A whole lotta turkey

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving! I hope you had a wonderful dinner with family, the kind that inspires meaningful and heartfelt discussion about gratitude and the truly important things in life.

I kid, I kid - who actually has those family holidays so reminiscent of a Publix commercial? The idea is nice, but at our house, there's usually chaos as everyone tries to sit down before everything gets cold. (We are a family of cold-food haters!) This year, I even toyed with the idea of idea of throwing in my own little message, but it seemed a little out of place, considering the grace delivered by my mother. It could be rivaled only by, say, Homer Simpson. (Sorry, Mom.)

And of course my brothers, the great conversationalists of the family, only add to the Rockwellian atmosphere at our Thanksgiving table. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, if you can't get rid of a family skeleton, may as well make it dance, right?

But it's ok. Life is not a Publix commercial (thank God - talk about pressure). And the next morning, as I stood on line at 6 am for a flat-screen TV with my loyal mom and dad, ready to spar - well, verbally - with anyone who dared try to ruin Hub's Christmas surprise, I realized that while no family is perfect, I'm pretty lucky to have the one I do.