Always. Nontraditional. Thanksgivings.

Our Thanksgivings are anything but traditional.  I guess you could say our tradition is to be nontraditional.

As children, we both had the traditional meal, except when my great aunt decided to serve Swedish Meatballs.

"Swedish Meatballs on Thanksgiving?" my mom said with shock, " whoever hear of that?" Now that she is 86 and detests the taste of turkey, she would gladly eat Swedish Meatballs.

In the 80's we lived on a Minnesota  farm where we tried our hand at raising turkeys and ducks and chickens.  Melida was in kindergarten and the teacher inquired of all the children what they would be doing on Thanksgiving.  Melida, in her animated style explained, " We will open up our freezer,all the turkey's will jump out and dance a jig! Their names are Duke, Earl and Ourfolks."  That year, we ate our pets.

That next summer we had a Thanksgiving celebration for a German Exchange Student in the community.  It was so hot in the non-air conditioned house cooking a turkey the old fashion way, in a roaster. We had all the trimmings of a traditional meal in July. In my younger life, I never gave it a thought that someone in other parts of the world would not have tasted turkey, cranberries or pumpkin pie. I think they enjoyed it!

When we moved to Iowa, we started hosting the Thanksgiving meals for students who couldn't get home.  I felt bad that I couldn't fulfill their meal expectation.  Their tradition.  It was then that I realized that no matter how alike us American's are, we are all very different is so many ways.

We shared a meal with a couple from the south.  She brought Chicken Dumplings.  Who ever heard of such a thing?  Why on earth would you serve something with Chicken when you are having turkey?  I have found out, since living in southern Indiana for the last 20 years,that Thanksgiving is NOT Thanksgiving without Chicken Dumplin's  I have not made them, nor will I.
Dumpling preparation will forever be left to the pros,  The pro's are the guys and gals who make them every year for the Church Summer socials.  When these folks die there is a special kitchen in heaven made up of rolling pins, flour, boiled chicken and stock.

In the 90's turkey became "the meat" of choice on our shopping trips.  It wasn't so much for the health benefit, which would seem like the logical reasoning.  We consumed it because it was cheap.  Beef prices had skyrocketed and turkey was now available "ground" making way for turkey chili, turkey spaghetti, turkey meatloaf, turkey burgers, turkey this, turkey that, and turkey what!.  When Thanksgiving rolled around, I proclaimed it a NON-turkey day.  Sure enough, I had no thanks for the old bird, I wanted to be thankful for beef.  That year, we splurged and cooked Prime Rib.  That year, we all got sick because we weren't use to the richness of beef and ate too much.  It was like we started the " Thanksgiving Day Over Eaters club" for the first time. And it was worth it! 

This year we plan to celebrate Thanksgiving at the cabin on Saturday.  Tom wanted to smoke a turkey, which we have done in the past.  I just wanted a plain old fashion meal.  The kind that includes sage dressing and pumpkin pie spices. I finally have a gas range and  I can't wait to roast the bird.  We no longer eat turkey everyday...so I am good with having turkey.  We raised our own pumpkins this year and I am not sick of eating them yet.  I always buy the biggest bag of cranberries and sometimes end up throwing half away.  If I don't throw them away, I freeze them for next year and then I throw them away.  My favorite dressing is Corn bread with sage sausage.  Another acquired taste since moving to the south.  When in northern Illinois, the dressing faze was "White Castle Sliders Thanksgiving Dressing". I just couldn't bring myself to make it.  But I will.  I have promised for the last 20 Thanksgivings.  I even looked up the recipe.  I am getting there. I'm thinking about it. Maybe next year.

 I love being nontraditional.  I love to shake it up.   So, I guess I will go to White Castle and get 12 sliders (without the pickle) and make this the best Thanksgiving ever for someone who has been waiting 20 years.  I don't want to disappoint.

Hope helping prepare pumpkins.

Man Cave/She Palace

Every room in my house is feminine.  There is not one ounce of "man caveique" here.  There may be a drawer or two filled with manly things like toenail clippers and screwdrivers.  That screwdriver drawer never has the right size either.  You need a phillip screwdriver...forget it, you need to buy a new one!

The feminine room decor is about to change.  Yes, the cabin will be the masculine home.  We have already decorated the great room with everything Green Bay Packer. Since the kitchen is connected, I will soon be the proud owner of a Packer crock pot.  I believe it was put on MY Christmas list.  Now don't get me wrong....I love the colors Green and Gold. Tom loves the Packers whether they win or lose. ( Like this weekend, no one is talking about it!)  But I really don't want to eat off a plate, drink out of a cup and wipe my face with The big G.  Give me the solid colors and I can work the motif in, thank you very much.

