November 19, 2016 — Thanksgiving is not really a holiday I do. Don’t get me wrong, I like the length of it; personally I think we should have more four-day holidays, but I just usually save the celebration for other holidays. And my apologies to anyone who reads me who doesn’t get the four days, or who is in a country other than the United States because this year I feel like marking it, not so much celebrating it, but marking this holiday by giving thanks. And really, no matter where you live, or even if you’re working, it never hurts to be a little grateful.

In addition to the stated name of giving thanks, and being the most traveled holiday of the year, not to mention being the holiday of eating, Thanksgiving marks the start of the shoporama that is the Christmas-Holiday season, and the start of holiday shows. In my tv watching of Friday, I saw my first Christmas show, and those shows, for me, usually trigger whatever recognition that it is about to be Christmas that I’m capable of getting at this time in my life. I suppose I’ll always like two shows. One of them, A Christmas Carol, was on. This one was the “Muppets” version. I’ve never seen it, and didn’t expect to like it, but I did. Making this about music, I seriously thought the entire time that Robert Plant should have been cast as the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, to walk amongst the Muppet supporting cast. Mind you, I don’t think of Robert Plant as Scrooge, just that the man in that movie seemed to be trying to look like a modern day Robert Plant, sans the beard. Plus, if Robert Plant could play a viking in The Song Remains the Same, why not? You know, he does have an English accent and all. The other movie I watched – Deadpool, a movie I resisted because I didn’t believe the hype, completely surprised me in one of those wow kind of ways. It’s funny, with amazing writing and transitions to keep one paying attention. And the bonus, the part that super-duper-really gets me, like really gets me, I think it’s right up there as my favorite love story ever. Yeah, I know, more proof that I’m completely not normal!

I had a tough week this week. My week started in the hospital with really big fears for my … continuation, let’s call it, or at least continuation in the form I’m used to. I think it’s impossible to get through that without having at least a hundred thoughts of gratitude, if anything gratitude that I didn’t have to be cured in a super-hero-making air chamber like Deadpool, which is super scary because there’s no such thing as super heroes or super-hero-making processes. So, without going on and on, I’m in the mood for songs about thanks.

I looked up songs about Thanksgiving, and if it has anything to do with Adam Sandler, you can pretty much forget about it. Most of the other songs I didn’t know, but there was one, and this one, … well, I just have to even though I don’t know it either … because it’s ABBA! It’s by ABBA, seriously?! The very mention of that band will make me smile a thousand smiles forever seeing as there was nothing around  here as contentious as was ABBA! So I have to post this one.

I guess that’s a ‘70s song, but somehow it sounds like a ‘40s song, or like one of those songs in the morning cartoon that had the bouncing ball over the lyrics. I was not a fan of that bouncing ball sing-along-lyric cartoon, but I’m thinking ABBA was. Even so, I agree; I’m thankful for music.

So that leaves mine. This is one of my favorite songs of all time, not really about the kind of thanks one gives at Thanksgiving, thinking more Deadpool love-affair kind of thanks, but I don’t really care … because it’s the strongest song of thanks I’ve ever heard. That line if the sun refused to shine, a line about the end, about things out of our control, those are the scariest of all things — the ones we can’t control. I don’t really want to say a lot about myself, not this time, just that I’m thankful I can still type and play music. I’m thankful the things out of my control did not take control. The sun continues to shine. And this Thanksgiving, oh boy, oh girl, oh dog, I’m the most thankful person on this planet.

And maybe just maybe, someday, Robert Plant will be in a Christmas show. Yeah, now that’s a good dream!