Seasonal Funnies #15

Why do turkeys make great drummers?

Because they are born with two drumsticks.

Happy Monday

I’m already dreaming of our Thanksgiving dinner.  Thanksgiving, I think, is my favorite holiday.  Although Christmas is a very close contender.

We always have turkey with homemade stuffing (absolutely no Stove Top!) and a vat o gravy.  I’m not kidding, if gravy doesn’t fill a 4 cup Pyrex measuring bowl I’m booed out of the dining room.  We also have mashed spuds (the tuberous root vegetable, not small children), corn, cranberry sauce, and apple pie.  Other items such as squash, parsnips and carrots, dinner rolls, pumpkin bread or pumpkin pie, cornbread, broccoli and rice casserole, green beans (in a variety of ways, my favorite is with cranberries and butter sauce, but creamed with fried onions is popular too), and though I’m not a fan, occasionally sweet potatoes.

The only problem is, there’s just 3 of us.  We can’t eat all our favorites, and I have to make some decisions about what we’re going to have so I can do my shopping tomorrow.  It all sounds so good!  How to decide?

So, dear readers, what’s your favorite or family traditional foods for Thanksgiving?

At last!

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, THE DREADED ASSIGNMENT is at last finished, a full 21 hours before it’s due.  I’m sure new evil awaits me for next week, but for now I can unclench my shoulder blades and do something fun with out guilt.

Thanks for all the kind words of support from all my 6WS friends and blog friend regulars.

Six Word Saturday: whining, just a bit

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in 6WS.  Mostly because I’ve been overwhelmed with homework.  So, perhaps you can guess the six words I’m submitting:

 

I don’t wanna do my homework.

Well, I suppose that’s nothing really new, but I absolutely loathe this assignment that is due on Monday.  Loathe it like with the passion of a thousand white hot fiery suns.  If I could pass the class and not do just this one assignment I would, but it’s a huge portion of my grade.  I’d rather give birth again that do this one assignment.  Sigh.  But if I wasn’t procrastinating and dragging my feet I’d be done by now and not have to worry about it anymore, so I suppose I should just put on my big girl panties and get on with it.

Happy Saturday.  Hope yours isn’t tainted by the misery of a horrible homework assignment.

Six Word Saturday Challenge is courtesy of Show My Face, Six Word Saturday

One mystery solved

This morning I’m checking my email and reading blogs.  The spud comes in my room and stands staring at me a while.

Me:  Yes.  May I help you?

Spud:  I know where your blue cup is.

Me:  The one that’s been missing all these weeks?  The one I kept asking if you knew where it was?

Spud:  Yeah.

Me:  Well.  Where is it?

Spud:  In my toy box.

Me:  You don’t say.  Will you go get it for me.

Spud:  Sure.

*Skips off to her room*

Spud producing the very missing cup proudly:  See!

Me:  Ah.  Yup.  That’s my missing cup.  What was it doing in your toy box?

*Shrugs*

Me:  How’d it get there?

*Shrugs*

Me:  Why didn’t you tell me it was there all the other times I was looking for it and asked if you’d seen it?

*Shrugs*

Me: *sighs*  Well, have you seen the other one just like it that’s also missing?

*Nods vigorously*

Me:  Well, where is that one?

Spud:  In my toy box.

Me:  Well, why don’t you go get it?

Spud:  Okay.

Sure enough, she appears with the second missing cup.  What I don’t get is why now all of the sudden they appear.  What I also don’t understand is that she’s normally the kind of kid you can’t shut up, now this morning she’s the queen of monosyllabic sentences.

Well, at least that’s one mystery solved.

Countdown: The end is in sight

T-minus 18 days.

Just 18 little days.

What’s that Janie, you may ask.  18 days til what, 18 days of what?

I have just 18 more days of class left in this semester.  Whoo-hoo!  Not only does that make me ecstatic for the pure and simple reason that I’m so ready to be done with this semester and certain coursework, but it also means my favorite time of year will no longer settle for the backseat in my daily life.