Right this very moment, construction of a detached garage is happening in the forest! Tom will have his own man cave away from the cabin. And I will have the attached garage to "feminize" and possibly turn into a craft, dining, and fun area for overflow company.  I already put curtains up.  I cannot believe that I am excited about decorating a garage.  But here's the deal.....it has drywall walls and ceiling and it is nicer than some basements!  My friend, Susie, named it the She Palace.  I like that!

 I am not a writer nor am I a poet so here is a poem anyway....sorry it doesn't rhyme. It speaks volumes on the true meaning of Man Cave/She Palace.  When you read it, go left to right and change your voice to masculine and back to feminine.  Then read it to your friends out loud.

Man Cave.              She Palace.
Yard Stuff.               Fun Stuff.
Farts.                        Flowers.
Beer.                        Wine.
Sports Radio.           Cooking Channel.
Grunting.                  Laughing.
Hollering.                 Singing.
Mine.                        I don't want it, it smells like farts.
 
Man Cave and She Palace are the places for the perfect married couple in the cabin, by the woods, and always ending up together on the porch that just happens to be decorated with the Green Bay Packer Theme.

Candy, Costumes and the ER

I'm a senior citizen now and Halloween still has that magic hold on me.  I never go to costume parties.  I never dress up.  I don't send out cards.  And I quit answering the front door.  But I DO buy Treats....LOTS AND LOTS OF TREATS.

I used to just buy my favorite....DUH....Snickers.   Then I realized that Tom's favorite was Heath Candy Bars and Butterfingers. My girls would eat just about any kind...except maybe Black Licorice...and who would actually hand that out at Halloween.

 When the girls were small we lived in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. These Halloweens were nothing like what we saw on the Halloween Peanuts Special.  That Peanut gang would hop, skip, run and walk to each candy laden home and squeal...TRICK OR TREAT.  Those kids had cool costumes and everyone seemed happy.  My girls had plastic costume that no one saw.  The weather just didn't cooperate in the mid-west. They wore costumes with their snowsuits over them.  Ice, snow and sleet couldn't keep them from this yearly tradition. Freezing cold, they would walk like Zombies before Zombies were cool. Wearing little red snowsuits and plastic Care Bear masks, they trudged up to front doors, rang door bells with mittens and shivered the words...TWICK O TWEEEET.

   
By the time we moved to Southern Indiana my older girls were beyond the years of Trick or Treating, but Bissy and Hope got to enjoy the "movie-like" atmosphere of the Halloween Season.  It was like the scenes in ET  or Halloweentown.  Our subdivision was full of families going door to door.  I was shocked...literally!  And I wasn't prepared!  Twenty years later....I am fully prepared with at least 400 items to hand out!  Yes...FOUR HUNDRED!!

Even before Hope was born, Bissy talked about what "that" baby would be for Halloween. The standard answer was "A Packers Cheerleader", of course. When Harper was born, Bissy's daughter, it was inevitable that she would also be "A Packers Cheerleader".  Harper and Vinnie were the Packer Duo when they were 2.  And the weather was Movie Scene perfect!

Vinnie and Harper, The Packer Duo!

For the past 10 years I set up my Halloween station in the garage.  Eleven years ago, I did my "Candy Handing" via my front door.  That was a lot of  doorbell ringing, door knocking and door opening for 400 kids!  Eleven years ago, I stepped out onto my front porch to "oooo and ahhhh" about the neighbors new baby.  That night, I heard a snap, fell forward and landed next to the cutie pies stroller.  If I had a costume on, it would have been the LADY on the LIFE LINE commercial reciting her only line, "I have fallen and I can't get up!"  That little baby is now 11. He no longer lives in the neighborhood but I sometimes see him with his Grandparents.  I don't have the heart to tell him how his cute little face ruined my night! That could just ruin his life!  or not!

Have you ever had to go to the ER?  Pretty scary right?  Try going on Halloween night!  Ax Heads!  Pumpkin Flame burn victims!  Scary Clown syndrome treatment! Zombie scab pickers!  Vampire Blood Bank seekers! Candy Corn Comas!  Then there was me with no costume and a very lame excuse of "Baby oooooo and ahhhhher".

Sure enough! A broken leg!  Halloween is a reason for an Anniversary.  Best Anniversary ever!  I get to buy my favorite candy, hang out in the garage, sit on my Packer Chair, feed Little Green Bay Packer Duos sugar, and NEVER hear a doorbell.  Did I mention the Wine???

