Baking a pumpkin pie with your three year old niece, and other small joys...

Today, I will spend Thanksgiving with my pregnant sister and her family. Since moving here, our bond has strengthened in ways I couldn't have imagined, but have always hoped for. I love being near my nieces and I love that my daughter can grow up with her cousins.

This year has been so full of good and necessary change -- and has brought so many blessings and changed so many relationships that I find it difficult to articulate my feelings.

I am so lucky for the people I have in my life; I find that family is more important than ever, and make a constant effort to be available and involved despite distance and differences.

Thanksgiving is an action holiday; it's more important to actively thank the people in your life than to tout it to the whole Internet. That said, I'm going to snuggle up next to my husband, feel my daughter move, and get ready to spend the day with people who are irreplacable to me.

I probably didn't think I'd enjoy a glass of Zinfandel with dinner either

When you're five, and twenty-five is light years away, it's easy to plan your entire life and set expectations of yourself. Of course, you still have imaginary friends and believe that pixies are real -- they're just very good at hiding in the bushes.

Like most everyone else, I had certain goals I thought I'd have accomplished at certain ages, and when I saw those birthdays pass without any significant change, I felt somehow inadequate - like my thirty year old self couldn't meet childhood expectations.

On my 30th birthday a friend called to ask how I was feeling and if I was having a good day. I remember saying to her that I thought I'd be somewhere else in life at this point and I was a little disappointed with reality versus the fantasy. In her wisdom, she told me that things I felt I lacked were things I had deliberately chosen to go without because the situation wasn't right, the timing wasn't right, and I wasn't right.

2006 has been so full of life and change that it makes most other years look like filler; years where a fine line and a few gray hairs were necessary to indicate the passage of time.

Nick likes to tease me that I'm late for certain life events like having a kid, or getting married. Every once in a while this bothers me and I wonder if maybe I am late, or I made a mistake that cost me some precious amount of time and *that's* why I strayed from the plan I developed at five.

But then I remember that at five I thought I would never like beer or wine, that all people and things were created equal, and that it was a tragedy when King Kong got killed. And, I really truly believed pixies lived in the bushes outside.

You are The Wheel of Fortune

Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of
intoxication with success

The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Dear paranoid young asian boy with the blue Honda,

If I have to hear your rude wailing car alarm go off one more time, I will be compelled to cause injury to your stupid blue Accord.

*Nobody* wants to steal your car that bad. Not Butters the cat, who rubs against the tires, not me, nor my trash bag that lightly brushes your trunk, and certainly not the hardworking garbage men who drive by the parking lot to pick up our trash.

Either tone down the sensitivity, or I will give you something to be sensitive about. I have a feeling that should someone actually try to steal your car, you wouldn't even come out and check because the wailing-buzzing-beeping-hooting-tooting-screeching noise comes and goes so many times in the same 24 hour period.

There are so many amazing things happening right now, and I'm hesitant to talk about them just yet; I'll know more soon and I will definitely post an update when the time comes.

We're still measuring about two weeks larger than our due date, so UCD has scheduled yet another ultrasound to determine how big this kid actually is. I'm not really sure what we are going to find out, especially since these ultrasounds have a range of one pound in either direction, but I'm going in regardless. I want to place bets on how large she is to see if I can make some money off my kid before she's even born.

I'm gonna guess she'll weigh in at 7 - 7.5 lbs.

Apparently she's dropped, but to be perfectly honest the changes have been so subtle I didn't even notice, although I do enjoy being able to eat more than a yogurt for lunch.

I find that my energy is waning and I've no way to make a moderately interesting conclusion to this post, which is why I haven't been posting as much lately.

So with that, I'll post more when I have opportunity, energy, and something meaningful or interesting to say.

Even the Iron Chef has to cook a normal meal sometimes

It comes down to a couple things:

1) It's all the same after it's been chewed up and digested.

2) It is so much more fun to cook with someone who isn't a control freak and welcomes help rather than criticizing any tiny thing that is done differently from what they think is "right".

Although, #2 is relevant in more than just cooking.