I Send My Thanks Into the Universe

For this place in my front yard.  It never ever fails to stun me into the realization of how wonderful it is to be alive.

For this guy, who is my holdfast and my source of joy.  He also bakes rolls and roasts turkeys.

For the onset of one last English Christmas, and the annual Warwick Victorian Christmas Festival, where they switch on the Christmas lights in Victorian style and boy do you feel like you stepped back in time and even the bobbies are wearing Victorian caped- uniforms and the Town Crier is ringing a giant bell and hollering "Make way! for the sleigh!", and the steam-powered carousel is spinning and the brass band is playing and the Punch & Judy show is way more boring than you would have thought but then again they didn't have TV back then to shorten their attention spans so what do you expect, and the chestnuts are roasting and you too look like you are back in time because the Chinese man who lives in a Beijing shack with no indoor plumbing made you a beautiful costume.

For Mary Carpenter's Christmas album, wafer cookies, pumpkin pie, falling asleep on the floor by the newly decorated Christmas tree, an endless supply of holly branches in the castle woods (and a man who is tall enough to reach them to cut them down, and who will carry them all in his giant backpack, in the rain), frosty windows, clementines, and only two more weeks of school.

For the incredible string of events in the history of the Universe that brought me to life.  I can never breathe deep enough or stare long enough to formulate a decent thanks.  So like Billy Connolly, I will settle for saying (in a Scottish accent because it sounds more truthful that way):  "my heart sings a wee song".   A song of thanks, that I send to the world.