TMI Questions: Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude is an easy thing to forget.

So many of our emotions demand more room.  Gratitude is rather reserved, so it has a hard time competing with those flashier feelings.  But that’s what keeps us humble, and in touch with reality. 

So I think it’s great that we have a national holiday focused on giving thanks.  Sadly, few people get the true meaning of Thanksgiving – despite its somewhat too-on-the-nose name. We get caught up in the turkey and side dishes.  The football and family dysfunction.  Yep, been there.  Oh, so guilty!

This year, I hope everyone finds a moment for quiet contemplation in order to truly get in touch with what it means to be thankful and to count our many blessings. 

Here’s wishing you all the very best this celebration has to offer.

TMI QUESTIONS:

Questions designed to reveal Too Much Information

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TMI Questions: Happy Thanksgiving

Do you travel or stay local? Family or Friends? Host or Guest?

It depends.  Typically, if one of my younger sisters and their families will come to the cities, then I will be elsewhere.  I don’t like my folks to be alone for any holiday.  Otherwise, if no one else can make it, I feel the need to be there.

This year will be an exception.  I will be driving a friend of mine to his mother’s house.  He recently had one of his feet reconstructed and cannot drive.  His mother is 84 years old, so I think it’s important that he be there. 

Unfortunately, neither of my younger sisters or my other siblings are making the trek to my parents’ house – and this could be my Dad’s last holiday season (he is not doing well).  So, while it pains me to leave my folks alone, my Mother pretty much demanded that I drive my friend and celebrate Thanksgiving with her and my father on the Friday after the holiday.

I consider my friend part of my family, and my family is on board with that, too.  He’s the business partner that I had a 17 year open relationship with.  He’s been a part of all our family functions forever.  He only has his mother, and she has been a part of most of my family’s gatherings, as well.  Family is very important to my friend, (he is my Mom’s adopted son, and a brother to all of us) so I will honor that for the rest of my life.  His mother is not very mobile, so that is why we are travelling to her neck of the woods this year.

Since my Dad has been diminished by Alzheimer’s, it has typically been me and my folks, plus my friend and his mother.  Christmas, my youngest sister and her husband will typically join us.  But, in light of my friend’s mother and her immobility, I am not sure what we will do this year for Christmas.  One holiday at a time…

I have hosted only one Thanksgiving.  It was a gas.  I crammed my parents, my friend and his mother, and my three sisters’ families into my basement – which has this room that looks like a church basement, complete with the 1950’s style linoleum.  It was hectic and crowded (six small kids, eleven adults, and two Chihuahuas).  The food was your basic Thanksgiving fare and went off without any snafus.  I did a drawing at the end, giving away prizes for the kids (all toys).  So whenever the kids started to act up I simply reminded them about the prizes at the end of the day. Worked like a charm.

Parade: Love it? Leave it? Never let it go?

Leave it. 

It was a distraction on the tube when I was younger.  Holidays always brought the worst out in my Mother, so she was usually seething about something or other the morning of.  If you were smart, you stayed out of her way and kept a low profile.  That wasn’t always possible.  But that televised parade sure served as a diversion.

When I was in L.A., it was tradition to go and look at the floats up close, at the end of the parade.  It was so cool.  I had no idea the floats were made out of flowers.  The amount of work that went into those floats boggled my mind.  I also thought it was an incredible waste.  But it sure makes a lot of people happy, so who am I to judge?

It sure made my life a little more bearable when I was young. 

Favorite Food?

Squash.  Love it.  Bake it, and whip it up with a tiny bit of butter or make soup with it.  And yams, too, but no brown sugar or marshmallow crap.  I like my veggies fairly straightforward.

Second favorite food is mashed potatoes.

This will be my first Thanksgiving minus Turkey – so I am not sure what I am going to do.  Fortunately, we are going out on the actual holiday (Asian food or Perkins), so I will have some choices to make. 

As for the day with my folks?  I will just fill up on the potatoes and squash.  Maybe bring some hummus for protein.

Or a nice grilled cheese.

Favorite holiday movie or do you watch football?

I don’t watch football.  I was addicted to watching it live when in high school.  It was fun then, because you actually knew the players.  But televised sports bore the crap out of me.  Too much commentary, too many commercials, too many pauses during play.  I’d rather wash the dishes or sit in the kitchen and gossip about our extended family members (lots of skeletons in those closets).  And the gossip goes both ways, I am sure (lots of skeletons in our closets, too).

Movies?  My favorite?  I take a particular delight in watching ‘Home for the Holidays’, starring Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft, and Robert Downey, Jr.  Directed by Jodie Foster (!), this ensemble production about a Thanksgiving celebration in the life of a wonderfully dysfunctional family is a hoot.  There are wicked laughs galore to be had, but the heart is there, too.  Cynthia Stevenson delivers the best performance, but the whole cast is top notch.  I totally recommend checking this one out.

