What I'm Thankful For in 2025

by jtg

Community

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Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025 Thursday, Nov. 27, 2025 at 11:28:48am PST

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I have to be thankful for recently.

I’ve been through a lot recently, and a year ago, it was not at all certain that I’d still be here today, nor is it certain that I’ll be here next Thanksgiving.

I’m thankful that I came through three major surgeries in the past year, with at least one more on December 22.

I’m thankful that Hair Furor hasn’t yet destroyed Medicare, yet, so I’ll be able to have the December 22 heart surgery at Stanford.

I’m thankful for the support and encouragement I’ve gotten from the fine folks here and beyond during times when I wondered if I would continue to be extant.

I’m thankful for my critters, my four dogs and four cats, and the 4-6 stray cats who depend upon my continued existence.

I’m thankful that I have been able, with a great deal of effort, to resume substitute teaching, which allows me to continue living indoors, at least for now. Every day I sub is an intense experience. I get very weak, and I’m frequently approached as I hobble across campuses by staff and students who ask with concern, “Are you alright, Mister Green?”

There are good things about subbing beyond the paycheck. As I’ve returned to classes, many kids and staff have been excited to see Mister Green again. Many thought I’d retired or just wondered where I’ve been. A lot of kids have told me how much they missed me, something a substitute teacher doesn’t normally hear as most just fade in and out of class when their regular teacher is gone. In one middle school class, I was set up with another sub as co-teacher. One student told the other sub, “Mister Green is my favorite sub ever!”

I am thankful that my YouTube efforts to get finances separate from Subbing or charity are succeeding, with two channels, Critters of Casa de Verde, and Mister Green Explains, about to go over 100 subscribers, as I proceed towards monetization. (Please go and WATCH, LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and SHARE).

I’m thankful I continue to live indoors with my critters, who have often been over the past decade or so, my incentive not to give up.

I’m thankful that I still have my mind. Senility runs in my family, as I have a first cousin, a few years older than I, who barely remembers her name, and my grandfather and several uncles were senile at their end. While I sometimes have difficulties remembering details or coming up with the right word at a moment’s notice, I’m still basically me, for now.

I turned 66 a few months ago. I likely have less time ahead of me than ahead, especially considering my health, and the possibility that Medicare will go away so that I may die in the next few years of something that is otherwise treatable, but I won't be able to afford.

I have had many life-threatening situations in my life, from cancer, heart disease and other situations. Some in my life have claimed I’m “faking it” when I refer to those situations, implying that because I survived, I was never in any danger. Just because I survived doesn’t mean I was not in danger.

Given my current age, 66, I refer to myself as a “baby senior” in that I am now undoubtedly beyond middle age, but not yet to the middle-senior or senior-senior ages of 70s and 80s, and 90s and maybe beyond.

The first time I could have died was when I was diagnosed with cancer at 34. The five-year survival rate of someone with my diagnosis at that time, 1994, was 90% death. That I survived was not a matter of my “faking it” as some have said, up to the present day. My survival was a result of the then-new chemotherapy drugs and surgical procedures, as well as having an exceptionally skilled and caring surgeon. As I put it at the time, I got Doctor B. J. Honeycutt and not Doctor Frank Burns. See MASH for those who don’t get the reference.

At that time, I thought a lot about my legacy and what I’d leave behind. I had started to write my autobiography at that time. One person said, “Don’t you think it’s egotistical to write your autobiography when you haven’t done anything”? I’ve continued to work on it over the years, and I realize that I need to produce a finished product, or at least a first draft I can update and upgrade. One of my friends from University has been telling me for decades that the key to my future is to write my autobiography. She meant that I’d make $ from book sales, and while that may be partially the case, I think that in telling my story, people will be more likely to get to know me as a person rather than a random online meme. Perhaps more people will listen to me as I share my knowledge and what passes for wisdom, and a reason for people to remember my legacy when I am extinct.