On this Thanksgiving holiday, I am filled with gratitude for not having to count on the U.S. Congress for health insurance.

I am also thankful for a home that's not in foreclosure, the availability of swine flu shots and Glee. (Those of you watching the new television show on Fox understand what I'm talking about.)

A few more things that deserve my thanks:

Five -- count em', five! -- statewide races on Florida's ballot in 2010, creating enough political upheaval to (hopefully) keep me employed as a newspaper reporter through at least one more election.

No more town hall meetings on healthcare this year.

Marco Rubio, for a hard-charging U.S. Senate campaign that has rocked Florida's political establishment on its heels. As one envious Washington political operative put it, I have ``a front-row seat to the best race in 2010.''

Gov. Charlie Crist, for doing his best over the next nine months to remind Rubio what happens to former presiding officers of the Legislature when they run for statewide office: retirement. (Just ask Johnnie Byrd, Ander Crenshaw, Tom Gustafson, Ralph Haben, Harry Johnston, Tom Lee, Peter Wallace and John Vogt.)

Quitters. If former Florida Sen. Mel Martinez and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin finished the terms voters elected them to serve, or if Crist decided to stay put for more than one election cycle, would politics be half as interesting?

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, state Sen. Paula Dockery of Lakeland, former Health Care Secretary Holly Benson and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami, for infiltrating a typically all-male, all-white clique of major candidates for statewide office.

Florida voters, for keeping it real. Just because they voted for the Democratic presidential nominee for the first time in decades doesn't mean they are going to go along with his party in 2010. This battleground state is as up for grabs as ever.

E-mails from political groups I've never heard of that address me by my first name and try to get my attention with a shocking subject line. (Not.)

Florida's still-strong open-records law, for revealing how little some elected officials in Tallahassee actually work and how much they spend in tax dollars to commute back and forth to their hometowns and attend Kenny Loggins concerts. (Paging Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp!)

Whatever it is in South Florida's drinking water that causes legions of politicians to forget whose money they are dealing with. (Not.)

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who makes me appreciate my husband in a whole new light because he would never promise to marry someone else on a New York City rooftop with The Dave Matthews Band after my funeral.

Blogs and Twitter, for giving eternal procrastinators like me something to do while still pretending to work.

Campaign finance reports, which don't lie even when Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum doesn't want to admit that his campaign for governor had a lousy three months.

Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer, for his deep and abiding concern about President Barack Obama's undue influence on our nation's schoolchildren.

My daughters, who amaze me every single day and keep asking if there's a chance we will live in the White House some day. Oh, the audacity of hope!

Beth Reinhard is the political writer for The Miami Herald.