1. Acknowledging, first of all, the Extreme Suckitude and Crass Glorification and Whitewashing of Colonization upon which T-giving mythologies are based, I would like to point out, before going any further, that T-giving is a deeply problematic holiday, perhaps even more resonantly so in this part of the country. That said, my own T-giving celebration was spent at the house of a post-colonial scholar, with all of my extended adopted family. While the feast contained many traditional T-day foods (but, thankfully, none of those Midwestern aberrations such as green bean casserole with that scary fried onion in a can bullshit, nor anything involving marshmallows!), the assortment of guests was marvelously diverse and international. It was a lovely day.
2. For my T-giving contribution, I made a Raspberry Orange Trifle. (And yes, it’s probably weird to post pictures of food that one has made on the internet, but here’s an aerial view of the Raspberry Orange Trifle, in case one is into that sort of thing.)
3. I’m particularly thankful this year to have such kind and amazing friends who are always so unbelievably good to me in so many ways. I’m thankful that I have nice colleagues and absolutely awesome students. I’m thankful for my cats. I’m thankful for armadillos. And eBay. And star-nosed moles. And you, you, you, and you . . . yes, you.
5. Half-assed vacuuming is infinitely better than no vacuuming at all.
6. When one is shy, there is sometimes an unfortunate penchant for Overcompensatory Logorrhea, in which one’s mouth is moving and one’s brain, as if from a great distance, is watching on in either outright horror or eye-rolling disgust, and the thing that was coming out of one’s mouth that was supposed to be an Amusing Anecdote isn’t really all that amusing at all, and even worse, it makes it seem as if the Amusing Anecdote has some sort of Significant Subtext by which one was going out of one’s way to Make An Important Point that, in point of fact, one really wasn’t trying to make at all, and as if that weren’t bad enough, there’s no way to clarify and indicate that one wasn’t trying to Make That Important Point because in doing so one would then be Making A Different Sort of Point Altogether which would be equally, if not more so, troublesome. I’m just saying . . .
7. My favorite coffee shop in the whole wide world has wireless! How happy am I?!?!
8. Conversations With My Japanese Mother (Condensed Version):
JM: Name-Excluded-to-Protect-the-Innocent said she thought you such nice dresser.
AH: [Wistfully/Hopefully] Really? She did?
JM: Yeah. I think she was drunk. She must be drunk!