weird holidays

[billy rubin]

in america, we celebrate thanksgiving.

nobody knows why we do it, and if you look atthe history, its never made very much sense.

its a day when millions of americans travel and die on the highways in order to arrive at a family feast where where they have legendary political arguments with people we never see at any other time.

in my own prairie past, the meal transformed from women in the kitchen and men on the porch to women anywhere talking about cooking and babies, and men anywhere talking about automobiles and football. the kids had their own little cardtables to fuss at each other.

then th emen wander off and the women clean up.

somewhere theres a reason for this.

right now, im not attending anybody else's event. im old enough to do my own now. everybody else is dead. now im the receding wave, running backwards down from the strand into the surf, there to be absorbed into the zeitgeist..

i have my number three and number two son, my number two daughter and her husband, and a visitor from south afrcica, zulu i imagine, who has been abandoned by the local quaker school for a week or two. the wife is in the borderlands up north, with her mother who has had abdominal surgery and needs an offspring from a thousand miles to the south because the two kids  close enough to get there in an hour are too busy.

isnt that how the world works?

anyway, here in appalachia, its a multi cultural extravaganza, complete with my live in son not talking to me except in profanities,  because i am imperfect.

oh well.

i went through that too when i was 21 years old. eventually he will discover that ive learned a great deal, and it will be better.

but in the meantime, theres roast ham, aqua fresca, fried rice, oklahoma cornbread, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, chickasaw succotash, and whatever else. with mexico, america, south africa, and oklahoma, theres no telling what will show up on the table.

ill take what i can get. my kids are important to me, whether they like me right now or not.

[billy rubin]

so like, happy thanksgiving.

[Dark Lightning]

Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving! I'm happy because my son replaced a leaking pipe on the water heater. I'm not scaling ladders with these knees. We no sooner get to it and I notice that the hot water expansion tank is seeping. If I'd've seen it sooner, I would have got it when I got the replacement pipe. Now, we'll have to shut the water off again to change that out. I hope it doesn't start spraying soon. I'm not buying anything tomorrow; I'm only going to drive to get my blood pressure retested. It's down from blood-spraying from the eyes pressure, but the nurse has to check it anyway.