October 10, 2011

Happy Turkey Day to all the Canucks out there!!
I’m sorry to say that I won’t be celebrating with you this year. Here is a list of some of the reasons (or excuses?) why, because lists are fun:

- I don’t own an oven to cook turkey or bake pumpkin pie, though I’d happily do it myself. (The picture is of my very first turkey I made a few years back. Ohlala!) I don’t think you can do these things on a hotplate.
- Today is the beginning of lectures for the fall/winter semester (yes, we get a late start here), so I will be in classes until 21:00 tonight anyway. There is not much time for cooking to whip up a batch of food to feed an army.
- I don’t know any other Canucks who would be willing to celebrate Turkey Day here with me.
- I don’t know of any Tschermanns or others willing to humour me for the day by taking the train out to the boonies for a turkey and pie I can’t actually make (see above).
- Aside from the turkey and pumpkin pie, I don’t really like Thanksgiving in the first place.

Why? Do you ask?
Well, here’s a blog post from last year that I wrote (on October 12, 2010, to be exact) which explains pretty much everything.

So, I was in Deadmonton (well, more appropriately Lac la Nonne, Sherwood Forest and Tofield) for Thanksgiving this year. Dead as ever, Deadmonton is actually growing on me again, and feeling a lot like home. Maybe even more than Calgary. Which is embarrassing to admit. But hey, it is what it is. Maybe I’ll babble on about that some other day. Or not, because I’ve already died of shame already for saying such a thing.

Anyhoo…

Let’s face it — Turkey Day probably only has two redeeming qualities: homemade pumpkin pie with whipped cream and turkey/homemade bun leftovers that will feed me for a couple of weeks. Other than that, Turkey Day, or more appropriately, Thanksgiving, really gets on my nerves.

The worst part of it all is having to sit around the table before eating, mumbling something incomprehensible about how thankful you are for a wonderful life, and blah, blah, blah. The worst thing is that my sister is such a fan of this ridiculousness, and since my parents are divorced, I am lucky enough to have to make up some crap twice every year before praying to a god I don’t believe in.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m thankful for a lot of things in my life, but sitting around a table, forced to come up with some earth-shaking answer about being thankful in life isn’t one of those things. Sure, I could be that jackass who mentions his/her extreme luck at being fortunate enough in life to be able to have a meal in his/her belly and a roof under which to sleep. But seriously, who says crap like that? Am I thankful for those things? Of course I am. If nothing else, my previous stint of having one half-assed meal per day so I could pay my rent not only was an awesome diet, but I am now thankful I have apples in my fridge. I also realise that there are a lot of people out there a lot worse off. But I’m still not that person who’s going to proclaim their good fortune about being able to eat at Thanksgiving. That’s tacky, right up there with this Miss Americas of the world dreaming about world peace.

More than anything, I’m thankful I have the courage to get out of bed in the morning, and that I can make it through most days with a smile. I’m grateful for my friends that have stood by me, and my family, even if I hate most of them most of the time. I’m thankful that I am who I am, and that I’ve gathered the life experiences I have, even if others don’t think much of them.

But at the end of the day, speaking out about that stuff at the dinner table just may as well be more ridiculous than not being on the streets or wishing for world peace.

So, in the end, I said I was thankful for Maxie. Hey, why not? He’s provided me hours and days of laughs and love, with many more to come. I mean, he’s the only man who’s stuck by me through thick and thin, who loves me unconditionally. So, I think it’s fine to be thankful for my puppy. And, he was a good cop-out for Turkey Day this year. Now, I have to work on being creative for next year…

Now, before you start off on the whole, “Hey, Ellie! It wasn’t that bad! You had apples in the fridge!” I’ll have you know that those apples were brought to me by a coworker from her family’s orchard in BC.

If my memory serves correctly, this is about the time of year when my coworkers started bringing food to work to feed me since I couldn’t afford to do it myself.

I guess I could have been thankful for that. (And I was, actually.) At the time, though, it just seemed more like charity. For a more detailed description of my sob story, please see my other published works.

If I’m going to contrast this year and last, there’s a hell of a lot I’m thankful for. October 2010 was one of the darkest months in a very dark year for me.

So, given that, in retrospect, I’m thankful for so much that I have this year, I’ll keep it simple:

This year, in 2010, I’m thankful that I have three apples in the fridge, and that I bought them myself.

If you would have asked me this time last year if I would’ve had anything to be thankful for this year, I would have laughed hysterically at you and probably started crying.

It just goes to show how time is really a tricky little fucker. And how I’m (still) exceedingly pessimistic.