Happy Thanksgiving, Don't Forget the Headshot!

So, it's Thanksgiving, and what's going through my head?

Well, it goes something like this:  If the zombie apocalypse goes down in a Walking Dead fashion, then we'll no longer play Taps at funerals.  Instead, we'll play DOUBLE TAPS!

Get it?  Instead of firing rifles into the air as a salute, we'll fire into the dearly departed's head.

Ew.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Hey, I didn't get to sleep until after 4 am last night.  Because of my rededication to genealogy/family history.  We were hugely into it back in the late 1990s, and we've really thrown ourselves back into it.  I think photographing cemeteries did it, really.  Made us want to take another look at our own dead folks.

And boy, has genealogy changed in the past 15 years!

I confess, I am a little bothered handing our family information over to the LDS Church, considering the craziness they get up to with this stuff, but then I remember my husband and my sister were both baptized into that church decades ago.  Any "baptizing for the dead" insanity they were going to indulge in?  They already have.  And they ARE an amazing source of information, and they're generous with it, too.  So score one for the Mormons.

Now, if we could just get people to stop listing dubious connections borne of wishful thinking when it comes to recording familial connections!  I swear, I scream every time I come across yet another child born three years before his parents or another woman bearing children in her 70s because, hey, close enough!

Here, here's someone we can't ID.  Gentleman was probably from the Philly area, appears to be a WWII shot?  I say Philly because this picture was in with my family's stuff, and my family is mostly from the Philly/Camden area.

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Homemade pumpkin pie this year--made from a real, live pumpkin, even!  It wasn't hard, prepping the pumpkin, and I think it's going to be the very best ever.  Hubby made one of his amazing homemade cheesecakes, too.  Here's a pic of last year's:

I expect this year's to be at least as good!

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Back to the genealogy?  I've discovered a treasure trove of truly bad names in my husband's family.  Here are a few:

Voyle
LeRay
DeLone
Arba
Pyrcle

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Not a lot else to say--busy day!  I hope everyone out there has a marvelous and wonderful and peaceful Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Mechanics

So, I posted about the things I'm thankful for, but I utterly failed to mention the FOOD.  What kind of Thanksgiving post doesn't talk eats?

We had two turkeys.  Hubby really wanted a deep fried turkey from Popeye's.  I was iffy--it's Cajun spiced, deep fried, and I wasn't sure I'd like it, so we got a small turkey for me for Thursday, had the Cajun deep fried turkey on Friday.

Thursday's feast included roasted butternut squash and sweet potato with herbs, corn, tatties and neeps and swedes (our first attempt--too sweet, thinking more tatties and less swedes and neeps), regular mashed with red potatoes and Kerry butter, carrots, baby portobella mushrooms, scratch biscuits, and stuffing made with andouille sausage, mushrooms, celery, onion, and walnuts.  The stuffing was actually made with low carb bread--we bought the loaf, dried it out ourselves for the stuffing.  The gravy was made with fat-free, low sodium turkey broth with xanthan gum instead of corn starch or flour for thickening.  Again, that's a blood sugar/carbs thing.  I had only one spoonful of the mashed, two forkloads of the tatties and neeps, and only a couple of bites of stuffing.  In fact, I loaded up on the carrots, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, and butternut.  They were incredibly tasty!  The turkey, of which I had a nice slice, was incredibly moist.  Very flavorful!

Dessert was homemade cherry crumble made in small souffle/ramekin dishes.  While the cherry filling was low sugar, the crumble was a full-bore mix of white sugar, brown sugar, bleached flour, cinnamon, and Kerry butter.  Why?  Because we've tried this with stevia, Splenda, saccharine.  We've tried it with spelt, quinoa, whole oat, whole wheat, and various other flours.  We've tried it with low-calorie margarines.  Never did we get a nice, crumbly, tasty topping.  Thanksgiving comes once a year.  I was determined to enjoy what I was eating instead of making excuses for it.