I Miss My Dad

Ten years ago, my dad (age 79) passed away from pancreatic cancer.  Sure didn't see that cancer coming!

In the 1960's, my dad had a diagnosis of cancer.  He had his fair share of hernias and ulcers.  I am sure that being in his 30's, he didn't think that cancer would be part of his medical records.  In fact, cancer wasn't a real known ailment back then.  When my mom told my brother and I that dad was in the hospital and that it was cancer, The Encyclopedia was the only source of information available.
 ( last centuries Google)

 The set of encyclopedias sat on top of my brothers dresser.  He was so lucky because he could lay in bed at night with a flash light under his covers and read any volume he wanted.  He was also the one who looked up cancer and only found one paragraph.

I was in grade school.  I thought my dad was going to die.

 My grandkids are in grade school and my children are in their 30's. I can't imagine it!

The surgeons cut him open from his sternum down to his pelvic region. Back then everything was exploratory.  He had many scars that I am sure a 2nd grader shouldn't and didn't see. He had radiation that burned his skin.  He stayed home from work.  Everyone was sad.

I remember that he had bandages on his cheek.  They had removed melanoma.  Back then, they just called it cancer.

As my brother and I got older and moved onto college then onto marriage, Dad would always report to us after his yearly checkups.  He always would say, "I'm having my yearly cancer check" and then a week later he would say."I'm good for another year!".  Those were the great years!

Then he got prostate cancer.

My dad was the most positive man in the world. He had a great sense of humor. He used his Scandinavian accent when joking about Lena and Ole, a Norwegian couple who always seemed to be in disharmony.  He couldn't tell a joke without forgetting the punch line.  We would laugh so hard!  No one cared about the punch line when he told the joke!

 He was a proud veteran. He left me the china that he bought in Japan after the war.  Ten years ago, prior to his passing, he spoke more about  his time in the service than he ever did when we were growing up.  We would pass a restaurant call Nagasaki, and he would tell me about that town in Japan.  I would just listen.

When he retired from his career with the Iowa Department of Transportation, he and my mom became what they call "Winter Texans".  Every Halloween they left Iowa and every Mother's Day they left Texas.  My mom still goes to Texas, same schedule.  She turned 86 this year.

He loved my mom.  I remember he would cop a feel right there in front of my brother and me.  Ya Mom, we saw it!  He loved her enough to go to a rehabilitation center for a month to learn about his alcoholism.  When he died 10 years ago, he had celebrated 25 years of sobriety and was a proud member of AA.

Then he got pancreatic cancer.
Then he got bladder cancer.
Then he got liver cancer.

In September of 2006 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.With each specialist we saw, the other cancer diagnosis showed up.  We stopped taking him to specialists.  He had cancer.

He was in hospice in my home and on the last week of his life we moved him to a facility called the Charlier Hospice Center.  It was the most beautiful experience. We hung artwork and pictures on the walls. We had a tape player with his favorite hymns. We had comfortable chairs to sit in and talk with him while his eyes were closed. He was covered with a colorful knitted prayer shawl that had arrived earlier from a Texas friend. My brother came from Arizona.  My dad had us together and that was a good thing.  When he passed away, we were not present but we were present in his heart.

I miss my dad.  Cancer didn't define him.  He wouldn't let it.  He lived a great life and I bet he remembers the punch line to his jokes in Heaven.....or not!

Jerry and Cinda with Wilmar Nelson

How Important is it?

I have been doing a lot of thinking when it come to the saying "How important is it?"

The usual answer for me would be, " Pretty Darn Important!"  "Everything is Important!". But, is it?

I usually go straight to my reactionary freaking my freak mode!  You know, get all excited about something that is totally out of my control.

Last weekend, at the cabin, Tom was doing his regular thang just putzing around the garden.  He has lost quite a bit of weight this year and his ring is very loose.  While putzing, it was wobbling and he pushed it up to his knuckles and went about his putzing.  It was 5 minutes later that he realized his ring was gone.   This ring belonged to his father who passed away several years ago.  This ring means the world to him.

Tom and rings.  His first wedding ring was gold and engraved with "I love you".  It was lost in a laundry mat when he decided that doing laundry while I was in the hospital recovering from the birth of our first child would be a nice gesture.  Not only did he lose his ring, he lost one of mine! We posted REWARD signs and never got them back. There was some lucky college student living in Pammel Court in Ames, Iowa who probably hit the mother load when he or she found them.

