On Thanksgiving my husband and I drove to the other side of the island to enjoy dinner with some friends. As we headed across the rural road that cuts through the middle of the Big Island , we saw at least three groups of wild turkeys alongside the road. We decided they must be out celebrating that they lived through another Thanksgiving.

After all, if you can't be grateful for what you have, be grateful for what you escape.

Among other things for which I give thanks, I am glad that I don't have to scrape ice off my windshield this winter, grateful that I don't have a flesh-eating bacteria devouring my skin, and grateful that the two children under the age of three in my life are my grandchildren.

This has been a hectic week. Because our daughter-in-law broke her foot, I am headed to the mainland two weeks early to facilitate her health, both mental and physical. It has necessitated my cramming a month of my life into five days, endangering my life, both mental and physical. We have a vacation rental house, and I thought I had a leisurely couple of weeks to get ready for our next set of renters. Instead I spent the Thanksgiving weekend cleaning and decorating for Christmas, and my cleaning ladies will finish whatever I have not accomplished before I leave. Did I mention how thankful I am for them?

As I put my special Christmas quilt on the bed, Santa in his hammock among the palms, and got out my Hawaiian ornaments, I flashed back to the first Christmas we rented the house to vacationers. We had hosted a couple of groups, but this was the first booking our property management company had arranged, and I was working hard to make everything perfect.

The tree was decorated with ornaments made from starfish. I had the television tuned to the Christmas music station. Even though there were no children in this group, I had left no tinsel unturned in making the house festive and inviting. I will never forget the words of the woman as she first saw the house. “Oh! My husband hates Christmas. I hope he doesn't puke.” (Insert here sound of air going quickly out of a large overinflated balloon.) I don't remember what I said to her or if I said anything, because that type of comment usually renders even me speechless.

Of course, three hours later I thought I should have smiled and said “A heads up on that would have been helpful so I would not have spent three days of my otherwise busy life decorating this house in hopes that you would have a joyous Christmas.” My efforts at putting a hula skirt on an animated Santa, strewing garlands of evergreen on the railings and my basket of Christmas goodies went largely unappreciated.

I should not have been surprised when the property management company called me after they left. “The guests gave us a list of twelve things that are wrong with your house.” It was the Twelve Days of Christmas gone wrong. Sing along.

No salad spinner. No beach towel clothesline. And a coconut could fall from the tree.

I was upset that our very first guest had been so negative. Most of the things on her list were pretty nitpicky. Some of the things on the list were even a good idea, and I eventually implemented them, but the negative tone in which the suggestions were made stuck in my craw. I tried to explain to the lady at the property management company how hard I had worked to make the house inviting and festive. “Don't worry,” she said. “We get people like this once in a while, the kind who would find something wrong with the Taj Mahal. She is just one of those people who only see the negative. Some people are just like that.”

It must be hard to go through life being one of those kinds of people. We all have times when our trials overwhelm us and we struggle to see a little sunshine peeking through the clouds, but some people carry their clouds with them to spread over the sunshine. I admit there are times that I have struggled with my attitude, but there was always the smile of a baby, the laughter of friends or the love of my family to pull me out of it.

In spite of that experience, I am once again draping my animated Santa in a hula skirt and this year I picked up a new ornament in Seattle , a gecko licking a candy cane. There is a one-year-old little boy and a five-year-old little girl in this group. Santa is leaving a little something for each of them under the tree. And there will be balloons for the five-year-old, because her grandfather says she goes nuts for balloons. I go sleuthing for this information, because I am the concierge of my own five-star hotel. I am also often the maid, the gardener and the handyman, so while I am scrubbing grout with a toothbrush, I entertain myself by imagining the fun this family is going to have this Christmas.

There is at least one Lord of the Rings fan in this group because the little girl is named Arwen. They are cat people, too, I understand, so I stuck my neck out and asked if they would mind feeding my strays—Gollum, Gandalf and Frodo. I won't get a chance to greet them when they arrive, and they will be gone before I return, but they are already my friends. With each e-mail exchange, I mention a couple of more baby things they don't need to bring, since we just loaded up for the visit of our little granddaughter, and they are overjoyed to know we are well-equipped.

I'm pretty certain that when they see the house, they aren't going to freak. You know, some people are just like that.