Friday's feast with the Cajun deep fried turkey?  Onion rings, Cajun fries, and scratch biscuits.  Only had two onion rings, but I confess I ate a bumpillion Cajun fries (also from Popeye's).  Pumpkin pie for dessert (yeah, store-bought, what can I say?).  And the Cajun deep fried turkey?  Wasn't bad.  Hubby adored it, son didn't eat much, and I thought it was okay.  Hubby wished it was more spiced, I was wishing for less.  It was certainly moist enough, though I found the texture a little mushy--had it not been prefried and then baked for almost two hours, I'd have said it had just the slightest "underdone" texture.  It didn't look it, and the temp was right, but it just had a slightly mooshy feel.  No doubt Hubby will want it again next year, and I guess I'm okay with that.  Not thrilled, but okay.  Gonna miss my "real" turkey, though.  Yes, he'll make both, but wow, what a waste, cash-wise.  Of course, the price of just the Cajun is pretty hard to swallow.

Thinking about Christmas dinner.  We usually have nice steaks-rib eyes or filets, but this year the Husbandly unit is pushing for Beef Wellington, homemade.  Not sure how the mushroom-hating boy is going to deal with that, and I'm thinking maybe we shouldn't go that way.  We only have Christmas dinner once a year--why intentionally choose a food we can be pretty confident our kid's going to hate?  For dessert, I'm thinking a Black Forest-type cake made with Chambord-soaked blackberries and homemade whipped cream.  And either a lemon meringue or a homemade apple crumble.  Not sure yet.

Dinner tonight?  Leftover turkey on low carb bread with low carb gravy, a splotch of stuffing, plus mashed and carrots, butternut, and sweet potato.  I really do love leftover Thanksgiving!

Giving Thanks

I don't usually engage in the whole "I am thankful for" gig.  Mostly because people assume that one must be thankful TO some grand being somewhere.  I, of course, am not thankful to any ghosties or beasties.  Because I don't want to hassle with the idea that I somehow SHOULD be, I tend to avoid the language altogether.  When I offer up thanks, it's a general, universe/life/existence/happenstance thing.  No deities need apply.

Which is not, of course, to say that you can't have your deities--if you lean that way, I am happy for you.  I hope it brings you great joy.

Anyway, back on point--I just spent two hours doing the "obligatory family phone calls" shuffle.  Gonna take me a minute to get back to where I was in my head.

Thankfulness.  Right.

I started to write this with the little Pakistani girls in mind.  You know, the ones braving Taliban bullets to obtain an education?  And my mind wandered to my own education, something I was so disdainful of when I was a child.  See, I didn't have to worry about being shot or having my family's home firebombed.  No, I had it just slightly easier.  Easier enough that I could look at that risk-free education as no big deal.  I read about these brave girls and their courageous families and I realize just how very lucky I am.

For that, I'm thankful.

Last night, I was cold.  My hands and feet, which tend toward the Raynaud's, were icy cold.  This used to be devastating for me, keeping me awake for hours.  I've found the cure for cold hands and feet when trying to sleep--a warm Cairn Terrier.  Charlie sleeps on my legs, and my whole body warms up.  So this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for my first little rat dog.  He's a keeper, a sweetheart, a comedian, and a heating pad all wrapped up into one carrot-eating, rolling-over-and-playing-dead, squirrel-loving bundle.

Speaking of thankfulness, we just gave Charlie his first ever Thanksgiving organ meat feast.  Ew, but he sure was impressed.  Impressed enough that he kept kicking around his dish and trying to make more magically appear.  Happy Thanksgiving, Charlie!

The car is back home--picked it up last night.  Haven't seen it in the daylight, so don't know how well they matched the paint.  Regardless, I'm thankful my husband wasn't compacted by the 18 wheeler that did three grand worth of damage to our new car.  Hopefully, come March when our premium period is over, I can be thankful for our insurance company NOT screwing us on devastatingly high new rates.  Cross your fingers.

Our boy is really opening up at Hapkido.  Getting to know the other people, learning to relate on a more grown-up, easy level.  He's having fun, he's learning, and he's coming to more openly relate to other people in social situations.  For that, I am very thankful--it's been a concern.

Speaking of being thankful where our boy is concerned, let me just say that, as we watch hubby's nephew do his level best to be a cautionary tale (you know, if you can't be a good example, be an excellent cautionary tale?), I am SO thankful that our boy isn't striving to be an utter waste like his cousin.  His cousin, which is super-sad because the kid really does have a sweet heart inside that homophobic, blustering, "look how cool I am" exterior.   Sounds harsh, I know, but the kid just turned 18 and is about to be a "daddy" for the THIRD time.  Smokes, dropped out of school, can't support the kids he already has (his mom has custody of one, the STATE has custody of the second), and, whoops!  Here comes a third!  An epic git by any estimation, and, by comparison, my boy is Einstein, Lincoln, Socrates, Isaac Newton, and Carl Sagan all rolled into one.  My boy's a good kid, but it sure does help to have the nephew around.  Keeps everything in perspective.

