Good morning. Hello! How are you? Did you have a pleasant Thanksgiving holiday? Mine was pleasant, aside from some various pointless, unneeded negative thoughts running through my head for no reason that had to constantly be kept in check. But, luckily, it was Thanksgiving so, you know, plenty of opportunities to remind me of the good things in my life:
Spent the morning with Jane, we had breakfast then came downstairs for a while and I did my 750 words, then we went back up to the kitchen and started cooking Thanksgiving. I had started on Wednesday, and Wednesday was a little muddled: I hadn’t done any mental prep or anything. I put too much celery in the stuffing and I had forgotten to put the turkey in a bag so when it thawed over the last week, it leaked turkey juice, which dribbled down the entire fridge and Emma and I had to remove every single item and part and clean it, which was a giant pain in the ass. Also our fridge is probably dying, which is also a giant pain in the ass. It is making moaning noises, protesting its continued existence. I suspect it needs to be put out of its misery but I am not a qualified fridge doctor, so we’re gonna have to get one in.
But luckily I have a fairly proceduralized, diagrammed process for things now, so I still managed to get all the Wednesday prep done, and on Thursday everything went swimmingly, no problems at all. Oh, there was one problem: I completely forgot to make the green beans, so we had to make do with only corn, stewed carrots, asparagus and beets. My god, how did we cope. Turkey came out great, stuffing came out great, corn bread came out great, mashed potatoes, gravy: everything was great. That was nice. I am very into my dry brine. Has America collectively given up on brining yet? So much pointless extra work.
I love Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday. It is a holiday of thanks, that’s definitely a thing America can use. Of course, there’s plenty not to love. Just because you love something does not mean you think it’s perfect. The holiday is a symbol of the country’s abysmal treatment of the indigenous people that populated this continent before we moved here. This article was a thing I read this week as a reminder: This tribe helped the Pilgrims survive for their first Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later. Of course, that probably wasn’t actually the first thanksgiving in America, and on that day, with that feast, everyone actually got along great, but no matter. The point stands because humans believe the point. And in any case, it’s not terrible to have a holiday of thanks be combined with a day of remembrance and atonement. That seems fine. We could, as a country, move the day to another day, decouple it from its problematic roots, and stop telling fairy tales about it. We’ve moved it to another day (the Massachussetts thanksgiving probably happened in September, the Virginia one was in December). I assume we don’t tell a fairy tale about Thanksgiving in school anymore, but who knows actually. I suppose telling kids that the Massasoit got played and abused and decimated by the Pilgrims is what the snowflakes are whining about when they say “Critical Race Theory.”
I like FDR’s proclamation for the first, official, national Thanksgiving in 1941, which reads, in part:
We have not lost our faith in the spiritual dignity of man, our proud belief in the right of all people to live out their lives in freedom and with equal treatment. The love of democracy still burns brightly in our hearts.
We are grateful to the Father of us all for the innumerable daily manifestations of His beneficent mercy in affairs both public and private, for the bounties of the harvest, for opportunities to labor and to serve, and for the continuance of those homely joys and satisfactions which enrich our lives.
Let us ask the Divine Blessing on our decision and determination to protect our way of life against the forces of evil and slavery which seek in these days to encompass us.
On the day appointed for this purpose, let us reflect at our homes or places of worship on the goodness of God and, in giving thanks, let us pray for a speedy end to strife and the establishment on earth of freedom, brotherhood, and justice for enduring time.
Could have had a proper apology to the indigenous peoples, and perhaps a bit too much god in it for me, but all in all, mostly a sentiment I can get behind.
Every year I spend the week leading up to Thanksgiving, and as much of Thanksgiving day as I can, working on a list of things for which I’m thankful. It started when I was a kid, maybe 10 or so — I mean, the first one I remember our family doing was on pin-fed dot-matrix printer paper from our Imagewriter II, so that should give a pretty accurate timeframe. I’v been doing it a long time. Thirty years, at least, easy. I usually post it on my Facebook or something, share it with friends. But weirdly, this year, I found it oddly exposing, oddly uncomfortable to think about posting it. I still made it, but I just copied it into my 750Words for personal posterity, and I don’t think I will be posting it. I’m not sure why but it feels so… raw, so personal. Which is a new thing I have to process.
