Thanksgiving 2012

This year's was the first Thanksgiving I'd ever spent alone.  As I did last year, I volunteered to work this Thanksgiving so that I can instead have off Christmas, and Mike left town early Thursday morning to spend the holiday weekend with his family.  Friday afternoon found me catching up on sleep with Stuffed in bed beside me while the slow cooker worked its magic and later waking to finish cooking, still in my pajamas. 

I had treated myself to a $4 bundle of salmon-pink Roses and frosted and decorated a single carrot muffin--my first sugar in a month--for dessert.  After pouring my iced tea and taking these few photos, I treated Stuffed to a can of wet food, like Lisa did for her cats last Thursday, ♥ and even let him eat at the table for the very first time.  It was Friday night, then, when I finally sat down to enjoy a simple celebration of food and flowers--and a sweet fluff-ball of a dinner companion who always appreciates the good things in life--and to say thank you, again, for everything.

Thanksgiving, I reflected while dining alone (after Stuffed had hopped down from the table and curled up on the floor again), is just pausing to think about all that you have--and all that you have had--and being grateful for it.  To miss eating a bigger meal only meant that I'd been blessed by a finer meal before.  To wish I were with my husband and family only showed that I am lucky enough to love and be loved.  And to feel nostalgic for all the Thanksgivings spent sitting at the kids' table at Papa and Grandma's house only proved that Thanksgivings huge enough to require kids' tables and hosted by happy grandparents are for me, not fantasies but memories. 

Thanksgiving, I was reminded this year, isn't only a "real" Thanksgiving when one is enjoying a full plate or full home. Thanksgiving happens anytime one says thank you with a full heart.  That's all.  And that's everything.

A Place for Everything

I woke up at 4:45 this morning feeling rested for the first time in days, if not weeks, so I got up and started straightening up the apartment while Mike slept.  I read an article a couple weeks ago about sugar's negative effects on the immune system and decided to cut it out from my diet for awhile to see if it helps, since I seem to be sick more often than not.  I've been this way for ages--my mom called me Typhoid Mary as a kid because I was sick so often--and it seems to be getting worse as I get older, so I figured giving up sugar was worth a shot.  (As an aside, did you know that "Typhoid Mary" was a real person?  And what a sad story hers is.  My goodness.)  The combination of the sugar-withdrawal and a flu shot last weekend have had me completely wiped out lately, but so far, so good today, so this morning has been spent putting away groceries and dishes that had accumulated in teetering piles on our one kitchen counter and on our dining table and otherwise organizing some of the odds and ends that had been making our little apartment feel out-of-control and annoying this month.   Cookbooks tucked back onto shelves.  Mixing bowls re-stacked.  Kitchen floor scrubbed.  Plants re-potted and watered.  Paints and stationery sorted.  It always feels so good to get things done.  'Nothing like a to-do list with a bunch of check-marks and crossed-off items.