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Thanksgiving day is a jewel to set in the hearts of honest men;
but be careful that you do not take the day and leave out the gratitude.
– E.P. Powell
1. Thanksgiving with family
2. road trips
3. “history of food” shows – I love learning all about where nachos and donuts and Tootsie Rolls come from!
I hope you’re all celebrating with loved ones today, and I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving!
The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.
– H.U. Westermayer
Of all the holidays, Thanksgiving is my favorite. I love going to my grandfather’s, knowing all the usual suspects will make an appearance, everyone will prepare something (my job is mashed potatoes and, for the last several years, also a dessert), there will be lots of catching up and storytelling, much laughter, maybe a few tears, and we’ll all leave a little fuller – both literally and metaphorically.
Here are some things I’m thankful for today:
1. my family, obviously – these people who hear me, and believe in me, and encourage me, and who I love tremendously
2. David, who is going to be my family one day
3. that David saved my computer from the jaws of the blue screen of death Monday night by spending 3 hours googling possible solutions on his computer until he found the right one
4. Facebook – what a genius invention; it keeps me up to date on my friends’ lives, even when we can’t be in touch as much as we’d like (and coming across a clever status message always makes me smile)
5. that my job is essentially guaranteed, at least for the next year, so unlike many people, I don’t have to worry so much about ending up unemployed
6. my friends – the ones I talk to all the time, the the ones I don’t hear from very often, the ones who are always in my thoughts, and even the ones who aren’t really friends anymore but who graced my life for a time
7. Chapstick – I never leave home without it
Wherever you are today, whoever you’re with, I hope you’re taking a moment to remember your blessings. Enjoy your day!
If this was adulthood, the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that she could now eat dessert without eating her vegetables.
– from Kinflicks, by Lisa Alther
The great Christmas cookie weekend is upon us again. Karen is coming next weekend and we are going to bake up a storm, and maybe even make some fudge and/or peppermint bark. Last year, I had my cookie choices well in hand by this point, but not so this year. The Kris Kringle cookies were a huge hit last year, so they will be making a return appearance, but beyond that, I’m still undecided. So, I thought I’d let you know what’s on my radar and see what you all think I should make this year.
First, Death by Caramel bars. I love caramel, and this sounds so good, but I’m afraid this might be too rich, plus, it’s not really so Christmasy.
Next, Caramelized Sugar Cookies. These really appeal to me; I bet they’re chewy and buttery and yummy.
How about Chocolate Malted Cookies? I love Whoppers, and I bet that’s what these taste like, only in cookie form. Oooh, maybe I could crush up some Whoppers and add them to the batter! Yum.
Maybe Lemon Sugar Cookies? I like the idea of a little departure from traditional sugar cookies, and this would satisfy my need to use my cookie cutter collection.
Finally, what about Mint Chippers? It’s really just a twist on chocolate chip cookies, I suppose, but the mint flavor makes it a little special for the holidays, don’t you think?
At best, I think I can make three kinds of cookies, since Karen will choose several as well, and we want to make fudge or peppermint bark (speaking of which, does anyone have a good recipe for bark?), so which two of those five possibilities do you think sound best?
Thanks for your input!
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
– Oscar Wilde
One year ago today, Hear Me in the Harmony was born. It seems both longer and more recent than that, but WordPress says it’s true. In honor of the day, I thought I’d share some HMITH trivia with you.
- I started over at Blogger and moved to WP on 12/15/07.
- Total number of posts: 132, including this one (that’s not so many; I wish I’d written more. Maybe this year.)
- Most viewed post: Seven Minutes in Heaven (which has more than twice the views of the next closest post, This Year’s Love)
- Total number of comments: 538
- Post with the most comments: Run For Your Life (followed closely by Who Are You, and Where Did You Come From?, one that’s very special to me)
- Most clicked link in my Blogroll: Things My Boyfriend Says (though that site hasn’t been updated in well over a year; maybe she broke up with her boyfriend?)
- The only post that doesn’t begin with a quote: Hey, It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask, Right?
- Most common search term used to reach HMITH: “white tiger,” with “white tigers” in second (Really? I mean, that’s weird, isn’t it? I have one picture of a white tiger, here, from my trip to Houston, but you know, not really being a blog about white tigers, I find this oddly troubling.)
