*I know I usually like to write lighthearted posts, but I do have to warn you that is quite sad.*
As I was making our Thanksgiving dinner, I was struck with a profound sense of sadness. Thanksgivng hasn’t been a happy day for me in years. It all started back when I was in high school.
In junior year I received a phone call from my biological father. He called to tell me that my grandmother (his mom) was diagnosed with cancer. I was devastated. As a little girl, I had spent so much time with gramma T. that she was my mother/grandma/Marry Poppins/best friend.
For Thanksgiving that year, my bio-dad drove me to see grandma. We all gathered to have dinner with her.
We all tried so hard to be joyful. We told grandma’s favorite dumb jokes, and any funny story we knew. Underneath it all there was a huge sadness.
They had discovered the cancer too late, and the chemo wasn’t working. (They had set up a hospice for her in her home.) Yet we were all in denial. Deep down knew she was going to leave us.
As we began to eat, our sadness deepened. Grandma T. was an amazing cook. (She would have taken Paula Deen down in a competition.) At this point the cancer had spread to grandma’s stomach, she could no longer eat. To swallow food caused her terrible pain. But, she wasn’t going to let cancer steal her dinner!
She would take small bites of everything. Then while we weren’t looking she would have to spit them out into her napkin. She commented on how moist the turkey was, and how fantastic the pecan pie turned out.
At one point I had to walk outside. I broke down. I didn’t want her to hear me crying. It felt so damned unfair! She was the kindest soul I have ever known. She never said anything mean, and had a kind word for everyone. Why her, why now?
She managed to hang on through January. She didn’t want to die during Christmas, and one of her sons’ birthday was early in January. She made it just a few days after.
Even thought it was been 13 years, I still have a difficult time on Thanksgiving. Part of my heart died with her, and it still hurts.
So to answer the Thanksgiving question: What am I thankful for?
Gramma T, I am so glad to have had her in my life, no matter how short the time was.
♦The largest pumpkin pie ever made weighed 2,020 pounds (916.25 kilograms). ♦A ripe cranberry will bounce. ♦All turkeys and chickens have wishbones. ♦Canadians celebrate their own Thanksgiving every October. ♦Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863. ♦The first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in 1924
♦There is a great movement to combat consumerism. The idea behind Buy Nothing Day is to boycott the madness of Black Friday. Doing so sends a message to retailers that we as consumers won’t fall for their madness. *Wiki Page *Adbusters
Have great Thanksgiving! (Go easy on your poor stomachs!)
Colors:
28th Lavender
29th Black
30th White
Dec 1st Purple
2nd White
3rd Gray
4th Amber
♦A very interesting article about consumerist feminism:
"I’ve always been fascinated and infuriated by the way that one is obliged, as a woman, to purchase the trappings of one’s own gender, and infuriated by the way the rules keep changing the deeper into the game you go. I’ve been getting into more and more professional situations where it is no longer okay to turn up with huge biker boots and a slash of clashing lipstick and expect to be taken seriously. As women, everything we wear is a statement, and we have no right to remain sartorially silent. We negotiate a field of signifiers every time we open our wardrobes, or, in my case, every time we rummage through the clothes-pile on the bedroom floor."
"Where do people buy these absurd, absurd clothes? I know that a lot of it is more like moving art installations than actual clothes, but you take a picture of a chick wearing a floor-length ball gown made entirely out of Nerds Ropes and you don’t offer any explanation — like, sure, we’re all just supposed to nod along with great dignity and appreciation for art as we ignore the fact that she’s walking around an actual city in modern civilization wearing a bra shaped like a dolphin. Right, okay."
♦Delicious pumpkin cinnamon pancakes. Yummy! Check out the recipe.
My favorite product is the Zombie bait station. Ha ha ha!
I am adding a new feature!
I have an almanac that lists the color of the day. It is determined by astrological data…I don‘t follow horoscopes too closely but, I do use it to try to add some color to my wardrobe. (I try to wear the color of the day. ) A few folks have expressed interest in the color of the day, so I thought I would share with all of you. Enjoy! Colors for the week:
21st Ivory
22nd Gray
23rd Brown
24th White
25th Rose
26ht Gray
27th Orange
I have been hearing terrible things about the Brazilian Blowout. (It is a chemical treatment to straighten hair.) There have been reports of burns and hair loss.
It is really scary what chemicals can be in beauty products. I want women and men, to be more aware of what they put on and in their bodies.
Siobhan O Connor tells of her experience with the Brazilian Blowout:
"Siobhan O’Connor’s journey into natural beauty began with formaldehyde. Whenever she and her best friend from back home in Montreal, Alexandra Spunt, would travel cross-country to see one other, they’d do “girly things”—including a foray into Brazilian blowouts. Their hair looked great for a month, but when O’Connor’s strands started breaking and Spunt’s hair turned into a “French-fried mangled mess,” they did some investigating and learned that they’d gotten a formaldehyde treatment. (Brazilian blowouts are now officially on the OSHA hazard alert list.) "
Check out the rest of the article from The Beheld's blog.
So, I am not over Halloween quite yet...bear with me...
"Sobering" Tattoo commercial by Rhett & Link. Ha ha ha!
(The guys that brought you Caption Fail)
Do you judge a book by its cover? This is crazy!
(The music is pretty good too.)
♦Gala Darling shares her adventures on Dia De Los Muertos (last year.) Her make up was amazing!
♦An awesome tutorial for day of the dead cookies. All of her cookie ideas are fantastic.
♦I found a super crazy site called Kinder Trauma. If you saw part of a horror movie, you can describe it to the blog readers. Many times they can tell you what movie it was.
♦The Bloggess shares her amazing haunted dollhouse. It is filled with horror movie references.
♦Artist Eric Barclay makes household garbage into cute little critters. So dang cute!
♦Two pugs + a literary reference + Halloween = super cute!
♦From the mind of Paula Deen…a recipe for cornmeal waffles with spicy chili. Sounds hearty and yummy!
