A Different Thanksgiving

It was a very quiet Thanksgiving, yet the silence was deafening. For some reason I kept going to the window and looking out, as though I was expecting someone. But I knew no one was coming. I wasn't even sure who I was looking for. Dad died in 2004, Robin in 2015 and Marie in September. Carl lives in Texas, Keith doesn't celebrate holidays and Clancy was spending the day with his ex-girlfriend.

 Yet I still made an almost 12 pound turkey (the smallest I could find), homemade gravy and the seasoned collard greens. Kitty made the rest of the meal, including the homemade mashed potatoes, corn, crescent rolls, strawberry cheesecake and sweet potato pie. I said the blessing and then we sat at the table to eat.

Nothing tasted like Thanksgiving to me. I ate very little because the food just didn't seem right, even though it was the same as it ever was. I finally realized it wasn't the food: it was me. I wasn't the same as I ever was. Even with my daughters there, I felt alone. I was too much in my head. I was remembering the last time Marie had Thanksgiving dinner with us when she lived with us, and how much she enjoyed the food and how happy she was. I remembered taking her on a drive one evening to see all of the houses decorated for Christmas, and how she loved the lights. Yep: I was missing her.

I believe it will be a different Christmas as well, but hopefully without the melancholy. I invited Clancy and Theresa over for Christmas Eve. Brie is going to go southern on us for Christmas dinner. I think that will help. Both of my daughters are phenomenal cooks, and with something non-traditional I think I'll be better about it. Time will certainly tell.

Why I Chew Cinnamon Gum

When I was a teenager, my best friends and I reached that age where we needed real information on men. So where could we get said information? That's right: Cosmopolitan magazine!

For those of you who may not know: Cosmo was/is a women's magazine for the 18-34 age bracket. Their description says, "People who are cosmopolitan have an air of glamour surrounding them, a sense that they've seen a lot of the world and are sophisticated and at ease with all different kinds of people". So what in the world were a group of 15-17 year-olds doing with this magazine? We were hoping to pick up some tips on getting boys and dating!

As the youngest of our group of friends, I had no business having anything to do with this magazine. I didn't date, had failed sex ed as a freshman and was just naïve in general. But I wanted to be like my friends so I oohed and ahhed over the articles like I had a clue what they were talking about. However, since they were way more experienced than I was, my friends had more than an inkling!

So as a 15-year-old, the only things that really caught my eye were some of the fashions (not that I was mature enough to wear what those ladies were barely wearing!) and I liked the makeup tips (not that I wore makeup!). But the best thing was at the end of the magazine they always had a short story that I would always read voraciously since I fancied myself quite the writer even at that tender young age. As a matter of fact, I thought about contacting Cosmo to see if they would consider serializing one of my books and running a chapter or two a month so I could be rich and famous! Granted, I couldn't quite write anything remotely resembling the sex scenes that were in the magazine (still can't!) but I was willing to give it a whirl. Yep, we see how that turned out, ha ha. But hope springs eternal!

After all of this time, I'm going to tell you what my main takeaway was from years of poring over Cosmo until I finally stopped reading it maybe 15 years ago. One of the articles was about what would make you unforgettable to a man. It included the 3 scents men can't resist: musk (as a teen I bought some Jovan Spring Musk cologne), vanilla (not my favorite scent so that wasn't going to work) and cinnamon. Bingo! To this day I still only chew cinnamon gum and use cinnamon Altoids.  Yet surprisingly I'm still not married. Thanks a lot Cosmo! No wonder I stopped reading you 😕 But at least my breath is always amazingly fresh 😉

First in the Garbage

Halloween was just over a week ago, and I always wonder: why do people give out yucky candy?

Of course one kid's yuck is another kid's yum, but some bad candies are just universal. Here is my Top 10 list of worst candies, in no particular order except for number one. Do you agree?

10. Necco wafers. Is it chalk? Is it plaster? Is it a Tums? Nope, because those items taste better! It's kind of dusty, and the colors have nothing to do with any kind of flavor and they're hard. Why do you hate children?

9. Circus peanuts. They are neither peanuts nor something you'd find at the circus. It's like stale, hard orange marshmallow in the shape of a peanut, and it squeaks when you're finally able to bite into it. Does anyone really eat those?

8. Good and Plenty. Plenty? Yes. Good? H to the no. I believe they get their flavor from licorice extract, or black licorice and that is not a good flavor. Why would anyone give that to a kid? 

7. Milk Duds. It's all in the name. Dud. It doesn't even try to taste like real chocolate and it majorly sticks to your teeth. No time for that!

6. Butter Mints. My mother loved these. They are those really soft pillow-shaped mints that like dissolved in your mouth. I remember when my brothers were in Boy Scouts, they sold tins of these 'pillow' mints as a fundraiser. My mother always bought more than one tin and would enjoy every single one of those mints. Ugh. Have at it Marie!

5. Tootsie Rolls. Goes along with Milk Duds. It's the Yoo-Hoo of candy. It isn't really chocolate, sticks to your teeth and it's a lot of work for very minimal, if any, satisfaction. It's like what you would eat if you were allergic to chocolate.

4. Raisinets. Just stop.

3. Black licorice. First of all, if you eat too much of it, it can cause life-threatening health complications. Besides that: it tastes gross.

2. Sugar Daddy. It tries to look like a lollipop because it has a stick, but it will take your teeth out if you bite it. It kind of tries to look like chocolate, but it's caramel. It's good if you're trying to lose a filling, because you will.

1. Candy Corn. There is absolutely nothing tasty about this. The colors do not equate to flavors. They are nothing but calories and sugar. The only good thing about this is you can invert them, stick them onto your teeth and call them fangs. You know you did this as a kid! At least that way you didn't have to eat them!

These are the candy types that end up in the garbage first. With that being said: what's on your list?