(Lists from 2005, 2006, and 2007)

• President-elect Barack Obama!
• guacamole
• my workout buddies
• the sunset glow that comes through our windows
• Daylight Savings time
• catsitters
• several political columnists: Fareed Zakaria, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks
• recycling
• our new storm door which finally got installed after we'd used the broken one for way too long - no more duct tape handle!
• bluegrass
• the crew at the rescue squad
• Tina Fey
• grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup
• pepper mills
• hiking
• that Simon and Maylee have, miraculously, become mousers
• traveling with friends and family
• the public library
• Etsy
• cupcakes
• over-the-counter medications
• fresh basil
• TravelZoo
• being close to our parents, both in proximity and affinity
• having our home filled with friends

I recently switched to Orbit gum, mostly because the package works better in my purse than the traditional kind, and also because the CitrusMint flavor was calling to me. But upon just finishing my first pack, I have discovered the best reason to chew this gum. Because when you take the last piece out of the package, you say aloud to yourself, "Oh no! I'm out of Orbit!" And then you hear yourself and laugh.

Last week I joined a local volunteer rescue squad. There are only certain things I'm allowed to do at this point, of course, but they still gave me the uniform shirt to wear. And a patch! I am very proud of my patch.

What is it about patches that make things seem official? You take an ordinary blue button-up shirt and slap a big patch on the shoulder and suddenly people trust you with their lives. This amuses me, especially since I am currently struggling just to operate the stretcher. (Harder than it looks, I'm just saying...) What's more, I'm pretty sure what the patch says doesn't even matter. You could be wearing a fucking Pinewood Derby patch and people would be perfectly fine with you defibrillating their loved one. "I'm sure he knows what he's doing," they think. "He's got a patch."

Knowing a secret at work before it is officially announced is just like knowing, as a kid, that Santa isn't real. You don't know who else knows and who doesn't, and so you're afraid to say anything to anyone. Because, having been sworn to secrecy, nobody wants to be the one to tell the news to someone who doesn't know. And yet if you knew that others knew, everyone could stop pretending not to know.

In kindergarten this meant saying to my friend Sara, "Do you think Santa comes down the chimney?" And then she said slyly, "I don't know...Do you know?" And then I said, "I don't know....Do you know?" Back and forth we went, both knowing but not knowing for sure if the other knew, until finally we just gave up without ever knowing.

At work what happens is that everyone who knows does a little dance around each other in which they try to ascertain if the others know, without outright asking. Suddenly, "Hey, how are things?" becomes more than a simple greeting. It could mean how are things but it could just as likely mean how are THINGS? As in, how are you feeling about the THINGS that we both know but can't say we know? And one's response to this is critical because it needs to be a reply that is appropriate both to how things are and how THINGS are, just in case the person is asking about THINGS and not things. Suddenly you're speaking in code without being sure the other person even knows how to decipher.

We bought a new refrigerator, and in preparation for its arrival we sorted through all the food in our old fridge, throwing out moldy cheese and dried-up fruit and caramel dip we've had since our first year of marriage. Okay actually, Rob insisted we keep the caramel. "Because that stuff is so good!" Yes, and also old enough to go to kindergarten. Blech.

The new fridge was delivered yesterday and as I was filling it with all our food, in a very organized fashion, I thought to myself how a new refrigerator is a lot like a new year. You get the chance to sort through the stuff that filled the last one and make choices about what to bring into the new one. It's an excuse to toss all the bad stuff you've been hanging onto, and an opportunity to finally figure out what is causing that orange sticky puddle. It's good to have a reason to sort and purge and simplify.

And it's easy to make promises about doing things right this time around, to swear you'll only bring in things that are good for you and take time regularly to rid yourself of the stuff that is crowding your space or stinking everything up. Most likely, those pledges will soon be forgotten. But somehow it's almost enough that for a moment there was a clean slate, a day of seeing things clearly, a whole week without moldy cheese.

At Curves, members were asked to write on a sheet of paper what we are thankful for, and then they were posted on the walls for everyone to read. Interestingly, the vast majority listed the same three things in the same order: God, my family, this country. A few were different, and one in particular stood out to me and was by far my favorite. It was written by a teenage girl, a fact made obvious by the i's dotted with big circles and the content. It read: my awesome friends, my adorable boyfriend, Andy Warhol, Trent Reznor, mac & cheese.

In that same spirit, I continue my tradition of listing the little things for which I'm thankful. (Lists from 2005 and 2006.)

• vibrant autumn colors
• belly kisses
• the house dip at my favorite sandwich shop
• veterinarians
• the big window in my office
• our swanky upscale grocery store
• that all my close friends have found partners
• snow days
• cities - New York and Chicago in particular
• polka dots
• working out with my mom
• that moment of relief upon waking from a dream in which I was either lost, back in college, or pregnant
• bacon
• talking on the phone with my brother
• the mountains
• getting 40 mpg
• the shade of red that I get my highlights in
• snuggling after hitting snooze
• kitty purrs
• the last 2:45 of LoveStoned (the "I Think She Knows" interlude)
• that feeling of exhilaration after a good run
• my dad's crinkle-eyed laugh
• The New York Times online
• my grandparents' farmhouse filled with family
• mac & cheese

Oddly enough, the past few weeks I've found myself wishing I were a football fan. I don't know the first thing about football, and don't care a lick about the sport. But growing up, the game was always on. It was in the background, a muffled soundtrack to our family life. It's still that way when we visit - during the season, the game is always on. It's that way in Rob's family, too. His uncle and cousins will gather for a game, settling onto the sofa with chips and drinks. And for the duration of the game, real life doesn't enter in. Thoughts of work don't interfere. Talk is centered around the plays. It seems so protected from everything, so relaxed. In a world in which conflict is real and scary and so often the good guys are indistinguishable from the bad, it seems to me that football must provide a welcome reprieve - it's easy to choose teams, and safe to cheer for just one side, knowing that in the end it doesn't really matter who wins. Not really. And in a world in which we so often feel isolated, it seems comforting to know that even if you're rooting for different teams, you are united in your football focus with the other people in the room. And, in fact, the reason they are there with you in the first place is because they are friends. They are family.