A Complicated Thanksgiving

I slept well last night and lingered in bed this morning until about 7:30 AM, which is late for me.  Had breakfast with Tony over at Goodies II on Bascom, then took a meandering walk and stopped for a cup of coffee, a cupcake and a banana.  From there, I went and saw "Silver Linings Playbook" which is an excellent movie.  A great cast, a sweet, funny, and well-told story layered under the acting (Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Tucker, Robert DeNiro) just made it a truly enjoyable film. It comes highly recommended from me.

A lazy afternoon followed, marked by family calls and texts, then a simple Thanksgiving dinner at Marie Calendars with Don and Tony.  Excellent food, good conversation.  From there,  home and into the evening.  A spot of bad news when I got home, one of my nephews has landed in the hospital in another state, apparent in the emergency room. Since he is largely estranged from the rest of the family, I am pretty much the only family member he talks to (though he does have friends there where he lives).  It was one of his friends who got a hold of me.  I don't really have any information at this point.  I  had called the hospital but when they rang me through, I simply got dial tone and no answer.  I will try again shortly.

His friends have relayed that one of them who lives close by is going to go see him, and I passed my number on to them, so hopefully I can hear something.  I know that he has had health problems for the last year or so, in part due to lifestyle choices he made.  They have landed him in the emergency room several times over the last couple of months.  I will keep him close in my thoughts and prayers until I hear more.  Not much else I can do from half a world away.

So, I would guess that, if I had to characterize this Thanksgiving, I would characterize it as complicated.  I think that would be a characterization of life around me of late - simply complicated. I hope your Thanksgiving is good, whoever you are and wherever you are.

Traveling Thanksgiving

I am in South Dakota for the Thanksgiving Holiday. At this moment, I am sitting on the couch in the living room on the ranch, listening to Hank Williams, sniffing the scent of fresh barley soup prepared by a professional chef and the scent of biscuits in the oven. That simple dinner is about twenty minutes out, so I thought I would pop online and make a quick entry.

I came back to the ranch on Friday the 18th and will, soon enough, be heading back to California. I like visiting here, it is always good to see my parents, my siblings, and any of my other relatives and old friends that I might stumble across - but, honestly, there is only so much to do in South Dakota, and all of it involves lots of driving.

On Monday, I was the parents driver, taking them into Winner (about twenty miles east) for a doctors appointment and errand running, then driving back to Rosebud (about forty miles to the west), and then back home. It was a fairly long day, but everything went pretty smoothly. Then, on Tuesday, I ran back into Winner to pick up the odds and ends for Thanksgiving Dinner.

We're going to have a small one, half a dozen people or so, and we are going to keep it simple and traditional - turkey, mashed potatoes, vegetables, corn bread dressing, and pies, lots and lost of pies. On Tuesday I picked up eight pies from the Winner bakery - two each of apple, cherry, pumpkin, and pecan. That is going to come out to about 1.8 pies per adult! It certainly could have been the all pie thanksgiving. I am sure they will try to foist one on me for the trip back to SD, but pies, in general, simply do not travel well! No matter how careful you are, at the far end, you end up with "the stuff that makes up a pie all mooshed into a container". Trust me, I've tried it.

So, I am spending the days as simply and quietly as I can, napping, reading, visiting, cooking, watching assorted things on television and listening to my folks listen to Hank Williams. And I am thankful, very, very, thankful, for every moment of it, in all it's simplicity and grace. So wherever you are, whoever you are, I hope you're able to find something simple and graceful to be thankful for.