We’ve been potty training Jane and it is hella stressful and making me insane. She didn’t poop for three days. She won’t poop in a potty, even though she can poop in a potty. She holds it in all day, or multiple days, and poops when she gets her night-time diaper — er, sorry, night-time undies — on. The relief I felt when that giant poop came out last night during daddy bedtime, I just cannot convey to you. Huge, not too hard not some rock tearing up her tender insides. Thank you poop, I am thankful for you exiting my daughter’s body. I tried to explain to her that if she wants to only poop in her night time undies that is fine, but she should try and do it every day. Emma has bought her a million potty books — we were already reading her potty books, but of course who knows what is the thing that will click in her brain and get her to start pooping on the potty with regularity. It could be a single random sentence in a single random potty book.
The good part is that after the first day, there have been no accidents. She pees in the potty just fine — though she won’t go to the potty when it’s just me around, she has to wait for mommy. Which, fine, okay, not perfect but progress.
If you are a parent reading this, please for the love of god do not post a comment telling me about kids who won’t poop and how it can, like, physically damage them or something I do not want to know. She’s pooped. We live to fight another day.
This is so stressful and unpleasant.
After dinner I laid around digesting for a bit, but not as much as I would have liked. Not really a day of lounging around when you’re the cook, and then you gotta clean the kitchen, and then we decided we should get our walk in, because it was still daylight and it was reasonably warm. And that was nice because our neighbors have their kids and grandkids over and they were all outside, and Jane got to see some kids.
Then we came home and decorated the tree, and listened to my Indie Rock Christmas playlist, which was pleasant. I have a few handmade ornaments that my great aunt made in, like, the 40s or something, and Jane isn’t quite old enough yet to have all this explained to her, but I do like the weird American ritual of collecting small weird bits and bobs and attaching emotional meaning to them, and saving them, multi-generationally, and adding them to a weird tree once a year. It is suitably surreal and ritualistic. Someday I will tell her about these ornaments, and where they come from. And she will retain a hazy, probably not entirely accurate memory of their provenance and age, just like me. And then another thirty years later she will make a mental note to ask her parents for a refreshing of the details, but they will be old, and not really remember, exactly, and in any case, their information was hazy to begin with. Speaking of which I really gotta ask my mom about those ornaments.
Also fake trees rule and all you real tree people are suckers.
I missed you guys. I feel like I sort of failed at a vacation this holiday. I didn’t get some big project done, which is always a thing I like to do on vacation. I don’t feel like I really got to relax very much because of the potty training. I probably made a strategic error not writing to you guys, because I cut off my main line of communication with my friends. Turns out I like my friends and I like chatting with you guys, so thank you for being there, thank you for reading, thank you for being there. I hope your holiday was a pleasant one!
Let’s do a mix. Mix of some live stuff. Mostly newly released. Well, maybe about half. Spotify recently removed the “make public” option from the menu when you right-click on a playlist title, and I have no idea what they did with it or what that means. I did a test, checking the links on these, opening them up in an incognito window, and you guys can definitely still see them, but… did they change the behavior somehow? Are those old playlists that were once private no longer private? I am so confused. Also they re-designed the discography page and now it sucks and I don’t know why they would have done that, previously that page was insanely useful.
I swear to god some companies just don’t know when to leave their product alone. Continuous deployment and development is maybe taken a bit too seriously in some parts. How about some product restraint.
Have a lovely weekend, I hope you guys had nice Thanksgivings, and we will returen to our regular schedule next week. And, again, thank you so much for reading, and commenting, and generally being there. It means a lot to me.
i’m very thankful for you, friend. ❤️
Thank you for always putting these and the playlists out! Sending you good poop vibes for Jane.