gremanda

It’s Thanksgiving eve and it’s mighty lonely around Chateau Verdineau. And it’s not even that Amanda has wandered off into a different wing and I just need to wait for her to return to the Great Room bearing a silver platter heaped with gourds, gizzards or some other kind of holiday crap. She left for Florida (friggin’ FLORIDA!) yesterday, to spend Thanksgiving with her family and won’t be back until next Tuesday.

I was invited (at least that’s what Amanda tells me) and all is good in Gremandaland. But the trip just wasn’t in the cards for me. I’ll be spending my Thanksgiving with my daughter and my parents here on Strong Island while Amanda spends hers lounging around in a bikini while roast turkeys float in little plastic boats atop the pool water (sorry grefandas, but that’s how I imagine they roll down in the Sunshine State.)

Don’t get me wrong – I am so happy to have my little girl for the holiday. I just wish Amanda could have been here to share the day with us. And I’m happy A gets some quality time with her family. I just wish I could have shared that with her. Sooo – um yeah – the crisp autumn air bears the ever so slight scent of bummer. Wicked different from last year…

One year ago, I met Amanda’s parents for the first time. Amanda finagled me an invite to their home for Thanksgiving dinner. If I remember her end of the phone conversation correctly, it went something like this: “Yeah, so mom, I’m like probably going to bring this weird old man with me… Uh huh… Right… Well no, not exactly… I’m kinda maybe dating him..? Yes…I think like 27 or something, so not like THAT much older…Um OK… New York… No, he’s not a Yankees fan… I promise he doesn’t smell too bad… K… Love you b… What…? Oh. I think it’s Craig or something like that…Toodles.”

My memory might be off with that “toodles” bit but I’m pretty sure the rest of it is right on.

I, of course, combined my considerable charm and even more considerable monster bankroll to hatch a master plan to win over Mama and Big Papa Gravel. We’re talking the whole nine yards — flowers, fine wine, a new shirt (for me, not for them – I have worn this same no-longer-new shirt in roughly 40% of all Gremanda photos since then. To my knowledge the Gravels all wore their own shirts that day; these shirts may or may not have been new.)

As you can tell from the photographic evidence, my plan was a resounding success.

At my first ThanksGraveling, I discovered that a meat pie is something you eat (not just something gross you read about on Urban Dictionary), Amanda crank called one of our favorite Twitter people David Niall Wilson, and then I looked on helplessly as Amanda spilled wine on her crotch and mopped it up with paper towels. (For the record I did offer to help, even suggested we could save on the paper towels ROWR – nobody seemed to think this was a particularly good idea.) Of course we ate a crapload of turkey and, if memory serves, I didn’t get yelled at for putting my feet on the dining room table.

Then we went back to Amanda’s Boston apartment for a weekend full of buying weird hats and kissing (while wearing said weird hats.)

A lot has happened in the year that has passed since then. Amanda decided that she liked “Craig” enough to take up residence in the Chateau. She met and fell in love with my daughter – and my daughter fell in love with her too. She finally met my parents who, so far, have not tried to drive her from their home with torches and pitchforks. (I have a few ideas as to why that might be. See: bikini photo above. See Also: my father.) We’ve had some adventures, visited some fun places, and have had lots of time to hang out together and just be nekkid us.

I’m thankful for everything we’ve had, done and been over this past year. I’m thankful for the opportunity to keep on having these things forever or until I die – probably somewhere around 3 years down the road at the rate I’m going.  Don’t get me wrong,  I’m thankful for lots of other things too (my daughter, my career, my co-workers, my more or less pretty decent health, etc.) — but right now, even though she’s far far away, I’m thankful most of all for Amanda.

I’m thankful that she lets me love her and that she loves me back. She’s my one, the honest-to-god-fer-real-this-time love of my life and I love everything about her: she’s thoughtful, loving, sweet, smart, almost funny, the most beautiful woman in the world, and pretty damn fun to squeeze. I’m thankful for every bit of her from the very top of her weird hat to the teeny tips of her weird toes. And I can’t wait to pick up her hat, toes and everything in between when she arrives back at JFK next Tuesday.