Now, for Day Three....

I am lucky! I just saved Emi's precious webkinz dog, Fudge, from certain destruction at the jaws of the black dog. Fudge feels a little icky and a tag is partially chewed off, but the seams and stuffing are intact. I say I am lucky because had Fudge turned into a pile of ripped synthetic fur and slobbery white stuffing, I would have had to deal with the fall-out this afternoon - intense weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. But providentially, I happened to turn my head at a fortuitous moment. So that makes the first 2 things on my gratitude list very clear to me:

1. That I saved Frudge from Cocoa - hence, myself, from the theatrics of a melodramatic 10-year-old.
   
2. That we have a nice, fenced backyard where Cocoa will happily play for hours on this bright, sunny day, so I can have a few hours where I don't have to panic if I leave a closet door open or have failed to do a proper sweep of errant toys, papers, books, leather objects, etc.. (I love that dog. I do. But she can be a handful - no, armful!)

And here's the set-up for the third thing that makes me grateful today: before school Emi was busily filling a shopping bag with boxed and canned foods to take to school for a food drive. I asked Annie if she wanted to take some cans, too. And then I wondered if she knew what a food drive was. I explained that sometimes people need help to get food to eat, perhaps because they've been sick or have been laid-off from work and can't find new employment. Annie interrupted and said, "That's what happened to Curious George."

"What?" I said. "Curious George got laid off?"

Annie responded with a sigh, "Yeah, Curious George got laid off from his job." (Who Knew! I should have suspected something, though, when I saw the Man-With-The-Yellow-Hat at a Halloween party with no monkey in tow.) Needless to say, Annie was quite happy to take food to school in the hopes of helping someone like poor Curious George.

No, the third item on my list today is neither Curious George nor Annie's cute quips (although those always warm my heart.) What I am thankful for is:

3. A pantry stocked with food, enough and to spare.