I’m headed out today to make my annual trip to my brother and sister-in-law’s home for Thanksgiving. For the past– I think it’s about 10 years now– they’ve been generous enough to host the Thanksgiving dinner for Matt’s side of the family. They celebrate Christmas with Suzanne’s (Matt’s wife) family down here in North Carolina every year, so everyone gets some love during the holidays. Suzanne always prepares an amazing and utterly delicious feast every Thanksgiving– and I can never thank her enough for all the hard work she endures to feed our tiny “brood”. She’s amazing. I’ve got a LOT to be thankful for. I’m thankful for my wonderful family, my health, the fact that I’m living a childhood dream everyday of drawing comic books for my living…. I could go on and on. In a world that is becoming increasingly frightening, I’m very thankful for all the wonderful things and people in my life. I hope that every one of you has a terrific Thanksgiving holiday, and that you have a myriad of positive things in your own lives to be thankful for.

And ANOTHER thing I’m very thankful for:

I am SO THANKFUL that I have Charlie in my life. He’s such a wonderful little guy– so affectionate and sweet. He’s my best buddy in the whole world and I already can’t imagine NOT having him around. As you can see from the pictures, he’s gotten big enough now that he can make his way on to just about anything he likes (the only areas he can’t reach yet are the kitchen counters, but that will come soon enough– he’s only 5 months old). He spends a lot of time climbing on and around my work area. Most of the time, he spends that time knocking everything he can find onto the floor, watching it quizzically, as if he expects it to do something other than just fall to the rug. But he’s never discouraged by the fact that the things he bats onto the floor never do anything but lay there. He just moves on to the next thing that catches his attention to repeat the experiment. But sometimes, he does what he’s doing in these pictures. He’ll lay at the top of my big light box and doze while I’m working on something. And that is the physical manifestation of something I used to fantasize about when I was younger. I always dreamed of being a professional artist and having a sleepy cat napping either on my table or in my lap while I worked.

I’m thankful that’s a fantasy that came to life.

UPDATE!!!:

Since a couple of folks have asked about it (Yo, Chuck– HAPPY THANKSGIVING, man!)– I’m also posting the SYNDROME sketch I did recently for a thread on SKETCHBOOKSESSIONS.COM. Here he is in all his villainous…. uhm, villainy. I LOVE THE INCREDIBLES!!!!

Mike