Thanksgiving Feast and Memories

It's that time of year when everyone heads off to a great big family dinner, or is stuck in the kitchen cooking that great big family dinner. I am a huge fan of feasting with family and friends.

I remember every year my mom went all out. She started early in the morning cooking the turkey, making stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, veggies, appetizers, cookies, all sorts of delicious and amazing foods. I really miss her rumaki and stuffed mushrooms. She was a fantastic cook. We'd set the table, which technically only seats 6, for 8-10 people. It would also have all the trimmings, lace table cloth, fine china, good silverware, crystal stemware. We were a regular Norman Rockwell painting.

I know that I was asked to help from time to time, but I think more often than not I needed to find something else to do to keep me out of the kitchen and out of mom's way. One year, as a kid, I took a bike ride across the way around McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing). Riding back up Bolsa avenue I remember watching all the squirrels playing in the grass and pine trees. I wanted to stop and play with the squirrels (remember, I was just a kid), but knew I needed to get back home for dinner. Besides, I'm allergic to light sabers.

Each year we would alternate our Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners with my parent's best friends, Uncle Roy and Aunt Fely. It was the same amazing gathering and feast regardless of which household it was in  although, my Uncle Roy's place had a pool table and a pool, both of which I loved, so there was that.

I remember that if we were at Uncle Roy's place they would always play pinochle, or (if I was lucky) we'd play mahjong! I loved playing mahjong! I love the feel of the tiles and hearing them clack as we mixed them up on the table getting ready to "build the walls" for the next game.

If we hosted I know mom would always insist on Martini and Rossi Asti Spumante sparkling wine. I'm not sure why she thought it was so great. As a kid I would get a tiny taste, but now as an adult I don't care for it. There are other sparkling wines or champagnes I'd rather have. However on Christmas we'd also have Japanese plum wine, which I totally love. I'm sure they played pinochle at our place too. I never played and still have no idea how to play. I would sit with my mom and watch because she was really good at the game, but they played so fast it was difficult to simply figure it out and I don't think I ever asked to learn.

My mom, unfortunately, passed after her second fight with breast cancer in June of 1991. Uncle Roy also passed a few years later. Though my aunt still hosted dinners, it was not quite the same without both of them. So at some point, though I was still invited to attend, I stopped going. I have to admit, the main reason I quit attending was the heavy Christian influence of her son and his wife. Though never overt, I felt judged like an outsider, even though I grew up with them and for all intents and purposes they were my family, but I felt terribly out of place. I know that as I came out of the broom closet, her son and his side of the family were less interested in maintaining a connection to me. I never really talk to him, or his now ex-wife. I do still talk on very rare occasions to one of his daughters.

Unfortunately my father also stopped attending at some point, mostly because he has a girlfriend and thus spends every holiday with her, her children and grandchild.

It's kind of sad if you think about it. This was a family tradition between the two families that lasted about 30 years and it is no longer.

For a time I would spend holidays with my birth-mother who lived a mere 20 minutes from my home. However, she moved out of state a few years ago, so it's just me now.

On and off over the years I would host a "Orphan's Thanksgiving". It was a gathering of friends and acquaintances from various social circles who either had no family to spend the holiday with OR had family but really didn't want to be with them and still wished to celebrate. I'd get anywhere from a small selection of friends to a huge gathering. Everyone would bring delicious food to share for a potluck dinner. Last year a friend brought over Beatles Rock Band. It was great to hear everyone from the young 20something anime otakus to the older 50something pirate enthusiasts singing along. Honestly, that was pretty awesome and made me very grateful to have so many wonderful friends in my life. :-)

This year I had no desire to host anything or even attend anything today. I know, seems strange given that I'm hosting one event or another every week and I did receive several invitations for dinner with friends, but I was genuinely ok with being home alone, relaxing, and enjoying my time. I planned on cooking whatever I felt like eating. FYI, I'm really not a huge fan of the big roasted turkey. I dunno why. I'll eat the dark meat, or skin, but the big roasted turkey is just not something I crave. I'm a bigger fan of the yams, fresh bread,

and pumpkin pie. Honestly, I'd rather have chicken or pork. Last year I made Hawaiian Kalua pork (called my birth-mom for the recipe), and today I made Greek Avgolemono lemon chicken soup. I made it as a hearty soup with chunks of chicken, potato, celery, carrot, onion, fresh lemon juice, eggs, and rice. I'd never made it before, but I literally had a flash of insight on how to make it and knew last week that I was cooking it today. It turned out great! I later topped off my dinner with a vanilla ice cream Drumstick. Granted it's not pumpkin pie, but I'm still good with that. As far as I'm concerned it was the perfect meal for me today. ;-)

