Thursday, November 22, 2012

Observations from the Road 11.22

It officially begins, the holiday season. It begins with warm pastries, coffee, and a newspaper with enough Black Friday ads to kill a tree. Somewhere in this house my dad surely has a case of win hid but I haven't begun to seriously look for it yet. He started hiding it years ago when he bought a case of wine to last the entire month and I drank most of it over Thanksgiving weekend. My wingnut uncles will do that to me and I can call them wingnuts in writing because I've been known to call them wingnuts to their face. They laugh it off though because they know Katie never has been all there. Little do they know, Katie is just fine but they aren't all there. This is how it goes at our Thanksgiving dinner and I love every wine soaked minute of it.

Somewhere Christmas music is playing now. Probably that overly sentimental sister of mine preparing herself for an early round of shopping tomorrow morning. I know its not my brother because it isn't noon yet so he wont be awake. But I lie, he was up as early as me and made the coffee. Much better coffee than I could have made I might add.

It's a gorgeous if cold morning in Pennsylvania. The turkey seems to be suitably thawed and it looks like a nice if somewhat unlucky bird, it didn't win the White House turkey pardon lottery. Wine, cook, dinner, football, wine, argue, stomp out to the porch for a cigarette, football. I think that covers it but did I mention wine?

Strange but as much as I sometimes dislike this time of year it's also the time of year I'm the least cynical. I really don't understand why that is so I guess it just gets filed in the 'I'm just an enigma' category. So what am I thankful for, it always comes down to my family, really that's all I need and I would't change a thing about any of them. Hell I even enjoy arguing with the crazy wingnut branch of the family but maybe that's just because of the wine. I know they don't celebrate our Thanksgiving in the middle east but the Gaza ceasefire seems to be holding for now. That's something to be thankful for too.

Honestly I don't understand why everybody doesn't celebrate our Thanksgiving Day. I mean seriously, who wouldn't want to remember a group of religious zealots landing in a new land, celebrating with the native population, enjoying their gifts of food, all the while wondering how they could be rid of them in the spring. It's just so American. Sarcasm! Just prepping for my uncles.

Happy Thanksgiving people