- Funniest search term used to reach HMITH: I think it’s a tie between “ways to almost die,” “I have a crush on my dentist,” and “Michael Keaton saves woobie.”
- Best search term used to reach HMITH: This one’s easy – “Brian McCann”
- My favorite post: This one was tough, and I couldn’t choose just one – my favorites are Brothers and Sisters and Memory Lane of Men, Part 1.
The best part of blogging, though, has been getting to know so many of you through the comments and through your own blogs (because I’m always reading, even if I’m not writing). I love being part of your lives this way, and I’m so glad you’ve allowed me to share myself with you.
From the moment a father first lays eyes on his daughter, she is forever his little girl, and he is forever her hero.
– from The Wonder Years (now that is a show I miss)
My dad and I have a very special relationship. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a girl or because I’m the youngest, but there’s always been a unique bond between us. When you add in Nate, sometimes my mom feels left out, because the three of us – sharing as we do genetics and a history that predates my mom’s presence in our lives – become a unit that can be impenetrable. I never feel more protected, in every sense of the word, than when I’m with the two of them.
I never realized it growing up, because I was self-centered in the way that most kids and teens are when they have everything they need and no worries to speak of, just how much my dad sacrificed for us. At 24, he took us from one place as very young toddlers because he didn’t think it was good for us, and eventually found that the place he’d taken us was more harmful than he could have believed, especially for Nate. I can’t imagine, as a parent, what that must feel like, to find out that your kids were being harmed by someone who had promised to love them – and you. So he took us from there, but we couldn’t all stay together, because he was in school, so Nate went to live with my grandma, and I went to live with my dad’s cousin.
While I lived there, I went to a preschool, and they were going to take us on a trip to the beach. I was really excited because I had never been to the beach before. But one day, my dad called and said he was coming to get me. The cousin had told him about the trip and how excited I was, so he asked me if I wanted him to come “before the beach or after the beach.” And I remember clearly, nearly 30 years later, leaning on the back of the recliner, playing with the telephone cord, and saying, “Before the beach.” And I knew that he was only taking me to my grandma’s, not to live with him yet, but even at 4 years old, I missed him even more than I wanted to go to the beach.
When we finally settled in Virginia and he was teaching at the local college, he eventually started looking for jobs elsewhere. He looked as far away as California, and I remember complaining that I didn’t want to move. I learned later that he had been offered several positions, but had turned them down so Nate and I could grow up and graduate in one place.
He bailed me out financially in college more times than I can count. He taught me how to break in a baseball glove with saddle soap, a softball, a rubberband, and a mattress. He gave me the opportunity to live in Spain while I was in high school, even if I whined like an ungrateful child in the beginning because I didn’t recognize how lucky I was. He thanked me in his dissertation for giving up my bedroom so that he could use it for his research (I was 7 or 8). He came to every night of every play and musical I was in in high school, and video taped them all. Before he and my mom sat us down to tell us Nick had been killed by a drunk driver while riding his bike, he offered me the spot on the couch next to him because he knew how much I cared about Nick (I turned him down because I thought they were sitting us down to talk about the beer they’d found in the fridge from when they were out of town). The day after I lost my hearing, I was eating breakfast in my living room when I all of a sudden recognized a pounding at my door. I opened it to see him standing on the other side; he dropped his bag and just grabbed me and held me for a long time. I told him later that day that this was “pretty much the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.” He tapped me on the shoulder (because I wasn’t looking at him) and said, “Me, too.” He cried the night I called to tell him I’d been accepted to law school and offered a big scholarship. He cried again when he was the first one I called the minute I found out I passed the bar exam.
And most importantly, he gave us a mother who loves us without reservation – even when we sometimes band together in the three-person cocoon that’s existed as long as I’ve been alive.
Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together.
– Pearl S. Buck
I know I’m not the only one doing this today, but here are some words of wisdom and other things I’ve learned, courtesy of my mother:
1. When you’re feeling bad, a walk outside will nearly always make you feel better.
2. Sit up straight.
3. Learn a foreign language and use it whenever you can (even if it hopelessly embarrasses your children).
4. Buy that tiny bowl at a yard sale or Goodwill – it’s the perfect size for salsa for one or grated Parmesan for the table.