I'm not real fond of the heavy amount of pressure we put on ourselves to make these holidays "perfect". I find the pressure unnecessary, and prefer not to buy into it. The holidays, events, gatherings, whatever it is will likely turn out to be perfect just as they were meant to be. It just might not be Martha Stewart perfect or Hollywood perfect, but it will most likely be just perfect for you and your family. The main point is to share the time together. To be honest I'm really not sure how my mom managed it. From my perspective she did it all with an amazing amount of ease. Don't get me wrong, I do know she worked hard at it, but I never felt like she was frazzled or ridiculously stressed about it even though she really did most of the work.

So today, as I am every day, I am thankful for my mom, Nole (pronounced NO - lee), for having been the one who choose me (and paid for me! Lol!), raised me, and taught me so many things in life despite the short time I got to have with her. I love you mom! The holidays are never quite as perfect without you.





My fave pic of my mother and me
visiting her favorite animal at the zoo.
1970



New Beginnings

I think I opened this account about two and a half years ago. I actually have several online blogs for a variety of reasons, but tend to post on my MySpace profile where I have a fair following of readers. However, aside from the fact that MySpace holds very little relevance to keep my interest as a website, they've also changed their website format, making things painfully annoying for me when I make a blog post there.

So here I am today, posting on Blogger instead. This will be my new main blog. :)

There's a lot going on right now. I'm gearing up to begin teaching a new class. I'll be teaching what I've labeled an "Eclectic Pagan Studies" class. I've had a list of people waiting for me to teach a class on Wicca. However, I've been in the midst of my own studies for the last 4 years with a new coven in a secret tradition of Wicca. I will graduate come this Candlemas (Feb 2nd - Yes, that's Groundhog's Day to the non-pagan types) as an Elder High Priestess of this tradition. I'm an ordained priestess in 2 other traditions of Wicca and as my current coven's tradition takes 4 years I was not ready to teach anyone this year in that particular tradition. I also wasn't particularly enthusiastic to teach the other two traditions. Not that I don't like them, I just didn't feel a strong pull to teach only one tradition. I did, however, have a great desire to teach a variety of pagan traditions that I've incorporated into my own personal spiritual practice over the last 28 years.

Upon deeper reflection I decided to teach a pagan class that incorporated learning about a variety of pagan religions, traditions, histories, mythologies, rituals, various divination practices, energy work, healing modalities, etc. We'll be going on field trips to experience different group's rituals, lectures, exhibitions, and festivals. I have people coming in to speak on various topics of which they are more experienced in than myself. To be sure, the class will be extensive. The entire point is to expand knowledge.

I was planning to start with a small group as this class in it's topic and structure are new and different, but I now have 13 students. I have another handful of potential students waiting for the next round of classes to begin and we haven't even started this round yet.

I'm positively excited about starting these classes in January! It seems that just before I finish one journey, I'll begin a new one.

On the flip side of new beginnings, I have a less than happy new beginning. Last week I took Big Boy kitty to the vet. He'd been loosing weight. He was a ginormous, but sturdy, 30 lbs. He dropped down to 21 lbs in a rather short period of time. Turns out he'd been having a mild respiratory ailment and just recently developed diabetes. I had to give him a liquid antibiotic, eye ointment, and insulin shots every 12 hours. He didn't seem too bothered by the shot, did not care for the liquid, but absolutely did not like the eye ointment. His antibiotic and eye ointment treatment is complete and he's noticably better, but of course I need to continue on his insulin shots.

Understand, BBk doesn't camp out at the food dish, and I'm very particular about what they, he and his siblings, eat. He and his brother are both very large structured cats. His brother, Edmund, is 20 lbs. BBk's front paws are as wide as 3 of my fingers across.

