Thanksgiving Twenty

I read this on a blog this morning, and it seemed like a good way to get my blog post in today.  The turkey is on and cooking, and we're finishing up the cleaning.  Happy gobble, everyone. 

Do you cook all or part of the meal?

Depends on the year, this one's mine.  I cook half the meal, and everyone brings something. 

 

How much do you spend buying groceries for the meal?

Usually it matters to me what we spend in a week on Groceries.  For Thanksgiving, I don't care.

 

Do you eat at home or go to someone else's?

Every year or two we switch off with my Mother in Law.....She had two years in a row though, so this is my second year in a row.

 

Describe your perfect bite?
STUFFING.  Oh Lord I love stuffing.

White meat or dark?
dark

Stuffing with giblets or without?

Without

 

Anything you won't eat at the Thanksgiving meal?
Are you kidding me?  No.  I eat everything.  It's the one day of the year I eat everything.

Carve Mr. Gobble at the table or serve on a platter?
Platter

Favorite pie?
Apple! 

Formal table or Chinet?

I always use the china...I love using the china.  And cloth napkins.  And place cards.  I love a formal table.  

 

Your menu?

Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn casserole, beans canned from this summer, rolls from Great Harvest Bread company (yum!), salad, maybe brussels sprouts if I remember to make them.  :)  And Pie.  Always pie.  

 

Favorite leftover?
Stuffing!!!!!!!

Extended family, friends, both or just immediate family for dinner?
It depends on the year, but we have both sets of parents and whatever sisters are in town every year, regardless of where we are.  Our families do thanksgiving together.

After dinner, do you go to the latest movie or football on TV?

Movies!

 

Do you watch the Macy's parade?

In Detroit?  Are you kidding me?  No.  We ALWAYS watch the Detroit parade.  :)

 

Christmas decorations up before or after?

I used to do it the day after, but I made a vow when Toast was born that I would NOT let holidays intrude on his birthday; so now we wait until after his Birthday on Dec. 8.

 

Black Friday shopping or sleep in?

HAHAHAHAHA.  I always say I wouldn't be caught dead at a store on Black Friday....but you know what we do?  We go OUTLET SHOPPING!!!!!.  So completely crazy.  Then we go here to buy Toast his ornament and take in the sights.

 

Any special Thanksgiving tradition?

My dad always goes to the Lion's game.  Always.  The first year I did a full Thanksgiving in our first real house, he skipped it....that taught me that people are sometimes more important than tradition.  
That being said, I am really proud to report that every year our turkey is walking on Tuesday and on the table Wednesday.   

 

Favorite thing about Thanksgiving?

I love having all of our family around.....we're all crammed in like sardines at dinner and we have a great time!

 

Favorite Thanksgiving memory?

So many....there isn't one that really sticks out.  I remember marching in the parade one year with my dog and my 4-H club.  My dog chose the middle of Woodward, right in front of the judge's stand to take a dump.  I wished the street would swallow me up.  Good memory?  I love making new traditions at Thanksgiving now that I'm married with kids.  We always celebrated Thanksgiving when I was young, but it wasn't a huge deal in my family the way it is in some.  I like to make our own day. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

A thinking prompt

“The simplest questions are the most profound.

Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?

Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.”

-Richard Bach

I stumbled across this little prompt on a Blog I read, and it seemed perfect...I've been thinking about these things lately as well.

Specifically, I've been thinking about how I DOCUMENT things in my life like change, home, family, goals, and the past. I always think about these things as the seasons change, but it seems that this year the topic is especially fresh. I think that I have reached the stage in my grief for Tiny Man that I've started to really assess how he changed my life and how I live it.

I'm thinking about the change of seasons and how much HOME has come to mean to me. When I was "coming up" I never in a million years thought that I would be a homemaker. My mom did it all, raised us, worked, she and my dad built a house together, and she did such a good job. (Because he's reading...yeah, dad, you are great too, but not so much a female roll model, eh?) Anyway, I always thought I would do the same. I would work, raise kids, make a home. One of the first things I realized after making the decision to stay home with Tiny Man is that I would NEVER have been able to do it all. Some people can, and they do a marvelous job. It's just not in me. Part of it is the job, teaching, it is very demanding. Raising kids, obviously, is also very demanding. For the first time in my life I am starting to understand what it means to prioritize the big things, and realize what the big things are.

There are some cliche'd examples of recognizing the "big things" in our lives. My favorite has always been the idea of rocks in a jar....if you have several rocks to put in a jar, put the big ones in first, they determine what else will fit...then move on to the smaller rocks (which fit in between the larger ones) and the sand to fill in the cracks. When we're younger we hear things like this and it never sinks in...part of that whole "invincible" thing, I guess.

What I've realized is that for me, success in life means not doing everything, but doing the things that I choose to do really really well. To me, that means that I can't do too much at one time.

I still struggle with the decision to leave work and stay at home. There are days I question if what I'm doing matters. But when I get a glimpse of what really makes me happy, what really makes me tick, I see that this choice is the only one that makes sense for me.

