Thanksgiving

Due to the kid's being gone today, I have been able to spend the morning lazing around with the Rock Star and the Beautiful Redhead.

Instead of peeling potatoes and checking on the turkey, we threw a chicken in the crock pot and assembled an enchilada casserole for later.  Maybe tomorrow.

My house is clean thanks to a week of "vacation" spent cleaning.  I have discovered that I hate dusting more than anything.  Whether that is due to it not being "important" enough to me or to the incredible amount of dust that my house seems to constantly recycle, I do not know.  What I do know is that in putting off dusting the other day, I decided to instead apply more rubber cement to the pane of glass that has been rattling in my front door.

During this exercise, it occurred to me that the Rock Star was coming home and would like nothing better than to help his mother with this project.  Stupidly, and in true Melinda form, I decided to just "press on".

Well, the good new is that I no longer have a pane of glass rattling in my front door.  

The bad news is that I have no pane of glass in my front door.

I plasticised over both the inside and the outside of the hole where the pane should be, ordered more glass that won't be here until next week, and still had to dust.

I bit the bullet and got the rest of the house clean.  I had to.  And do you know the twins didn't even notice there was no glass in the door?  Gotta love those boys, huh?  I mean, as long as there is food, nothing else really matters or even registers with them.  It used to drive me crazy as a "girl", but as a mother I count on it.  I have even become comfortable with it.  So comfortable, in fact, I have come to rely on it, and do you know, it seems better this way.

Anyway, with all that cleaning done, it left yesterday free to watch Gone With The Wind several times, as it was on continuous loop on AMC yesterday.  

I must confess, watching Scarlett always makes me feel better about who I am.  Also, I don't really get why Clark Gable was considered so good looking.  I guess maybe you had to be there.  But in the end, when he tells her he doesn't give a damn?  It really doesn't get any better than that.  It is kind of sad because she isn't a completely terrible person, and at that point, she could actually be kind of a good person, but of course by then, it 's too late.  Just like life.  Karma gets Scarlett too, and boy does she ever have it coming.

I think my favorite line/scene in that movie is where Scarlett is trying to get Mammy to pull her corset tight enough to make her waist 18 1/2 inches.  Again.  Mammy says "Now, Mz Scahlet, you done gone and had a baby.  You ain't nevah gone be 18 1/2 inches again, and there ain't nothing you can do about it."

That is the truth.  And furthermore, ain't nothin in this world where an 18 1/2 inch waist is gone help with, honey.  Lay that down and forget about it.  Plenty of more important things to worry about right in front of you.

I am no Scarlett, thanks be to God, but she wasn't all bad.  In fact, if she could have gotten the Southern  Lady thing out of her mind, she could have.....well, what couldn't she have done?

She is just the kind to have had enchiladas instead of turkey if she felt like.  We all need enough selfishness to do what makes us happy, regardless of what anybody thinks about it.

Embrace your self involvement, women, just don't let it take over your good sense.  Realizing what is really important is positively liberating, no bra burning needed.

In the end, I promise you the world won't stop spinning.  I also promise you that turkey and stuffing do not actually make it onto people list of important things.  Nobody will remember what kind of stuffing you fixed.  They might remember if you burnt up the turkey, or burnt up the house if you are the turkey frying kind, but other than some horrible catastrophe, all they will remember is each other, and the funny things that happened that day.  It's all that's important.  You should find that a relief, especially if you are a woman.

I wish for you today to be thankful for all that you have, even if that includes turkey.  But I hope that you have so much turkey comes so far down on the list that it doesn't even matter.

Don't be a Scarlett, never able to see what's right in front of you before it's too late.  Live every moment to it's fullest and don't worry about the mess.  It will be there when you are ready to clean it up.  I promise you that, too.