The vet said that we caught his condition pretty early on and that if we get his weight down that it is possible he can naturally reverse his condition. She seemed very optimistic about it. :)

She also prescribed a food change. Low fat, high fiber Science Hills prescription diet. Stuff's not cheap! A 10 lb. bag is $28. Currently the kids all eat a turkey and oatmeal diet because I took them off of corn. It seemed to help greatly with some skin issues they were having and my allergies to them. However, the new SH food, the first ingredient is chicken-by-product, then corn. I'm not too happy about that, but I'm going to give it a try to see how they do. I've been slowly mixing the food ratio between the two from the turkey/oatmeal to the SH over the last week. In a few more days it will shift to all SH. I noticed all of the cats are now eating less. Much like humans, cats don't like diet food either. *bleah*

Tomorrow I'm going to take BBk into the vet to get his blood work done and see if the insulin has been helping or if they need to adjust the dosage. *fingers crossed*

There's also been a slew of recent drama going on all around me. To be honest, I don't feel like blasting it across the intarwebs even though it might be entertaining to those not directly involved. Hehe. In the end, it's just not worth the hassle. If people want to be silly, cause conflict, stir shit up, and create ridiculous and unnecessary drama, they can go do it elsewhere. I'm totally bored with it.

Otherwise, all is moving along, just as it should be, and the world keeps on spinning...

A Review - Avatar: The Last Airbender Movie

I saw the series a while back and was really looking forward to this film. However, after it came out I didn't hear anything good. I ended up seeing it anyway. Here's my opinion about the film.

Admittedly, I love the series, but like all films, whether from books, comics, or tv they don't quite make it as you would expect or hope.

My issues with the film are many:
1. Terrible acting. I'm not sure if it was the choice of actors or the inability of the director to give them good direction. There's a point when Aang, Sokka, and Katara end up in a prison camp with earthbenders. Aang tries to get the people motivated to rebel. The guards are just standing there while the people begin to fight, like they were waiting for an invitation. Everyone is slow to react. It's just pitiful. And that's only one example of many bad acting/direction issues I had.

2. Forced relationship dynamics. Though this was a rehash of all of season 1, they push you immediately into trying believe that there is a much stronger bond between characters than they actually develop in the film. If you've seen the series then you already know who means what to each other, but here they try to get you to believe a deep bond exists between characters that have just met. I wish they'd allowed things to develop/unfold more naturally.

3. Poor martial arts. For gosh sakes couldn't they have found kids that actually had a grasp of martial arts? It hurt me to watch them do all these stiff, choppy movements on screen. It totally wasn't a secret that there'd be martial arts in this film! You'd think they'd have spent some time with a good choreographer to teach these kids. Maybe it just wasn't in the budget?

4. Not so special effects. So where exactly did the budget get spent? The special effects were atrocious! There was one scene where Aang was in the village of the Northern Water Tribe, he's doing jumps and kicks across the screen. He's not in "Avatar state", he's still himself. It looks as though he's been imprinted upon the movie in the background, but no one bothered to change the lighting to help blend him back into the scene. It stuck out like a sore thumb and it didn't make any sense to me at all. There were a few other times where I though, "WTF?!?" but fortunately I wasn't as annoyed by this through the whole movie as I was the first three issues.

5. Color. Why were all the bad people brown? I know there was already a big issue made about this. Everyone in the Fire Nation was either Indian or Middle Eastern. While I'm totally glad they're in the film (Hollywood needs to add more color to it's films!), but why were all the "heros" white? The entire Northern tribe was white too! However the Earth tribe that was at the prison was Asian. What the heck was that about?

6. Characters. I felt that Sokka was too serious and a little too old. He wasn't funny at all. Aang was impulsive, but not really playful. I think some of the details that make these characters so endearing were missed.

7. Can you say "franchise"? I guess M. Night Shyamalan assumed that no matter how crappy his version there'd be a second film. There's no ending. I heard after the fact that people knew about it. It's supposed to be a "cliffhanger" type ending, so it's not really an ending, but I didn't think it was much of a cliffhanger anyway. It ends right where season 1 ends.

8. The end, finally! I'm the kind that stays through all the credits. I like to read to see who did what. I have friends that work in various aspects of the industry and I love finding their names in the credits or just reading the unusual names you find. I did not stay for the credits. I just wanted it to end. I felt like it went on and on and I was expecting it to end on more than one occasion, so when it finally did I was ready to get the hell out of the theatre.

Overall the film feels rushed and messy. I feel M. Night Shyamalan doesn't pay enough attention to the whole film and how it comes together, nor to some of the details that could make a film like this shine.

So to sum it all up:

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!