Gratitude

At Larry's annual managers' dinner, the spouses have to say what they're grateful for, giving us all an opportunity to be treacly (and, IMO, insincere) about how much we love our TRH family, and, no surprise, I just don't like to follow the crowd on this one.

I've actually been thinking a lot about the upcoming year - 2012 and the end of the world, and what we're responsible for, and what we owe our community.  And, of course, I love elections, and presidential election years are my all time favorites. I considered saying that I'm grateful this is a presidential election year and all that CNN will talk about all year is the election!  But that would've bee going a bit far, so this is what I said:

I'm grateful to live in the greatest country in the world, where I can talk shit about my government and no one is going to drag me out of my house in the middle of the night, and I can practice my religion and no one cares that it's different from theirs.  And most of all, I'm grateful that it's a presidential election year, and I get to VOTE!

It's not what anyone wanted to hear, but I'm okay with that - it's what I had in my heart. (Larry later said it was just so typical of me, though he didn't strictly mean that as a compliment of course.)