, until I dozed—and then kept me up and staring at the television until about three or four in the morning, just two or three hours before I had to wake up again to work on the day after Thanksgiving, because I am not used to drinking coffee at all.

Whew! Can you sense the caffeine in that sentence?

Yeah, so I had plenty of reasons to be thankful. Most of all, I’m thankful that I met this day with a smile.

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