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Remembering what Thanksgiving is all about

752 views 11 replies 3 participants last post by  BigEd 
#1 ·
Had an exceptionally good day today, and it got me to thinking philosophically I guess. We always do a thanksgiving dinner at work on the wednesday before thanksgiving, and that's when we give out christmas bonuses as well. The techs and office manager worked till lunch while I fried up my wife's handmade eggrolls back in the warehouse. Had everyone's kids there except ours, spouses and even one grandma, all showed up around 12:30 and ate a crazy amount. Cooked 117 eggrolls in an hour or so with two woks going, gave a dozen or so to the contractor we share a parking lot with, set aside a couple dozen to take for our sons who are coming to visit, and all the rest were either eaten at lunch or taken home with people. Other people brought a bunch of other stuff as well, from desserts to Lo Mein to hibachi vegetables to 'death by chocolate' cake. Generally the funnest work day of our year, and this year was especially good. Sent everyone home three hours early, and I'm about to head home myself; all of us taking both thursday and friday off, other than one tech being on call if needed. Not sure if I'll accomplish anything or be a total bum this afternoon, but I'm rooting for total bum.

As crazy & crappy as the last couple years have been, it's easy to forget about being intentionally and consciously thankful. But my wife is still mostly up & around now, more than a year longer than the doctors told us she would have. Our business is going okay, our people are doing good, our sons are gainfully employed, and I'm on the tail end of recovering from the foot surgeries I had this year. And even the poorest 5% of people in America are still in the top 5% richest people on the planet; so we really should remember to be truly grateful for a lot of things. Things aren't perfect, but they're definitely better than they could be, and we're much more fortunate than a lot of the world is.
 
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#2 ·
Happy thanksgiving, up North we had ours last month. It turned out pretty good, most of the politicians cancelled lockdowns that the population was planning on ignoring anyway.
 
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#3 ·
Happy Thanksgiving Day! I'll probably be up visiting a friend's family later tonight.
But yeah it's unfortunately easy to forget how good we have it here.

I just remembered a comment about our "poor" here in the USA I read in a book about the USMC in the invasion of Iraq. One PFC said "man everyone needs to come to a place like this (Iraq) this is real poverty. Hell even most our poor are fat as ****!"

Yeah some perspective is in order.😁
 
#4 ·
Happy Thanksgiving Day! I'll probably be up visiting a friend's family later tonight.
But yeah it's unfortunately easy to forget how good we have it here.

I just remembered a comment about our "poor" here in the USA I read in a book about the USMC in the invasion of Iraq. One PFC said "man everyone needs to come to a place like this (Iraq) this is real poverty. Hell even most our poor are fat as ****!"

Yeah some perspective is in order.😁
Isn't that the truth!
 
#6 ·
Yeah, I've not traveled outside the United States. But between family and people I've talked to who either immigrated here or were here on student or work visas I get a good idea. Or reading of other people's experiences.
 
#7 · (Edited)
Just a reminder to try and be intentionally thankful & appreciative of our lots in life. Even those of us who make less-than-average incomes in the US (which includes me) are still among the richest people on the planet. We were reminded firsthand of this when we went to Mexico in August (the cheapest month to go there because it's the hottest). Our niece was with us - she's a nurse in the Houston area, and initially didn't believe me when I told her that nurses in Mexico make from 13,000 to 39,000 pesos at most ($650-$1,900 USD) per month. Nurses in the US range from $3300 to $9200 per month. (I only know it because I looked it up to show her.) Our cost of living is definitely higher here in the US, be even in a big city like Houston it's only double or so; not proportionately higher for what she earns. Down there, families often live together & save up together to buy a used motorbike for the family, then save up some more to someday maybe buy an actual new motorbike. Here in the US, even 'poor people' tend to have HDTV's, high-speed internet, hot & cold running water and very rarely actually go hungry. That's NOT the case in some of the places we've been; and we haven't been in tons of places. We have it much better in the US than most of the world.

Last week we learned that my wife's twice-daily chemo isn't completely working anymore. It's been keeping the cancer stalled for over four years, but a recent PET/CT scan showed that the primary source tumor has started growing again. So now she's scheduled for what's actually listed on the oncologist's paperwork as 'radical' surgery between Thanksgiving and Christmas, to see if they can make some gains surgically instead of chemically. We sat there Wednesday afternoon as he told us that 15-30% of the people who have this procedure lose some amount of the use of at least one limb, a 5-10% chance of losing most of the use of one limb, and she walked out of there actually smiling. Because as crap as that is, she's still alive and mostly getting around. In the health care systems of most of the world, she wouldn't even still be here. Not saying all of them; I have no delusions of the US being the 'best in the world', but it's well above average.

I'm as put out and angry with the political and economic situation in the country as anybody right now, but again, as crap as it is, we still have it way better than most of the world does. Most of us are pissed off & worried about social insanity, the economy, etc. But we need to keep in mind that in a lot of places, they don't get to vote on who reigns over them, and they don't even have a frame of reference for the "pain" of paying an extra four dollars for a Thanksgiving turkey. Their frame of reference is often more along the lines of "can we afford an extra loaf of bread", or "will the store even have bread on the shelves". It's real easy to get tunnel vision on our problems, but as bad as they are (and some definitely are), many of them are mole hills compared to the legitimate mountains a lot of people face every day.

I'm thankful that my wife is still here and isn't in a facility yet, I'm thankful that our sons are doing fairly well, I'm thankful that most days I actually spend most of the day in a warm building, I'm thankful that we've been able to pay off almost all of our debt over the last few years, and I'm hugely thankful that the Blue Cross insurance I used to complain about has paid more than 99% of my wife's medical bills.

I'm definitely no Pollyanna by nature, but there's no benefit to being Ebenezer Scrooge, either. Have a good Thanksgiving and be sure to specifically & intentionally make a mental list of the good things in your life when you do.
 
#8 ·
Prayers, are with you
 
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#11 ·
Another very thankful day. My wife has had several weeks of complications, culminating in pretty major surgery this week, and she came home from the hospital today. I left work around 9 am to go pick her up and we spent the entire day together. Absolute best day we’ve had in a over a month. I haven’t done much online or done any new videos in several weeks due to all we had going on, but today has been great.
 
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