I can�t believe it�s the week of Thanksgiving already. It�s such a clich� but time really does fly. Especially as you get older. What I would give to be a kid again. To have everything back to the way it was when I was growing up. Grammy, Grampa and Aunt Bev would still be here.

I have such fond memories of Gramps arriving every Thanksgiving morning in time to watch the Macy�s Parade on TV with us. He�d always start dozing halfway through, but we didn�t care. And he always brought a big bag of mixed nuts still in the shell with him and he�d sit there and crack them all open for us. My favorites were, and still are, Brazil nuts and hazelnuts. The Brazil nuts were always such a pain to get out of the shell, but so worth the aggravation. Oh, and he always brought a big bag full of oranges, apples and bananas, too. We�d all munch on a piece of fruit while Mom made breakfast � scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, toast and orange juice. Mom�s scrambled eggs weren�t, and still aren�t, just plain old scrambled eggs. She throws bits of bacon and sausage in there along with Parmesan cheese, cream cheese, onion and garlic, sometimes pepper. Sometimes she�d make hash browns, too. How she put breakfast together like that while still getting stuff ready for Thanksgiving dinner, I don�t know. Mom has the patience of a saint, that much I do know. Around noontime we�d start smelling the turkey and even if we weren�t hungry up to that point, we�d instantly be �starving� because it smelled so good. Dinner would still be 2 hours away, though, so we�d have to appease the phantom hunger pangs with nuts and cut up vegetables. My aunt, uncle and cousins would arrive around 1 with a ton of pies. My Aunt Bev always made a lemon meringue pie with the meringue as the crust and topped it with fresh whipped cream. It was so good. My cousin has the recipe but hasn�t made it since my aunt passed away. She has, however, made my aunt�s apple pie recipe many times. That apple pie recipe is the only one that rival�s Mom�s. Speaking of pies, there was one year in the mid-late 70�s that we had a massive Thanksgiving pie fight. I don�t know who started it, but I do remember pie and whipped cream flying everywhere. Everybody was laughing so hard they were crying. One of my cousin�s was actually crying, though, but I don�t remember why. He may have gotten some in his eye or something.

I feel so blessed to have these memories. It would be wonderful if I could keep them in mind while I'm trying to pick up a few last minute things for my Thanksgiving Dinner contribution as idiots on cell phones cut me off without using a directional, or back out of a parking spot in front of me without looking if anything�s behind them first, and then have the gall to flip me off when I honk my angry horn at them.

Am I missing something? Are there other people out there like me, who feel you always need to watch your surroundings and be alert while behind the wheel of a car? Does anyone wonder if Cracker Jacks gives away possibly hundreds of thousands of driving licenses as their prizes each year?

This is one reason I try to do as much holiday shopping through QVC and Amazon as I can.

�Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people��