Happy Thanksgiving

I've always contended that, in a past life, I was the ultimate Betty Crocker wife and mother...either that, or a farmer's wife with a house full of mouths to feed. Reason being: I'm notorious for over-cooking. If we're expecting 4 for dinner, I instinctively make enough to feed at least 8. I also get a strange pleasure out of planning, organizing and making things "just so" in my home (although, if you were to happen to drop by on any given occasion, you'd question the above statement).

Another occurrence to substantiate my past-life theory: Every Thanksgiving morning in recent memory, I've awoken really early--I mean, unreasonably early--not because I have to, but because my body wakes me up around 5am or so (as I write this, it's currently 6:26am and I've been up for about 30 min or so, after laying in bed for awhile, trying to will myself back to sleep). I like to think of this behavior as a reflection of, what famed Psychoanalyst, Carl Jung would call our "collective unconscious". Collective unconscious has been described as a "storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from man's ancestral past, a past that includes not only the racial history of man as a separate species but his pre-human or animal ancestry as well.*"

Generations of domesticated housewives and mothers have arisen at ridiculous hours of the morning on Thanksgiving Day for years and years (or at least since 1863--it wasn't until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving that the tradition really became part of America's culture. The only other change was when Franklin Roosevelt changed the date to the fourth Thursday in 1939*), tied aprons on, put a silky scarf on over their rollers, popped a Valium with a bloody Mary chaser and began the task of cooking the Holiday meal. Somewhere, encoded in my DNA, is the latent urge to get up before the sun and begin basting, sauteing and chopping. Even though I don't usually have to cook on Thanksgiving Day, I've learned not to even fight the urge anymore because my body won't let me go back to sleep. I only wish that the Macy's parade started earlier, so that I'd have something to watch on tv instead of infomercials. OR, even better...if the notorious, "Black Friday" shopping event were to happen on Thanksgiving morning instead of the day after. I could totally be up, dressed and ready to go at 4am on Thanksgiving morning, in order to elbow, kick and punch other people for $5 off of an electric blanket at Sears.

Since you've been so patient with me and my wordy, nerdy post, I'll include a picture for your viewing pleasure. Did I tell you that Santa stopped by my house last weekend, during our early Thanksgiving celebration? (When, yes, we did have way more food than was necessary--just the way that I like it.)

Anna was not digging Santa so much and, pulling from her collective unconscious, hung onto her Daddy like a baby baboon on a banana tree

*Thanks Mom and Dad for all of that money spent on college. I think that I just finally redeemed it's value in this post. Oh and how cool is the internet for plagiarism? Kids these days...so lucky. When I was a kid, I used to have to walk 3 miles in the snow to get to the library, to plagiarize from actual books.