It's been a rough year (so far). We have had way too many funerals, and not enough social gatherings and happy news. Yet somehow here we are, happy and reasonably healthy despite it all. I can't help but be grateful for that.
This is the first year without my little sister. We haven't had Thanksgiving together in a long time but there's a certain kind of treasure in getting to chat with someone who shares all the same family memories that you do. I remember joking with her that we'd both have to watch the Wizard of Oz and the Great Pumpkin and chat while we watched. She'd laughed and told me I was crazy, and that she loved me.
It's plotting to be a pretty quiet weekend but there will still be Thanksgiving dinner. I think Dad would come down and haunt me if I didn't make his beloved Turkey. though this would be considered a large chicken in his world. When he was out for a visit he bought the biggest turkey he could fine -- so big in fact that we couldn't fit it in the oven. I wish I had taken pictures of he and James slicing the top off the turkey to get it in the oven. Even after most of the day in the oven that sucker still wasn't cooked. We ended up butchering it and eating what was cooked, and the rest I put back in the oven and cooked in intervals. It was the craziest (and perhaps longest lasting) turkey dinner yet. It gave us some good giggles though.
He'd be so amused that my birthday falls on Thanksgiving again this year -- he was so fond of making the dinner on my birthday and telling me all day long "Turkey for the turkey".. It's funny the things that we remember when all is said and done.
That being said, there have been good things this year too. Things have been so weird since lockdown that many of our old routines just fell by the wayside, and I've struggled to put new ones in their place when our schedules can often be so here there and all over the place. It's a work in progress.
I've been making a point of taking at least a little time each day to get back to "my list" and not just the list that everybody else gives me. It's felt good to check some things off and get back to doing some of the things that I love and have missed. That being said, I'd fallen behind on some of that OPS list and I've been making great strides there too. I'm calling it a win.
I've been quieter this year, and I've gotten some complaint for it. The truth of it is that sometimes it boils down to not having anything nice to say -- other times, it's just nice to exist in your little corner and not have to entertain any additional drama rent free in your head. Covid did that to us/and for us -- gave us time to think, and reflect on where we were and where we wanted to be. It's not always where you thought. That's not always a bad thing either.
This Thanksgiving I am grateful for all I have, and those I get to share my life with. This ride wouldn't be the same without any one of them. 
I am grateful for the family that chooses to be family, and the friends that have also become family. Thanks for being part of my story
Happy Thanksgiving!
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