His next wedding ring was purchased at a jewelry store that was going out of business. It was 80% off. This ring cost me $27.  By the time I purchased this ring, we were entering the "not so much lovey dovey" part of our marriage.  No engraving, just wear it already!

During the time that he wore this cheap ring, he was a large animal veterinarian in Minnesota.  His specialty was dairy cattle.  Since I am not a veterinarian and couldn't even play one on TV, I can't tell you the REAL medical terms of what he did for pregnant cows. Here is my version. He stuck his  bare arm up the butt of a female cow to check stuff. ( I really do know the medical terminology but like my version better) He lost his ring inside her butt.  At least he didn't call me to come find it, and we don't talk about this loss. It was never returned but I bet somewhere in that field is a shiney object waiting to be found.

His third wedding ring was purchased from a secondhand store. A $28 purchase. I was never going to spend anymore than that! No love notes. It was not wrapped as a present.  Just put it on and don't lose it, mister!   He wore that ring for over 20 years and never lost it. On our 30th anniversary, we go new rings. Our old rings were cashed in and I got myself a John Hardy silver chain and pendent!  I have lost and found that a few time too!

He has had 4 wedding rings.  When his dad gave him his ring, I told him to wear that instead of his new one that we got on our 30th anniversary. His dad's ring has a 3/4 K diamond.  And it matches my new wedding ring. 

How important is it? A ring?  Well it is the symbol of marriage.  But do we really need a ring?
How important is it? Losing something that is a symbol?
How important is it? Losing anything?

When he lost his dad's ring I felt sad but not freaked out like I usually feel.   I had a peace about me because I had been pondering all week the phrase " How important is it?"

I belong to a group that meets weekly and we share experiences.  "How important is it?" was the topic on the very week Tom lost that ring.  My friend had shared an experience of losing her mom's ring and then finding it. In her discovery, she said, "No one was hurt, no one died, it was just a ring." It was so ironic that I would be experiencing the same lose 2 days later.

We purchased a metal detector this weekend and put it to use as soon as it was assembled.  We retraced Tom's moves through the garden and found a lot of IRON.  When we got to the summer squash, the beeping changed and there underneath the leaves laid his ring.

How important is it?
If you don't get wild and crazy, blaming and accusing, ranting and raving, bitching and moaning about something that is totally out of your control, you can feel so much peace when things work out. And all things work out, just not always like you want them too!

Carnival Fish and Hope

Hope with her Carnival Fish "Rover"

The Fall Festival in our town is going on right now.  Ever since Hope started school, the Special Ed kids get to have the carnival area to themselves on Tuesday. The West Side Nut Club sponsors this awesome event and this year the paper reported that 500 kids attended. This year, Hope went with her class and I didn't have to go!

Hope loves to wander. She isn't lost, everyone else is.  If she wandered this year, they didn't tell me. I had a great day off!!

Hope loves the games because of the prizes and everything is free that day.  In the past, she has come home with huge plastic bags full of stuffies, blow up toys, necklaces, and various trinkets.  Just another reason she hoards!  She loves her stuff.  This year, by the time she got home to our house, all she had in her possession was a gold fish. A real gold fish.  Her teacher tried to convince her to take the stuffed animal fish, but Hope insisted on the REAL gold fish.  This fish was still alive in its plastic bag  at 5:30.  I laid the bag in the fish tank so the temp would be the same.  I have no clue who taught me that and when Tom saw it, he questioned my intent!  He released the fish in the tank and that little devil ate his weight in gold.  He was so hungry.

This fish was named Rover. Only because someone wrote Rover on the bag.

When Hope names things, she usually thinks for a while and then names it Cindy.  Every time she goes to Build A Bear she picks out a cute animal, dresses it in Disney Character clothes and heads to the birth certificate computer. You would think that if she dressed the bear like Elsa, she would name it Elsa.  This is not the case in Hope's  world. I cross my figures that the bear will have a cool name like Coco Moco but when I ask, "what is the name?"  She always says Cindy!

The first time Hope won a fish at the Fall Festival, Tom wasn't home to take care of it. I did.  And guess what?  It lived!  For some reason this fish got the name Charlotte.

Charlotte is the reason that we now have a 20 gallon Fish Tank.  It's funny how a free feeder fish from a carnival turns a home into an aquarium totting house equipped with gravel, castles and fake seaweed, lights and a motorized filter. In our case, the fish had a honey comb and a Green Bay Packer Helmet to hide in.

Oh, and the mourning that goes on when a fish dies!  What ever happened to flushing a dead fish down the toilet?  It just doesn't happen in our house.