I really love the October, November, December months.  I love fall colors and the cool crispness in the air, I love traditional Halloween scary decorations and fun.  I love Thanksgiving.  Traditionally Thanksgiving means turkey, making holiday cards, and putting out the Christmas decorations.  I love the trappings of the season: planning, compiling and wrapping presents, the baking, and the first snow of the year.  I love my icicle lights, I love the scent of pine.  I love the quiet serenity that seems to blanket the Great White North in a twinkly mantle of snow on Christmas Eve.  I love to go for a winter night walk and feel the happy glow of the holiday lights, imagine the happiness and joy of the people snug in their houses gathered around glowing Christmas trees bolstered by mountains of carefully wrapped presents, the excitement and expectation of the wee ones watching for Santa and then returning home to my modest abode to sip steaming Chai in front of my own lovingly bedecked tree with soothing strains of my favorite holiday music playing low.  And, I love my birthday, which falls on December 5th.  Before moving to the Great White North, I always hoped for the first snow fall of the year to occur on my birthday, as apparently the story goes I was born on the first snow fall of the year, and it was an on again, off again sort of treat.  Now, I often can enjoy the first snow fall of the year much earlier on, but it’s no less special for me.

I know a lot of people who hate the commercialism of the holidays.  I know a lot of people who resent having to spend money on presents that are not appreciated, who have family dramas that deter from the joy of the season, and many other “holiday hang-ups.”  I think though, the holidays are what you make them.  To me it’s a beautiful time of year that holds the promise of peace, tranquility and remembering those you love.  Traditionally, winter was a time when the weather forced people’s activities to grind to a halt, to gather in a place of warmth and share food and drink.  Now-a-days we are so busy in our day to day lives we tend to forget what it is to sit quietly, to share a meal, to listen and to be grateful for what we have and who we share it with; which makes holiday times which sort of require us to slow down for a minute all the more important and special.  No matter your religious or spiritual beliefs, no matter what you call your winter holiday, and whether you gather in a huge crowd or in solo, I believe deep in my bones that we each have the power to make this time of year as magical as we want it to be.  I also am convinced that that kind of holiday magic can’t be bought no matter what you spend or where you shop.  It is simply bestowed upon even the most meager and humble celebrants if they but choose to find the spirit in the holiday.

Don’t get me wrong, presents are nice.  Holiday parties can be fun.  And a huge fat turkey and decadent trimmings are definitely in order.  But, it’s not the physical things done, bought or given that create the magic, it is the spirit, love and joy in which they are bestowed, honored, or experienced.  Holiday magic comes from a feeling, a spiritual understanding, and a unbridled joy of the heart which has nothing really to do with diamond tennis bracelets, the newest X-box console, or who has the most holiday lights, or who’s party is catered by that swanky 5 star restaurant.  As the main character from my most favorite Christmas story ever, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, discovers, “Maybe Christmas… doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps… means a little bit more!”  I have had Christmases that were so lean we only got a turkey because Leif’s employer gave grocery store gift cards to the employees instead of a having a staff party.  I have had Christmases with no presents.  I have had Christmases with no trees.  And, generally of late my Christmases have been just me and Leif, the spud traveling with her dad for the holidays.  And, I am so totally okay with that.  Those holidays have actually been some of the happiest because I was celebrating from the heart without the obligations, the long lists of gifts to buy, the hours of wrapping or the planning of whose house you were going to when and how to juggle all the details.  I found the magic in me, and not in “things.”

School this semester has been a hideous trial.  I’ve also been dealing with my wonky eye and it’s complimentary medical bills and drama.  So, sadly October and much of November has been a blur of irritation, misery and exhaustion.  But now, the countdown to the end of semester can begin, and I can start to enjoy my most favorite time of year.  After all, that which is truly important will out.  Next Thursday we will stop everything and have turkey, and decorate the tree and make up holiday cards.  After that there will be my birthday and the spud’s birthday (three days apart) with cake and a few presents, she is, after all, going to be 7.  After that there will be our Yule party and Santa will make a special early night time visit to our house, because Santa knows she travels with daddy on the holiday.  Then the spud will go to her daddy’s for Christmas.  And my life for a few weeks will be normal, peaceful and totally indifferent to Spanish verbs, Physics quizzes, a certain arrogant professor and irritating projects, medical bills, and disconcerting visual disturbances.  Life will be simple and blissfully happy.

Happy Friday.

Cute and sassy

One of the odd things about passing into middle age and returning to college is associating with people young enough to be your children.

Earlier in the year a young lady in my class told me that I totally rock gray hair and if her hair turned gray like mine she’d never color it either.

Yesterday, another sweet young lady, who happens to be one of my T.A.’s admired my new hat, then went on to say that she also wished she was brave enough to wear a “cute and sassy” haircut like mine and how she just loved my hair.

Perhaps I’m starting a new trend, go gray, go cute, go short and sassy.

Or maybe they’re just saying these things because they don’t know what else to say to the lady old enough to be their mother.

Eh.  Either way it feels good to get an unsolicited compliment.