Well, I don't know about you, but I LOVE Thanksgiving!  It's a great holiday food, family, fun, and being thankful.  And when the last slice of whipped-cream-topped pumpkin pie has disappeared, the remains of the 15 pound turkey are in ruins, and all the leftovers are safely in the frig, it's nice to do a blessings check.  So let's turn our attention to our favorite soap, and gather up all the blessings we find therein.

When we start counting our Oakdale blessings, we have to put the veterans at the top of our list.  At a time when so many soaps are canning their vets left and right (can we say serial killers everywhere??), As The World Turns still manages to work our senior treasures into the storylines here and there.  Dr. John Dixon is caring for Rosanna's and Craig's new baby, Dr. Bob Hughes was attacked by the serial killer last summer, Susan Stewart fell in love with said killer, and Kim (I love that she calls people 'kiddo!') often pops up at the diner to dispense advice.    Also, Kim and Bob are regularly seen clucking in dismay over their son Chris, who's been fooling around with Allison Stewart.  And imagine my surprise when Nancy Hughes was brought in by the police for questioning in the hit and run accident of Mike Kasnoff!  A timely story, considering that elderly drivers do have high rates of auto accidents about 9 times as many as drivers between the ages of 25 and 69, according to statistics.  Of course, the veterans are not featured consistently, and one longtime Oakdalian who has been conspicuously absent is Lisa. Rumors have floated around that actress Eileen Fulton and The Powers That Be had a falling out, which resulted in her airtime being cut to practically nothing; it's probably a safe bet she will never be involved in a storyline again.  So our veterans getting airtime is a mixed blessing at best.  Realistically we know they won't be gracing our screens that often, and in our hearts we miss them terribly.  But at least the summer serial killer did not wipe out a whole generation of favorite characters! 

So that's one mixed blessing on our scorecard.  Next up; we give thanks for romance! Ah, love and lust in the Oakdale afternoon!  Our premier couple in love would have to be Bob and Kim Hughes.  They've been married for ages, after suffering through some poor spousal choices in their frivolous youth.  Kim was married to Dr. John Dixon and Dr. Dan Stewart, as well as the hunky Steve Andropoulous, before settling down with Bob.  As for Bob, well, long-time viewers will remember his youthful marriage to that gold-digger Lisa, as well as a few other women before he met Jennifer, Kim's sister.  When Jennifer died, Bob and Kim went though all the standard soap opera roadblocks before they finally married.   Bob's parents, Chris and Nancy Hughes, were Oakdale's first rock solid 'tent pole' couple on the show, and Bob and Kim have stepped up to fill those shoes quite nicely.

Lily and Holden have gone through numerous adventures, scandals, and heartbreaks to become the 'junior' tent pole couple.  Jack and Carly Snyder are the cutest couple right now seeing Jack wriggle on the hook when Carly grilled him about his non-relationship with Mitzi was a hoot!  Rosanna and Craig Montgomery are a sparkling couple who seem to get all the best lines!  Their wedding was an event to remember, thanks to the writers.  Now we are watching Katie Peretti Frazier and Mike Kasnoff slowly and bitter sweetly work their way towards a relationship.   The Widow Frazier is still mourning her recently deceased hubby Simon, while Mike, a perennial loser in love, is patiently waiting for Katie to fall for him as much as he's fallen for her.  Don't blow this one, writers, I'm expecting something sweet and passionate with these two!

So overall, we are blessed with romance on ATWT.  But while veterans and romance are edible delectables this Thanksgiving, let's move on and examine the next course, the villains!  We can certainly give thanks for some juicy villains on ATWT.  To hear the name 'James Stenbeck' is to shiver with terrified delight!  James is a smuggler, a thief, a kidnapper, a murderer, an embezzler, a blackmailer; and has faked his own death, wriggled out of prison, and avoided jail on various occasions.  James is smooth, sophisticated, charming, slippery, arrogant, depraved, and a cobra who will use anything and everything to achieve his nefarious goals.  What more could you ask for in a great soap villain?  If James were melted down, we would be left with a hard little evil black heart sporting a sinister smirk.  I've seen many great soap villains come and go over the years Carl Hutchins on Another World comes to mind most frequently and James Stenbeck has to be in the Hall of Fame.

But James, currently in prison, is not the only villain we are thankful for.  His ex-wife, Barbara Ryan, is currently the psycho-mommy from hell.  She is not above lying, cheating, and manipulating her own children to get what she wants, and she feels completely justified in every one of her actions.  Barbara even hired a hit man to provide a solution to the problem of her son's fiancée, Rose.  Okay, she did cancel the hit, but Barbara's got plenty of other schemes up her designer sleeves.  She rants, she raves, and I'm sure on occasion she has even frothed at the mouth as she carries on the great villain tradition.  Yes, these two are definitely blessings!

Well, our blessings and our meal are winding down, but we still have a few more to give thanks for.  First, there's Craig, the all-purpose character.  Is he a romantic hero?  Is he a villain?  Is he the comic relief?  I give thanks for the fact that he is all three, at different times and also all at the same time!  Craig's tender romance of Rosanna while she was in the hospital was incredibly touching.  Plotting to ruin any chance of adopting a baby by having his business raided was just rotten, and seeing him afflicted with the poison ivy that he had hoped to coat his daughter's lover with was hilarious.  Craig can do it all, and a recent scene where he paused while trying to call the birth mother of his newly adopted son, because he could hear Rosanna singing to little Cabot over the baby monitor, was a beautiful, moving moment.

Okay, we've worked our way through a full table of blessings this Thanksgiving, and we're almost finished.  All that's left is dessert.  Henry Coleman is the whipped cream of our dinner, and we give thanks for him!  Oh sure, Henry's a villain; he's dabbled in a little poisoning here, a little lying there, a little blackmailing once in a while, a little electronic bugging on occasion, and a little evidence tampering when need be, but you gotta love him!  He's worked in TV news, tabloid journalism, as a private investigator, and now he's a nanny for baby Sage Snyder!  Of course poor Henry's had no romance, unless you want to count the kiss he received from a deranged shipwreck victim while he was in disguise as Katie Peretti!  He's single and has no relatives in Oakdale, and doesn't pop up very often.  But when he does, I know the laughs, the crazy situations, and the 'Henryisms' are coming.  To the uninitiated, it's hard to explain Henry; you just have to experience him to appreciate him.

Okay, I don't know about you, but I'm stuffed, and ready to go watch a football game!  Now I know there are a lot more blessings to be counted on the show, and I'm sure I've missed yours and I sincerely apologize.  But there is one more blessing I want to acknowledge, with your permission, and that would be you.  I started writing this column about 5 weeks ago, and I was extremely nervous!  But I have received so many great letters of support from everyone, and I really appreciate it.  You really know how to make a girl feel welcome!   I know I won't always please everyone who's in an Oakdale state of mind, but I hope I can always give you something to think about!

Don't forget to check out this week's ATWT poll question!