Our Carnival fish always have friends that join them.  They come from the neighborhood pet store.  Charlotte ended up with 4 friends.  They were beautiful fantail fish, Casey, Bissy, Harper and Graham. Not original names since they belong to family members.  Charlotte was replaced several time do to early demise. Poor Charlotte.

Charlotte is the little one.  The Big Black one once lived in a drawer!

Alas, all of those fish have entered the great ocean in the sky.  And they all had autopsies.  Liver disease.  So sad.

The 20 Gallon tank now has two Carnival Fish that my Grandson won 2 years ago, Two creepy oversized head fish from the store, and now Rover.

I asked Hope this morning what her new fish's name was, fully expecting her to say Cindy and she said..."It is Charlotte!"

Good answer.  Move over Rover!

Charlotte the original Carnival Fish

Of Bird and Hope

When you live in the forest on the weekends you just sort of get accustomed to dead animals, dead bugs and dead snakes on the property.

The first dead animal we encountered was the year our cabin was built.  The birds weren't used to a building in the way of their flight path. We would find beautiful dead cardinals, nutshatch and finches on our porch upon arrival.

The first dead bird turned out to be Hope's first pet.  Have you ever read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck?  That book is one of the creepiest books out there.  I should write a book Of Bird and Hope, it could be equally as disturbing.

That Saturday, we were inspecting the building process of the cabin.  We were thrilled that our porch was complete and the cabin had windows and a door.  We didn't pay much attention to the fact that Hope had claimed a dead bird.

Hope has always had a fear of animals.  She had no fear of this dead bird.  She picked it up, carried it to the car, dumped out an old Tupperware container, lined it with a pink washcloth, and put the bird inside.  She talked to it, giggled about it, caressed it, and kissed it.  I strongly suggested that it wasn't a good idea to kiss it but Hope's answer was, " MOM!!!!"  I tried  to convince her to leave it on the ground because....well....duh....Germs! I lost!

When it was time to leave, she had the bird resting comfortably next to her in it's makeshift coffin.  I was in disbelief that she was still hanging onto the concept of it being a pet! Did she name it?  I don't thinks so.  So, let's just call it DEAD BIRD.

Our weekend commute to the cabin takes 72 minutes, by the time we got home, I totally forgot about her fascination about DEAD BIRD.

It dawned on me halfway through the night when I woke up with a jolt....DEAD BIRD...where is the dead bird?

Just like the Night Before Christmas, I bolted down the stairs, unlatched the garage door, threw open the hatch of the car....to see an empty Tupperware coffin.

OH MY What's the matter?

This was not Hope's first rodeo with a small animal.  One time, when Tom was cleaning the fish tank, Hope somehow hauled the "large black fish" up to her room. When Tom realized the fish was gone and nowhere on the floor near the tank, he knew that Hope had to have taken it or the cat ate it.  He asked her and she denied it but with much diligence, he finally found it alive in one of her drawers!   Could this be the case this time?  Did she carry DEAD BIRD to her room? Why didn't she carry it in it's "casket"? I turned on her lights and dug through her drawers! No DEAD BIRD.

We have always had a "thing" about saving dead animals.  We had parakeets.  Remember the show XFiles with Mulder and Scully back in the 90's? That was one disturbing show! More than once, I would jump out of my skin and scream for the actors to MOVE!  One Friday night, I scared the parakeet with my excitement and it fell off its perch and died!  Being the Veterinary Pathologist that he was, Tom put it in a plastic bag, stuck it in the freezer so he could do an autopsy later.  That poor bird became the talk of the High School and was visited often by my daughters classmates until Tom finally figured out the death.  It died of some big scientific explanation. Bottom line, I was not the responsible party to it's passing!

Back to DEAD BIRD.  Where was DEAD BIRD?  I figured in the freezer. Nope!  We have 3 freezers and I checked them all.  I woke Tom up from a dead sleep to see if he had anything to do with DEAD BIRD. Nope!  He was too tired to talk about it and how dare me accuse him of freezing DEAD BIRD!  See above paragraph on why I would accuse him!

DEAD BIRD was not in the freezer, it was midnight, and I was freaking my freak.  I went back to the car. I looked under the seats, in the glove compartment, between the seats and under the car mats.   When I was in the back seat checking under the mats, I noticed that the "pocket" on the back of the front seat was bulging some.  I stuck my hand in the pocket and pulled out DEAD BIRD.

Hope, keeper of all thing, hoarder of most saved DEAD BIRD in the safest place of all.  And I got to touch it.  Of Bird and Hope, coming soon to a bookstore near you.