On a slightly snarky-seeming, yet absolutely sincere note?  I am indescribably happy that I will NEVER, EVER have to utter the words "President Romney."  Joy!

And finally?  I am thankful to have that family that, so often, drives me batty.  Doing the "phone call shuffle" may be a pain, but not being able to do it would be a whole lot worse.  Holidays were never very good with my family--too many fights, too many pitched emotions, too much stress in the air.  Some day, I'll tell a tale or two of Thanksgiving with my mom, of sneaking into the kitchen every few minutes to turn the oven down from the blistering 475 at which she thought a turkey must broil away to dust, only to have her stomp back out and crank that bugger back up.  Surreptitiously creeping to the oven to dump can after can of chicken broth into the pan in a desperate attempt to be spared another year of utterly flavorless, lumpy gravy.  Maybe not good times, and maybe long-distance makes it all easier, but my times, and funny in hindsight.

A couple of funny things--the first maybe not as funny as the second:

1) Went to the store last night to pick up some last-minute things for tonight's dinner.  Hubby whipped out the debit card to pay . . . and it was rejected.  DE-nied!  We knew we had sufficient funds, so we wound up going to the bank.  It was late, after hours, but hubby hoped it was a problem with the store's machines rather than our account.  No such luck.  Hitting the bank's site on his phone, hubby was informed that, by paying for the car repair with the debit card, we had "exceeded our daily transaction limit."  Good thing I had fifty bucks cash hanging out with the emergency kit, huh?  No, the irony of having a limit to how much of my own money I can spend hasn't escaped me.

2) For months, we've been giving Charlie, our Cairn Terrier, chunks of carrots.  Just a round of raw carrot while we're preparing julienne for pasta or whatever.  He runs around with them eagerly, parading about, really, then drops them at our feet.  All this time, we've assumed he just wanted to play fetch, and so we've picked up the carrot and thrown it.  He chases it down, brings it back, and drops it again.  A fun game, right?

Turns out he didn't want to play fetch.  No, he wanted us to break it up into smaller pieces for him so he could more easily chew it.  Yeah, don't we feel stupid?  Imagine how frustrating that must have been for him, bringing the carrots for help in eating and, instead, having us throw the things across the house each time.  Poor Charlie!

On a wildly unrelated note, if you've any familiarity with the cemetery at Old Frisco, Utah, please drop me a note.  I'm on something of a quest. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  Be safe, love, be loved, and enjoy!

Are you SERIOUS?

News story today--a New York City public school has suspended 19 four-year-old kindergartners for "exposing themselves." 

I'm sorry, for doing WHAT?

These kids are FOUR YEARS OLD.  They're not "exposing themselves," they're getting naked.  That's what little kids DO.  They aren't sexual deviants, this isn't indicative of some deep-seated and potentially dangerous perversion.  It's just little kids taking off their clothes!  You don't suspend them and put on their school records that they're somehow twisted or sexually un-right.  No, you teach them not to do it, same way you teach them not to eat their boogers at the lunch table or stick paperclips up their noses. 

Even the parents who oppose the suspensions seem to have this screwed-up idea that some massive intervention is called for.  Talk of psychologists and specialists and the like.  Folks, they're FOUR.  There's nothing twisted about a four-year-old dropping trou.  It's COMMON. 

It's normal. 

Just like it's normal to teach them not to do it.  So stop whining, stop SUSPENDING them, stop wringing your hands and crying about psychological interventions and just teach them not to do it.  Matter-of-factly.  Like you would teach them ANY thing it's important for them to know for socialization's sake.  But for goodness' sake, STOP sexualizing our kids!  Please! 

Time to get started on the pies.  Pumpkin, cherry crumbly-topped, and pecan.  The cherry with stevia and no-sugar-added cherries.  I don't eat pecan, so that doesn't really matter.  And the pumpkin?  I'll just have to be good, won't I?