On the street where I live

Hubby and I are extremely lucky, on the whole. We live on a street populated with really nice people. Sure, we aren't BFFs with all of them, but we socialize, we talk over the fence, and I have playdates with our neighbors across the street. Sometimes we have dinner. There are two lovely teenage girls I would trust to watch Toast, should the occasion arise. Then there's the guy who lives just to the North of us.

Okay, yeah, we talk over the fence, and he's nice enough. But he's also kind of a jerk...in that whole "bachelor, not interested in anyone but himself" kind of way. We know he has had, on occasion...many occasions...drugs in his house. Because he's told us. And weapons...there are the weapons. He didn't elaborate on that one. We sometimes see him drinking lots with some other people on his deck (but you know, we've been known to do that too)...and more than once we've smelled the exotic "tobacco" he and his buddies take part in.

Okay, so he's a little wild. None of that is my business. And there is the "ookey" factor...he had a high "ookey" factor..just creeped me out. But still, for the most part he was pretty quiet and never caused us any harm.

There were the fireworks, which he would usually set off in the middle of the night, in a HEAVILY treed neighborhood. Bottle rockets. Illegal "free flying" fireworks. Now, this is just stupid. Lots of trees and closely spaced houses + flying fire? Yeah, that makes me really irritated with you and causes me to use some very unseemly language when I speak of you.

So we've noticed that this winter he's been gone....really gone. I figured he was wintering in Florida...seems like the type. And he's self-employed, so you know, it was logical. Last week I was driving past his house (the rear of his house faces the north side of our house, so unless we drive or walk around the block we don't see the front of his house) and there is a for sale sign in the front yard. I think to myself "Let's throw a party, the weird neighbor is moving out!" I was pretty excited.

Tonight Hubby and I were talking to our "corner neighbors" (they live on the corner) and I mentioned that it looked like he had moved. She informed me that he DIED. Huh? Yeah. I had this weird feeling. You know, I didn't know him, I didn't really like him or dislike him, I said some mean things about him and ignored him the rest of the time. But still, it's kind of weird to get news like this. Apparently his family spoke to the corner neighbors and said they'd rather keep it quiet, that he had "not been doing well, and didn't know how poorly he was doing". That can mean a lot of things, but none of them are cheery.

I don't really have a point to this story, but it's worth writing about, because it caught me by surprise and is just such a surreal situation. Yes, people die. But when someone who is apparently pretty young and (from the outside) in fairly good health, it's always kind of a shock. Moreover when you have mixed feelings about that person.

What a random thing to find out.

Why 2009 is important.

I've already said I don't make resolutions. Because I break them. But I have made a commitment to myself for this year: get happy. This entails a lot of things, but mostly it's about balance. Balance between being a good mom and being a happy person. So there are some things I'm doing to try and make sure I take care of myself.

First, I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm going to try and craft every day. I love a lot of crafts, knitting is like breathing for me, I have to do it every day. I'm also passionate about scrapbooking, I like embroidery, I like to make things from old objects, to reuse things in new ways. Before Toast was born, we had his room set up as a library/craft area....all of our books and my craft stuff were there. When we were getting ready for his arrival, I boxed everything up, we moved the books to the living room, and I didn't make anything for a long time. When he was born I also stopped knitting, because I had no time. Then I began to slowly come unglued. I was very unhappy. It is difficult to adjust to two children, and I had no outlet for myself.

When Tiny Man died, we didn't do anything with his room for a long time. Slowly we began to change that, and after a few months I set my craft things up in there again. It felt okay, and I like being in there with the "Little Prince" murals on the wall to remind me of him. But It didn't feel like my space...and slowly it began to feel less like his, too. But I thought, I don't want to get to comfy...we don't know what we are going to do in terms of having another child, and if we do we will need that room. (No, I refuse to make my kids share a room because I have too much stuff or need my space. it's not an option). But then I thought of something. We do have a basement. It's not pretty and it's not finished, but we could carve out a little space down there for me, should another Coffeemamma offspring come along. So in the meantime, I could work on creating a space for myself, knowing I can move it should the need arise.

So that's what I did this weekend. I had some storage, but it wasn't working the way I wanted so I moved things around. I purchased a desktop drawer unit from Ikea for pens and things, and painted some tins with chalkboard paint for more storage. I used what I had and this is what happened:

Everything is old, with the exception of the black and tan drawer unit you see in the corner (the black is chalkboard paint). I also bought a new holder for scrapbooking embilishments that you can't see well. It's on top of the middle drawer unit. The table next to my drafting table is Hubby's kitchen table from when he was single. The drafting table is something I bought when I was single, and the nightstand in the back has been mine forever. I like the way the drawers and that small nightstand work for storage.
Next to the desk is a crate with some storage for stamps. On top of that is a sticker/embelishment binder and some baskets of things that don't fit anywhere else...chipboard letters and the like. These are pretty, but they will have to be moved because I'm sure Toast will get into them lickety-split!
The dresser was Tiny man's, and we aren't sure we won't need it, so it stays. It's holding sewing supplies, my yarn stash (one drawer, I'm not a yarn stasher...but my scrapbook supplies make up for that). On top are some jars with supplies, as well as the tins I painted. These are NOT very visible, but trust me they are cute. The table will hold my sewing machine, when I get it out of storage in the closet.

