Gobble Gobble

Just got done eating a wonderful dinner. My mom and I resolved to make our own Thanksgiving dinner this year, which is a big deal. Our family was invited to two dinners this year, and though we appreciated the offer, we really wanted to just have a layed back, enjoyable meal without the awkwardness of being in someone else's home stuffing our faces and then scrounging up decent conversations with people we rarely see. Okay, maybe that wasn't my mom's reasoning, but it was close, I'm sure.
So, this morning at about 4:30, my mom went to the store and bought one of the last two turkeys (good to know we weren't the only losers who wait until the day of to buy supplies). One of the guys that works there even showed her where he hid some extra boxes of pumkin bread mix for the last minute folks.
I worked on the apple pie crust for at least two hours. It was either too dry, too moist, too crumbly, etc. I finally got one batch to roll out perfectly, but as I lifted it to line the glass pan, I realized I didn't put enough flour underneath it, and it stuck to the counter. My luck. I ended up lumping it together and flattening it out in the pan instead. You gotta do what you gotta do to make stuff work.
The turkey, which was supposed to only take 3 hours to cook, took 5 hours, so our 3 o'clock meal turned into a 5 o'clock meal. But that's okay. It was satisfying.

Dropped quote from dinner conversation:
Mom - "Jared, I have one question, and I want the truth. What was your harmonica, a roll of toliet paper, your inhaler, and a bar of soap doing in your pillow case?"

You had to be there, I guess.

How was everyone else's Thanksgiving? Or, if you don't live in the US, how has your week been so far?

Cheers,

Dani

PS. Check out the feedback form I made (the link should be on the toolbar at the bottom of the window). Fill it out, por favor! (and if the link doesn't work, lemme know). Thanksss.

Devestation and Reform

I've learned so much lately about life. These things just hit me like a ton of bricks, it seems.
First off, I can't even begin to explain the dynamics of my family because we'd be here for several hours, but I can say that the past's events left me with ill feelings toward my dad. Holding a grudge, they say, is harmful to the soul. But how can you forgive someone who doesn't even understand that they've hurt you? Like they filter out what they don't want to hear. What if that person is your father, and you can't just purge your life of him because he's bad for you. What's harder, in my case, is that all of this is unspoken. There is an elephant in the room, so to speak, every time we are in the same room. Neither of us speak of it.
But I've discovered an explanation for the way he is, and why he acts the way he does, and it is that he can't understand. He's not a cold-hearted person who can't see that he's pushing away the people that love him most in this world. He's simply incapable of making that connection. There are psychological labels for it, but I'm going to leave it at that. By coming to this realization, I am more willing to give him a chance. More willing to actually hang out with him. It's just kind of sad that that is all it will ever be. Hanging out. The role of a "father" is somewhat void in my life.
But that's where I let go of the past and look at what I have right now in the present moment. I have a Father that answers me. Like, seriously answers me. If you're turned off to this because it sounds cliche, I don't blame you, but know that I don't write hokey crap just because it sounds nice. I asked God to show me some things recently, and he immediantly gave me an answer that I could not attribute to anything but Him. I know that my healing, physically and emotionally, is going to only come from Him. I just have to learn that I can't control my own healing process. He's already planned it for me. Sucks for an uptight worrier like me, but I'm sure it won't suck for long.
I'll save some of the other things for another time. I'm supposed to be finishing an essay that is due in 45 minutes (that I've had all week to do). STUPID END OF THE SEMESTERR.


Cheers,
Dani

PS. What's new with all of you? Tell me about stuff.

Attractive Legs.. for Ants

Today I asked my mom to pick me up some lemon juice from Walmart while she got groceries. She asked me why I needed lemon juice. I told her not to worry about it, but she wouldn't let it go, so I told her it was for a cosmetic experiment and not to judge me and to get me my freakin' lemon juice (I was kinder than that, though).
She knows I'm a product junky, and she also knows that I like to try unconventional beauty treatments. I recently learned about "sugaring" for hair removal, and when I saw that you could do it at home, there was no way I was going to not try it. The recipe called for sugar, water, and lemon juice. That's it. And I looked up the tecnique on youtube and decided it didn't look that hard. I could do that too. No sweat.
I mixed the sugar paste (which entails heating the ingredients on the stove until the mixture is dark brown). Then I let it cool, poured it into a container, and followed the directions for application.
You have to grab a glob of this sticky stuff with your hands, roll it into a ball, smooth it on with pressure against the grain of your hair growth, and then pull it off little by little and quickly with the growth of your hair. It was not by any means as easy as I thought it would be. My mixture was perfect, and I applied it correctly, but my hairs got together and decided they weren't going to go without a fight. Just before I swiped the sugar off, one yelled, "HOLD, brothers!" Two were sleeping, so they came out, but the others were on their game.
I love personifying random, non-living things :]

So, about that last post, it was a bit random, I know. Totally unlike what I usually write. Yes, it was about apples; yes, my grandmother really had an apple tree with nasty apples on it; yes, there is some subtext in there. Just kinda felt like writing it.

And thus ends my crazy post for today. I need to be focusing on the two essays I have to write this weekend.

Arrivedercci!

Purple, Yellow, Rotting, Bruised

For as long as I could remember, the apples never looked very appetizing. I'm not sure they were ever really fit to eat. Maybe when the tree was young, maybe then my grandma would go outside and gather up the apples for a pie or something. I never asked her, though, so I'm not sure.
But for as long as I've been around, they have been rotten. Even the new ones still on the tree. I pick up a fallen apple and turn it over and over in my hands. Its skin is yellow and pale. And bruised. Painfully bruised. Some spots are soft and mushy, and others are compact as if there is a small rock underneath. The surface is broken in a few places, and its begun to dry out.
I look around and see that the other fallen apples are the same way. Tossing the apple aside, I sit under the shade of the tree in the lush, green grass. We don't have grass like this in my yard, or in any yards in our neighborhood for that matter. Leaning against the tree, I look around me. I see purple, yellow, rotting, bruised apples nestled in a carpet of green. I see my legs stretched out in front of me, craddled in the carpet of green next to purple, yellow, rotting, bruised apples.

I pull my legs in to my chest and begin to cry.

I'M NOT DEAD

I swear. I've just got sooo many things going on. Deadlines. sleep. Work. food. Family. School. You know how it goes.
I've got this major research paper due tomorrow, and guess what page I'm on. Page 5. Yeah. Sad thing is, I've been working my butt off on it. It's just a really confusing topic. I also went to advising for classes in the Spring (for which I register next week). I'm all like, "Here's a list of the classes I'd like to take," and the guy's all like, "Herm, humph, errr, we usually put our second semester students in these classes." So he signs his name next to his classes, but I've already checked to make sure my classes fulfill my credits, and they do, so maybe he just doesn't like the classes I chose. In which case he should probably pull some strings to get those classes out of the catalogue, or at least take them off the approved list on my student web account so that next time I won't spend my already limited time making up a schedule. Or maybe he should just change jobs.

Work is pretty great. I just got home from it, so I'm not incredibly enthusiastic about it at the moment. Eight hours is draining. But I work with some interesting people, and I'm learning some neat-o stuff about administrative management and stuff. Yeah, I just used neat-o.

That's all I really feel like writing about at the moment. Maybe I'll get some free time and some interesting things to talk about one day soon.

Sincerely,

Danielle Dani