Since I will probably not have a chance to do any earnest giving of thanks at my Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night (you know, amidst the manservants and the vieille reserve cognac and the swimming breaks off the shores of the Palm... not so much the situation for earnestness), I thought I would take this opportunity to be thankful for:
1. My indescribably wonderful family who I will see 22 days from today (minus the one with Yellow Fever who's forsaken us for Asia AGAIN... although I'm thankful for her, too).
2. Sam Sam the Weiner Man.
3. The Olde Tyme friends reading this from America, Singapore, the UK, Germany, and other locales who know (or should know) that their willingness to laugh/coach me through life from thousands of miles away (often via Gchat or SMS) makes my day on pretty much a daily basis.
4. The crazy, eclectic group of people who have become my framily (friends + family... any takers?) in Dubai. It has certainly not always been a smooth ride, but finding good people in this town is like finding a needle in the world's biggest, tallest, most expensive 7-star haystack, and I am truly blessed to have found (and hung onto) the ones I have.
5. The chance to live, play, travel, and frolic in a region of the world that I've always dreamed about, frustrating though it may be at times. It's especially worthy of gratitude in an era where the sky happens to be falling a little less here than it is in other places.
6. My great, stressful, intimidating new job, which is showing me - for the first time in my career - the challenges and rewards of working with really really insanely smart people. And earning me lots of frequent flier miles, to boot.
7. Change we can believe in.
8. The krazy (not to be confused with crazy) relationships and "relationships"I've had since moving here. Some have been good, many have been bad, but I've learned a lot from them and I feel like these lessons will coalesce in the not-too-distant future and lead me to a point where "krazy" becomes just "crazy."
9. The way that I will feel around 11 AM on Sunday morning when I look out over the Mediterranean having just run 26.2 miles. The chance to push myself. The memory of being on a cracked-out 3-hour training run a few weeks ago in 95F heat and adamantly deciding that "You Shook Me All Night Long" would be my new theme song because of the lines "she was a fast machine / she kept her motor clean" and more aptly "knockin' me out with those American thighs."The fact that I could knock someone out with my thighs these days.
10. Assorted shallow consumery things that I actually do give thanks for on a daily basis because my life would be bleak and pleasureless without them, including but not limited to: Gossip Girl, Starbucks skinny extra-shot lattes, Target, the Blackberry 8800, the Sonicare 7300 Elite, Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper (even when it costs $1.25 a can because it's been air freighted over from the States), the Asics Gel Nimbus, Cotton Candy LipSmackers, iTunes Genius for realizing that if I like Hilary Duff I might also like Miley Cyrus, Hendrick's and tonic with a slice of cucumber, OPI nail polish, NPR podcasts, the nice folks at Hyundai who designed a $15 SUV that I can repeatedly crash into things without it driving any worse for the wear, and O Magazine which is not my bible but is pretty darn close.
So, to all of these things: I am thankful for you. :)
And to close, a funny story. I believe I've blogged about my across-the-hall neighbor before, he of "I'm a successful 30something barrister, and I play polo, and I drive a $200,000 car, and I'm devastatingly handsome and oh-so-perfectly posh and witty and flirtatious" fame - the catch being that he has a wife and kids who live in London but don't stop him from bringing home assorted blondes at 2 AM, a phenomenon which Flatmate E and I frequently bear witness too. Anyhow, long story short, ever since meeting his "wife and kids" whilst afternoon-drinking at the pool about a year ago, E and I have held him up as the Archetypal Dubai Asshole - so much potential, and yet such a douche - and warned more than a few people to stay away from him. Aaaaaaaanyhow, he's in with our new crew of equestrian-set friends, so as it turned out we ended up having him over for a couple bottles of wine last Saturday night, which of course got messy, which of course led to E and I spilling the beans and telling him in no uncertain terms that the jig was up and we knew he was married with children.
Which led to uproarious laughter on his part and the procurement, via iPhone, of family pictures proving pretty irrefutably that his "wife" is actually his sister and the "kids" are actually his nieces/nephews.
Whoops.
So tonight I get home from Syria and I find the following note slipped under my door:
Thank you for the loan of the wine glass and the sheer quality entertainment on Saturday night. I owe you some wine. I will remedy this week!!
A
P.S. The wife and the kids are doing just fine - they are just disappointed that 007 spent all his money on an Aston Martin!!
HA! Moral of the story: just because it walks like a douchebag and talks like a douchebag and seems to engage in infidelity like a douchebag, doesn't mean it's aaaaaaaaaaalways a douchebag. Just 99.9% of the time. ;)
Stay tuned for post-marathon updates from Beirut on Sunday, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