So there it is. I'm not a creative genius, but I like having my space here. I like that there is a box of toys tucked in there for Toast (even if he prefers raiding my craft drawers instead). I LOVE that I can be in there with the memory of my Tiny man and work on his scrapbooks. It's a peaceful little place for me.

It's the little things that plague me

We don't use paper plates in my house. I can't really explain what the big deal is, although yes, some of it is that I like to think I'm not killing lots of trees just to eat pizza and not have to wash a plate. I just don't get the idea of paper plates. We have a dishwasher, so it's not that hard to just eat off a regular plate and put it in the dishwasher afterward. I'm kind of weird about the kitchen. The rest of the house can look like a bomb just went off, but the dishwasher is run every night, emptied every morning before breakfast and ready to receive dirty dishes. I hate having dirty dishes in the sink...drives me nuts. Being that my dishwasher is usually empty, I see no reason not to just use the plates we have rather than getting out paper plates. Even for a sandwich...just use a regular plate.

So this weekend when I cleaned out my china hutch and found a cache of paper products, the same thought ran through my mind that always does when I poke my head in there..."Where did all of these come from?"

Then I looked in the bottom of my pantry. There were so many of those plastic colored cups you would think I hosted a frat party every weekend. Yet, again, we don't use plastic cups all that often. Sure, maybe a bit more often than paper plates, but not enough to justify the amount we have.

Last time we hosted thanksgiving at my house (three years ago) the power went out just before dinner. My Mother-in-law, bless her, immediately picked all the plates and silverware up off the table and asked me where the paper products where, because who knew when we'd get power back and did I really want all those dirty dishes sitting around? I love my MIL for this...she is SO practical and SO easy to please. We broke out the paper plates, forks, napkins and cups and had a great dinner. It was convenient, I guess, that we had all the paper products at that point. A topic for another day relates to the pure serendipity of having the power go out just as all the food was done....

So I guess that my stash is good for something. Today as I was putting it all out of my way and in one place for storage (read: where I will forget it's location and buy more), I really did wonder where most of it came from and when I am ever going to use it. I guess it's one of those things that everyone has around the house for a rainy day. Or a big meal with twelve people and no power.

We have movement, we have movement! The past week or so, I have been feeling little pokes and prods from the baby in the hut. (I now refer to my abdominal region as the "baby hut"). It is kind of cool, it feels totally different from when Tiny Man started moving around in there. Hubby gets a bit jealous, I think, because he can't feel anything going on yet, and I can; but he's handling it well. :) I'm still feeling well, though looking forward to my appointment next week...I need to have my thyroid retested. After having Tiny Man, I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism (lazy thyroid, basically). I am starting to feel like I did before they found this out: tired all the time. It's not fatigue, it's more like chronic tired...I could sleep all day and not feel rested. I move through syrup all the time. Each task seems like I could never complete it and it would take everything I have just to start. I'm not like this, I enjoy being busy, so it's very frustrating to feel this way. I am on medication for the condition, but because my blood volume will grow so much while I'm pregnant, I knew I would have to be retested to make sure I am getting enough of the medication. The extra blood dilutes it, basically. I am looking forward to getting retested and hopefully feeling better soon. I have too much to do and not enough energy to do it.

Speaking of too much to do, hubby and I have been busy. When we moved into this house, there was one room that was wallpapered, and we knew that we would strip the paper and redo the room. We've been here three years, and we finally got around to it a few weeks ago...because of all of our jaunts lately, it's been getting done in bits and pieces. The paper stripping went more smoothly than I thought it would, and hubby did a great job on the painting. We have an old desk (it actually needs to be refinished, but it will be a job for later) that we intend to put in there as a changing table. Since we have a tri-level house, it's wise to have a "diaper base station" both upstairs and in our family room area downstairs. Besides, the desk is in the room that we need for the nursery.

Which brings me to the next point: we need to clean out that room. Right now it's a library/craft room. The biggest job will be moving all of our books downstairs. We plan on lining one wall of our family room with the bookshelves and moving the books. The hardest thing to do is to find a spot for all of my craft things. I"m not sure where they will go. There simply isn't enough storage for all of it, and I hate to have things out in plain sight. Besides, I use it all often, and I have to have it accessible to me, and yet be able to store it. Hubby and I are working how on this is going to happen. My beloved drafting table will have to be torn down, stored somewhere. I'm thinking I would like to sell it to buy a piece of furniture or something that will look attractive in our dining room and still store all of my craft materials. So much to think of. So much to think of. The good news is that the room is a very pretty color of sage green and we don't need to (nor do we want to) repaint it. It will look good for a boy or a girl.

I'm writing this while in another window I'm working my way through the pages of Interweave Knits "Hurt Book Sale". Deep discounts on books that don't look new. Busy server, though. It's taking a full minute or more for the pages to load. I think knitters really give teachers a run for their money as bargain hunters and sale-mongers.