This is, of course, Thanksgiving week, and I think I have a lot to say about it — leading up, preparing, eating and drinking, cleaning up after. I think there’s enough comedy and commentary in it to write about it every day. (I guess we’ll know in a few minutes.)

The line above was said by — Did it sound familiar? — the great Frank Morgan in “The Wizard of Oz”. It was on last night on TBS (just before the equally wonderful cartoon “The Grinch That Stole Christmas”, which we watched afterwards.

Folks, we all spend too much time watching TV, some of us just plain old “too much”, some of us “way too much”, some of us “way, WAY too much”, but I think the combination of those two wonderful pieces of work, of story-telling, “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Grinch That Stole Christmas” are, in their ways, as enlightening and moral and joyous as a bible class or a breakthrough in prayer.

Or a few good drinks and a successful bout of love-making.

Does that sound contradictory or even blasphemous? It shouldn’t. My view of the world (both this and the next) is “Everything in its time”, and that includes a moderate amount of drinking and the Polynesian Fertility Rites that attend it.

Now if only I could keep the drinking moderate…

So, here’s the scene. One off my kids had a baseball game and then a team swim-awards-party, and my wife took him to those, for his cross-country team in someone’s backyard — Southern California, remember; swimming and baseball all year round — and I cuddled with the other one in The Big Bed with the dog ALL DAY LONG. No writing, no cogitating, no guilt. (Well, plenty of guilt, but what the heck.)

I made everyone breakfast and loaded, ran and emptied the dishwasher, and scrubbed the counters, and did a little shopping for essentials, like eggs, bread, fruit, milk, joice; and post-drinking essentials, like Coke, potato chips and ice cream, and made my usual astonishing Big Daddy sandwiches, of which even the dog is in awe.

A quick word on juice: We’ve moved back to concentrated orange juice. For years and years, our whole married lives in fact, we’ve been buying fancier and fancier orange juices, some pulp, lots of pulp, ALL pulp, not from concentrate, fresh shipped, right from the orchard. Regular brands, nothing crazy, Tropicana, Minute Maid, good stuff, but then one day my wife and I were remembering how our parents always got concentrated juice and made it in a pitcher and kept it in the ‘fridge, and that was that. That’s what I mean by “moving back” to concentrate.

We’ve used concentrate now exclusively for a month or so, and you know what? It’s fine, it’s good, it’s just as good, and it’s cheaper, which never hurts. Why throw money away, or, as my dad used to say, “If you saw it on the street, you’d pick it up, right?” Absolutely right.

Plus, and this may be a little fanciful, but it gives the kids something to do. As I say in my act, we don’t hunt, we don’t fish, we don’t grow, we don’t plant, we have no contact with any process of nourishment, and, well, just them opening the can and filling it and stirring and rinsing gives them a small sense that they’ve helped make something for the family, and that, I think, is very valuable.

ONE MORE PLUS: It’s a tiny thumb in the eye to the fancy product world that seduces us more and more every day. On the rare time I find myself in a liquor store — oh, shut up — it’s getting harder and harder to find a good, solid whiskey that doesn’t have one of those goofy “booklets” attached that tell the story of the liquor, and of their colorful, homey characters in Tennessee or Scotland or Mykonos. MILLER’S RULE NUMBER TWO MILLION: Any whiskey that needs a booklet to feel good about itself is too precious and cute for anyone to devote the time to drink too much of it.

So we all got into The Big Bed around five or so, and that’s a real treat, because as much as the kids are growing, we still have our positions that make it possible (and not hard at all) to all be in together, including the dog. I’m holding on (literally and figuratively) to each of those rare chances, because one day, sooner than we all think, they’ll be too big, or won’t want to, and it will be just another memory of their childhoods.

But last night was as good as life gets. I made tuna sandwiches and salads, and then we hunkered down for “The Wizard of Oz,” which is as great as it needs to be. Every moment a joy, and a theme and execution that, if you don’t cry, you’re just not welcome in my life. (Unless, of course, you’re an availabe and willing sexy woman, and God and my wife have both just walked in together and told me to go ahead and take a free night off. If that happens — and, admittedly, the chances aren’t great — then I won’t care what her taste in movies is.)

That’s where the title of this comes from. The great Frank Morgan, who plays the wizard, at the end when he’s about to take off in the balloon to return to Kansas to, as he says to the gathered throngs, “Confer, confab and otherwise hobnob with my fellow wizards.” It’s a charming piece of palaver from a dandy actor, and another gorgeous moment in a gorgeous movie.

The best things in life may not be exactly free, but that movie, together, with a healthy family, a great dog, and a giant cuddle in a warm house, simply cannot be beaten, and I don’t care if you throw in a fifty room castle or a hunded old cars, or a twenty-man yacht. All jokes aside, anyone who would pick the yacht over that cuddle is just plain out of his mind. And you know what? Lots of people would, wouldn’t they?

REMEMBER: IF YOU WALKED OUT OF BED TODAY TO MAKE SOME FOOD, AND THE WHOLE FAMILY WAS WAITING THERE FOR YOU WHEN YOU GOT BACK, WITH JUDY, BERT, RAY, JACK, MARGARET, FRANK AND ALL THE WONDERFUL OTHERS… FOLKS, YOU HAVE HIT FOR THE CYCLE; THE CYCLE OF LIFE.