5. You don’t need to have matching everything – eclectic is interesting (I, the perfectionist, struggle to remember this every time one of Pico’s bowls break and I want to rush down to Ikea and replace it).
6. Thank you notes are not negotiable, even for family members – write them in a timely manner.
7. Yes, you can reuse that plastic bag, and you should.
8. Making your bed takes two minutes and makes a huge difference.
9. If you love your job, you never dread going to work.
10. When you’re a guest in someone’s home, clean up after yourself and always offer to help.
11. Know prices on everyday items; then you’ll know when you’re getting a good deal and should buy more.
12. You shouldn’t worry about things you can’t control, and you probably shouldn’t worry too much about the things you can control either – worry doesn’t accomplish anything.
13. It’s ok to have a few things that are just pretty to look at and serve no other function.
14. Read, read, read.
15. Get informed and get involved in causes that are important to you, and give what you can, whether it’s time or money or a letter to your Congressman.
16. Children don’t have to be born to you to be yours; it isn’t biology that makes a mother, it’s love, kindness, sacrifice, desire, and a big enough heart that make a mother.
Happy Mother’s Day! What has your mom taught you?
Love is just a four-letter word.
– Joan Baez
By the time this is posted, I will be in the air on my way to Houston to visit my BFF Aimee, her husband Tim, and their new giant baby, Ben. I haven’t seen Aimee since just before she and Tim moved to Texas in September, and I miss her a ton. I’m so looking forward to meeting baby Ben; I can’t believe he’s five weeks old and I’ve never held him. I am staying until Monday, so hopefully he and I will have plenty of time to get acquainted, Aimee and I will will have plenty of time to catch up, and maybe I can even give them a chance to get out of the house together without the little one. Oh, also on tap: dinner on Friday with J.
Valentine’s Day has been my least favorite holiday since my freshman year in high school. For several weeks prior to that day that year, I had been talking to a guy, Jason, and it seemed we were headed toward dating. Then Valentine’s Day came, and with it came the deluge of flowers and candy delivered to the office which were announced over the PA system all freaking day (“The following students have deliveries waiting for them in the main office: not Melanie.”). Even if your boyfriend went to our school, he was still supposed to have the stuff delivered to the office, not bring it to you at your locker that morning – half the appeal was having your name announced so that everyone knew you were part of a couple.
Now, I may have mentioned that I was a bit of a dork in high school, and all that stuff made me uncomfortable. I never expected Jason to get me anything, and I didn’t want him to think I did, and the easiest way to convey that, I thought, was to avoid him that day. So I did. In defense of my stupidity, however, he avoided me, too. And that was the end of that (except for the inevitable part where I spent the next, oh, two years “in love” with him, lamenting my missed opportunity). And that’s the story of how Melanie came to hate Valentine’s Day.
Those of you who do celebrate, however, I hope you have a wonderful day. Those of you who, like me, are sometimes convinced that it is your destiny to end up the neighborhood spinster-cat-lady, well, for you I found this. I’m partial to the “Dejected” version – “peaked at 17″ killed me.
P.S. The one bright spot about Valentine’s Day this year: pitchers and catchers report today, which means baseball season is just around the corner! (I get my baseball info from Bugs and Cranks, and you can follow your team there, too!)
Resolve, and thou art free.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
New Year’s resolutions, that is. I thought I’d go ahead and share mine as well. As if you care. There are only a couple; I know myself, and any more than that would overwhelm me.
1. Become more informed. The primaries are upon us, and I don’t have any idea, beyond the bare bones, what any of the candidates stand for. I read Express (the condensed version of the Washington Post given out free to Metro commuters) from cover to cover every morning, I get the NY Times headlines emailed to me every day (and I read probably 50% of the stories), plus I read the Yahoo headlines and numerous blogs (what do you mean, none of them are news blogs?), and I still feel like I don’t understand what’s going on in the world. Maybe my brain is broken, but it’s like I’m reading the information and it’s not staying in my head. I live in the center of the political world, and I am hopelessly out of touch. But I can tell you what Britney’s latest legal trouble is, so there’s that.
