Unturkey

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving day. Mainly because by the time we get through Con season in september, A-chan's birthday and Halloween we're desperate for some time-out before the Midwinter Holidays clomp us over the head. Also because we're vegetarian and it causes more trouble to join my family for the holiday than joy. The vegetarianism has always been a source of bad feeling between me and my family and it's so nice just to ignore the whole thing and not get into fights and recriminations about something that doesn't really matter. (Why can't I bring my own food to family celebrations??? It drives me nuts that they get so angry when I bring food with me, but they don't want to cook things that we can eat...) And I most definately don't want my daughter to get caught up in the family politics over something that is supposed to be a pleasant holiday. I want to keep her as far away from it as possible. Another reason, though mostly an add-on to the others, is that we aren't so sure the arrival and subsequent survival of the first americans is something to celebrate with wild abandon. I have mixed feelings about it. Obviously if they didn't arrive and live through the first years of settlement then I and my husband, daughter, cats, et al wouldn't be here and enjoying this beautiful 70 degree thanksgiving day weather. But on the other hand the new americans did slaughter and displace thousands of the native peoples and completely destroy large parts of their cultures. We have yet to decide how we will tackle these issues in the future. What exactly do we want to tell A-chan about the first immigrants and such? And how do we go about explaining that we don't eat turkey when the rest of the nation is so enamored of the idea?

So here we are not celebrating but instead doing hard manual labor with huge boxes full of midwinter decorations and strings of tree lights so that we can celebrate another holiday later. Ketu put together our fake christmas tree to the utter delight of A-chan and all the cats. I'm not sure if A-chan had more fun carrying the branches to him or chasing away cats when they tried to eat the fake needles. She loved the "Christmas in the Stars" CD that was the first holiday music of the year - Yes we all love R2 and 3PO singing carols. We are teh g33ks! Our food today consisted of all american staples that have absolutely nothing to do with Thanksgiving: grilled cheese sandwiches (lunch), pizza (dinner). For dessert, however, we totally caved in to the delights of pumpkin pie (for Ketu) and pecan pie (for me). A-chan insisted that the cool whip was ice cream and refused to eat any pie in favor of the "eys cram".

When the empty boxes of holiday decorations go back into the attic we are going to send up some old baby toys too. We decided this a few days ago and somehow A-chan found out about it. She went out of her way to convince us today that her exersaucer was still a well-loved and wanted toy even though she hasn't fit into it in almost a year. It's just been sitting in our office for that long, waiting for an excuse to banish it to the attic. But now we are second guessing our decision. Should we leave it out? Or put it up and hope that she doesn't notice the lack of a huge circular entertainment device. And of course to make things even more difficult, the cats love to sleep in the gently curved and vaguely cave-like bottom. Oh yes, we are weak and I'm convinced that they have all banded together with some fiendish mind-control device!