Thursday, November 26, 2009

Thanksgiving Day

I decided a few days ago that I was going to spend today remaining in a grateful frame of mind. I'm happy to report I was succesful in doing that.

It was disappointing that I couldn't go to Joplin as planned, but I decided to make the most of the day here. Amy invited me to join her group for dinner, and I really appreciated the offer, but just wasn't sure if I would feel good enough to be decent company. So, I bought a take out order of turkey at Roy's on Wednesday and today I whipped up some sides to have a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner. Well, minus the things I don't like anyway.



Okay, and here's the big confession... I love that jelled cranberry sauce right out of the can. I know, it's not very sophisticated, but I like it. I've made cranberry sauce a few times, and I like different relishes people make, but I also like the stuff out of the can, with the rings imbedded in it. I don't know why, but I do.

I also baked a pumpkin pie for dessert. It was quite tasty, although not as great as it would have been with my own pie crust. But I just didn't feel like doing the pushing and pulling necessary to roll out a crust so I cheated and bought one.

Late this afternoon I went outside to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station pass through. It was really cool to see both of them at one time. The ISS will be visible again tomorrow night about 6, but it was really neat to see both of them tonight.

Tonight I started decorating the Christmas tree. Greg put up one of my small, 6 foot trees for me the other night. I wasn't going to decorate a tree at all, because I'm certainly not up to my usual tree and decorating extravaganza. But, I decided I wanted a tree of some sort. So, he set up this tree and brought up just three of my boxes of ornaments. So, I'm just going to use whatever is in them, as opposed to dragging out the other boxes too. Of course, every box has some precious things in it.

One of these boxes held this Santa, that I bought in Amsterdam while on a trip with Matthew.



Matthew and his family have been on my mind all day. I'm still not used to the idea that he's not out in the world. It just doesn't seem right to me.

But, today I decided to be thankful for the moments we had together, the great times we shared, the travel experiences we could have only had with each other, instead of lamenting that we won't have more. Matthew is one of the few people I have ever known who understood my desire to cram as much living into every day as possible. We were in sync on that, which is probably one reason we made so many wonderful memories together. I'm so grateful I have those memories and the trinkets like this Santa that bring them flooding back.

I hope you've had a wonderful day filled with gratitude.