2. Get back on track, weight-wise. I haven’t talked about it, maybe at all, here, but I’ve been on Weight Watchers for nearly 20 months now. I’ve lost 60 pounds, which is great, and I’m thrilled, but I have a long way to go (30-40 more pounds), and I’ve not lost anything since September (in that go up one week, down a couple weeks, back up a couple the next week, kind of way). I am so not one of those people who whines that I’m working the program perfectly and it just isn’t happening. No: I’ve kind of gone off the rails, and I take full responsibility for that. It’s time to get my head back in the game, because WW does work, but you can’t fool the program. Or the scale.
3. Get more involved. I do nothing. Nothing. I get up, go to work, come home, sometimes go to the gym (in my complex, so I don’t even have to drive), make and eat dinner, watch some TV, travel the information superhighway, read a little, and go to bed. Wash, rinse, repeat. The weekends are marginally better because I accomplish more (read: clean my apartment, go grocery shopping, and cook lunches for the week), but they are largely the same. If I don’t go down to Richmond or have someone from Richmond come here, I don’t do anything. It turns out that my “work friends” are just that: friends at work. Which sucks, but it is what it is. One person I thought would be more than that (not the same one from early November – a boy – but not a boyfriend, just a boy friend) is apparently tired of me.
So, now I have to make my own fun. This goes along with that “I swore my life would be different when I moved here” thing I talked about early on. I want to meet people. I don’t know how I forgot about church (I’m Unitarian), but I never even thought to look one up when I moved here. I’m going to do it. And I joined the local bar association when I passed the bar in October, and god knows they send me enough crap about getting involved, so I want to try to do that, especially volunteer work.
Thinking about the effort it will take makes me tired, and I’m tempted to say I don’t have enough time, but: wash, rinse, repeat. Thinking about having to talk to people I don’t know at all makes me kind of nauseous, and I’d rather stay home and watch TV, writers’ strike or not (you guys, they’re bringing back American Gladiators – how freaking awesome is that??), but you get the life you make for yourself, right?
4. Go on a date. I don’t know if that’s so much a resolution as it is a hope, but here’s where I’ll do my part: if I meet someone I’m attracted to, I will ask him out. If someone asks me out, I will say yes, even if I think there’s no way in hell we’ll hit it off, under the heading of “Hey, you never know.” Unless it’s, like, one of the homeless guys who hang out at the top of the escalator at my Metro stop in the city or something. Give me a break: he can’t buy me dinner (don’t worry, I’ve got my room in hell all picked out.).
So there you go. My new year in four easy steps. How about you – what’s your big resolution?
Now, I think I heard something about some political brouhaha in Iowa tonight? (I’m kidding, I promise. I know it’s Idaho.)
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word “happy” would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
– Carl Jung
Happy new year! As predicted last week, I spent the evening drinking champagne (mostly from a glass, though I got one very satisfactory swig from the bottle) and watching movies (Reign Over Me - very good). I would have liked to be out, but somehow, when you don’t make the effort to make plans, they tend not to materialize on their own, so . . .
My trip to Buffalo was very nice, minus the sad parts about my grandpa from my last post. I got to see some cousins I hadn’t seen in a while and hang out in a (very) small-town bar on a Friday night, which was definitely an experience. It’s not a stereotype for nothin’. Those of you who know me from the interwebs will understand who I’m talking about when I say that I got to meet Suby, SubyJr, Skipper, and ThinIdentity for lunch on Saturday – what a great time that was! Such funny, smart, beautiful women.
It’s back to work tomorrow; at least it’s a three-day week to ease back into it. I don’t think I could handle a full five-day week just yet. It’s been nice to relax and travel to visit family. The holidays were good to us; I’ve got no complaints, really.
Here’s this week’s list:
1. cousins
2. a 28-mile canoe trip [I'm not gonna lie - I ended up across the river from the rest of the group at the end of the weekend because I lost my paddle in the last mile or so, but a Good Samaritan saw me and drove me back to the other side]
3. creme brulee
4. people who know that money is not a prerequisite for happiness
5. going down swinging
6. two-hour lunches
7. floor seats at a great concert
8. curtain calls
9. breakfast foods: eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns, grits, pancakes, and orange juice
10. doing all your laundry and housework on December 31 so you start the new year with everything clean and fresh
I hope your new year is getting off to a great start!
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