I did not find the gratitude I was searching for last week. Wouldn't it be wonderful to read that, Hallmark-movie-like, I awoke on Thanksgiving morning with a full resilience bucket and an abundance of … thankfulness?

Ah, to be so blithely happy. To find joy in the simple pleasure of feeding my family. 

It's not so easy as all that. For anyone, if we're being honest. 

I do find joy in putting a well-executed meal on the table, particularly on a nicely set holiday table. And our day together was lovely. A few bumps occurred, as expected … in particular the meringue crust for the chocolate cream pie but that edifying story will have to wait for my bitterness to fade to a mild astringency. Suffice to say, the meringue did things meringue is not supposed to do, namely expand during cooking to fit all the available space, and I do mean all.

As anyone who cooks with egg whites knows, meringue does not expand, does not spread, does not change its shape during cooking. In fact, it simply hardens, creates a lovely, crisp, outer crust, a shell if you will, that gives way to a chewy, flavorful center. The great thing about meringue is that it is as consistent as Greenwich Mean Time. Usually.

ANYWAY … since I'm clearly not over the meringue crust, we'll be moving on now.

The thing about grief -- which shows up as weariness, anger, lachrymosity, sometimes simply the absence of gratitude -- is that it's not linear. It's not predictable. It's not rational. It's an emotional game of pinball. 

Sometimes, you sit in a kickout hole, racking up points while the chimes ring out your success. Sometimes, you bobble a popper and .... drain. It doesn't matter how well you play, how much experience you have, this is the game and you get the lane that the plunger sends you to. Period. 

For those of you asking, yes, actually, I did play a lot of pinball when I was a younger version of myself. Now, I mostly play open world video games or tabletop RPG like DnD or Pathfinder. In video games, I'm the character who meanders all over the map, doing all the side quests, finding all the treasure chests, while the NPCs beg me to do the boss battle and save their villages. 

"Hurry, Thimul." (that's my current character's name). "Our village needs you." Yeah, yeah. But first, I need to find out who stole Remi's chickens. Oh, and I need to return Froki's bow. And I still haven't figured out who is selling skooma in Riften. Your villages will be fine. I'll get around to that boss battle … eventually.

When I play tabletop RPG, I am that player, the one who is a little too into her role. GooseGoose, my current Pathfinder character, is a goose bard. Yes, you read that correctly. I play a talking goose who travels from town to town singing for money. And yes, I do sing all the time in the game -- as I do in real life, to the abiding chagrin of my youngest. (MOM. You're singing "Elmo's World" again.) 

Also, yes, in game, I honk a lot. It's something I'm less inclined toward in the real world though, which honestly is disappointing. I'd like to be the person who walks through Target occasionally issuing a gentle honk but it would feel performative so I just don't do it generally. 

Wow. How did we get on this topic?  I remember. I was avoiding talking about grief. Oh no. And now we're out of time. We'll have to postpone the grief talk to my next post.

If you have an Audible membership, consider listening to Tim Curry's narration of A Christmas Carol. I listened to it while prepping the Thanksgiving meal and it's honestly quite delightful.

Much love.

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