Thanksgiving

I am about as "all American" as it comes. No, I'm not overly crazy about baseball (it's like watching paint dry) - but I do love football...think pointy ended ball, the Indianapolis Colts, etc and you've got the picture. I love hot dogs and chips, an icy cold Diet Coke, the Fourth of July, and John Phillip Sousa.

Now, it doesn't get much more 'American' than Thanksgiving - Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, the Maria, Pinta, and Santa Maria And really who doesn't love a perfectly cooked turkey; a mound of mashed spuds with a heaping spoonful of homemade noodles nestled down in the taters; fresh cranberry salad; and, a piece of my mother's famous pumpkin cream cheese pie - followed by the obligatory carbohydrate coma?!?!?!?!! Certainly, not me - I love it all.

My whole life we have literally traveled over the river and through the wood (though the wood has shrunk considerably!) to grandmother's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It is my father's mother, and it is the house her father built - we like our 'roots' in my family! It is a wonderful old farm house, and when I'm there I often think, 'if these walls could talk'......

Well today, in the midst of the pre-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas insanity I get a phone call from my sister-in-law....who just doesn't call to chat, especially during the work day. Thought everyone who needed my new e-mail address had gotten it....well, evidently not. Seems one of my cousins, my uncle's daughter tried to e-mail me and it got 'bounced back'....long story short, my 94 year old grandmother was en route to the hospital, seems she has fractured her femur and is going to need surgery. Look, nobody wants a 94 year old to have surgery...not doctors or nurses or families....AND certainly not my grandmother. But, really there is nothing 'elective' about this - so that eliminates all the head scratching and questioning about whether something 'should' be done...depending on your perspective, I guess this is could be a 'good' thing.

Historically Thanksgiving is kind of a dicey time in my universe for health issues....my father, with all his 'big' cancer announcements occurred around Thanksgiving, usually right before - when mom got sick, Thanksgiving was a disaster, she was in the hospital, and I've had my own health issues at this time of year....we just don't seem to have good Thanksgiving 'mojo'.

People who know me know I've developed the philosophy of 'don't going looking for trouble, trouble will find you soon enough' - it just really is a fact . But, that being said, I've had a 'feeling' for awhile about my grandmother and this holiday season (to cap it off, my sister tells me this afternoon she had been 'thinking' about our grandmother and Thanksgiving) - I didn't have a 'good' reason to have 'a feeling', but I did. And just for the record, my 'feeling(s)' are notoriously right.

So anyway, there you have it. She is a strong and somewhat cantankerous woman - she's going to have surgery tomorrow morning and I'm sure she will be fine...it may slow her down a little bit, but it's OK, she's earned the right....she won't like it....oh well.....

As 'All-American' as I am, I do have some 'issues' with Thanksgiving - I might pardon all those turkeys given the chance!!! (Does anyone but me remember the WKRP episode when they did the 'Thanksgiving promo' and dropped turkeys from a helicopter.....turkeys can't fly!!!)