Thanksgiving

I am interrupting my blog posts about our travel to New Mexico to celebrate Thanksgiving Day. It’s a good time to contemplate…to be thankful for the abundance that is ours.

In times past, the season was celebrating the abundant availability of food as everything was harvested before winter. I still feel a little of that from the CSA shares this past fall. I have sweet potatoes and garlic in a big bowl on our (unused) dining room table. There is butternut squash puree and shredded squash in the freezer. I have frozen greens (for soups) and fruit beety in there too. I made zucchini bread with the shreds and mousse with the butternut squash puree for our Thanksgiving dinner. It feels good to still have the direct linkage to the fall harvest for part of our Thanksgiving meal. I am thankful that between the CSA and Wegmans – there are bountiful choices for flavorful and nutritious foods that are easily available to us.

We are just back from our trip to New Mexico. On recent trips, it seems like we have honed our focus to the types of activities we enjoy…in new locales. Having the wherewithal to make choices for travel and other activities is certainly something to be thankful for.

Sometimes little things make a substantial impact on our perception of how life is going. Right before we left for New Mexico, our washing machine broke. There was not time to get it serviced before we left….so it waited until the day after we got back. I’m thankful that it was easily fixed (sock in the water pump…not something that would require a new washing machine) and that we’ve already done the piles of laundry from our trip.

This holiday finds us feeling good physically and emotionally. My son-in-law defended his dissertation research on Monday and already has a postdoc lined up at the University of Pittsburgh. My daughter will defend in the spring and is busily applying for postdocs now. They’ll spend a quiet Thanksgiving in Arizona and we’ll do the same in Maryland; the rest of the family is in Texas. I’m thankful 2016 has been a good year for us all.

Happy Thanksgiving!