But, honestly, I would rather take all the dogs for a walk.  I like the cold air.  And there’s something about walking past all those houses full of family cheer, dysfunction, food and alcohol that make me sad/happy. 

That’s me.  Always enjoying things from a distance.

If you do holiday decorations, for which holiday and when?

                                                                                                                     

Gosh, I have kind of kept things to the bare minimum for years now.  Even Christmas. 

I have this tiny tree with the lights and decorations on it that sits in a garbage bag in a store room for most of the year, only to be plucked out to sit on an end table in my living room for the season.  Other than that, there is this rather baroque looking angel/tree topper that sits on atop of my grandfather clock year-round, looking down upon me, passing judgment throughout the year.  She’s so pretty (if a bit of a prude).

And then there’s the yard décor.  I have a plastic snowman that sits in my front yard until spring.  I just like him.  Sometimes he is joined by a little tin soldier and a tiny, fat Santa.  I don’t plug any of them in.  And the soldier and Santa always go away the day after New Year’s.   

But that snowman?  He’s there for the whole of winter. 

He makes me smile.

Black Friday. Thoughts?  Feelings?  Soapbox?

I don’t participate.  I don’t care. 

I figure this is something that corporate greed and the breeders have born out of a need for ‘more’.  I could care less.  I no longer see Christmas / The Holidays as a reason to spend a great deal of money.  Possessions don’t make us better people.  And giving the perfect gift does not buy one love or excuse all our lousy behavior the rest of the year.

And Black Friday does bring out the worst in people.  Just read some of these stories: http://thoughtcatalog.com/charlie-shaw/2013/11/35-retail-workers-share-their-their-most-wtf-black-friday-horror-stories/

All of which I believe actually happened because… I read it on the internet.

I think it’s madness.  But it’s not for me, so what I think doesn’t matter.  Much.

I know this is wrong, but I do get a kick out of reading all the horror stories about people getting trampled on their way to getting an $11.99 kitchen gadget or stupid popular toy.

Does that make me a bad person?

Probably.

Bonus

People traditionally give thanks on Thanksgiving. What are you thankful for?

A lot this year.

Second chances, in particular.

My recent rebirth has shaken my life to its core. I’m sort of amazed that I did not require a 12-Step Program or numerous sessions on a therapists couch to turn myself around, but I didn’t.  And while I am still scrambling to put things back together and still trembling in the aftermath, I am doing really fucking great.   

I haven’t been myself for well over twenty years. Some of my early interactions with humans had left me so fucking damaged that my soul had turned sour and I stopped believing in the promise of hope and the power of love.  I tear up just writing about it. 

I’ve been numbing myself for so long – not with alcohol or drugs, but with sex.  This blog is sort of a testament to that part of my life.  I frequently have joked about my multiple personas, but the fact is, I have been living a dual life for so long, one robbing the other of any pure joy to be found in any situation, that I’d forgotten who I really am. 

Instead, I put on a brave face and tried to reconcile the dichotomy that my life had become.  It was a constant battle – robbing Peter to fuck Paul.  I’d become so dishonest, so untrue to myself.

So, to have a second chance, to reclaim myself… that is the greatest gift the universe has ever given me.

And the amazing thing?  I know deep in my heart that I am worthy of it.

I will spend the rest of my life honoring it. 

Since the day the scales fell from my eyes?  I have never been happier or more joyful. 

October 26^th will forever be a very special anniversary for me.

And if this all sounds like some kind of religious transformation, well, it’s not.  I don’t believe in any of that stuff.   I’m pretty much an agnostic or an atheist at this point. 

Nor do I really believe in judging the actions of others.  We all have our own paths to walk and to quote my beloved Melissa Manchester: “We need gardens to grow in.  And there must always be room enough for all of us.”

So, no worries. 

I still stand in awe of the many sexual warriors I have met in person or via blogger. I will still enjoy reading of your exploits or looking at the pics you post.  Those of you who enjoy sex for the sake of sex?  You fucking rock.  You’re helping to tear down the walls of sexual oppression that have ruled Western civilization for far too long.  So rage on.  Shine on.

But, for now, I need to explore something else.  Something more. 

I’m super excited about all these changes and I have no idea what’s to come.  I have hopes, for sure.  But if things don’t work out the way I want, I am sure that something wonderful is waiting for me to arrive.

I have been waiting my whole life for ‘me’ to arrive.

And I can’t wait until all this turmoil that I’ve created in my wake calms.

It’s going to be a good, good life.

As always, thanks, Sean!