Thanksgiving Prep FF

Oh, it's the perfect Friday Five for me today. I believe I'm experiencing the mullygrubs - Mom and Dad finished their annual visit yesterday, the holidays are closing in with no family again this year, and a general mully-grubbiness has latched on... so here comes the cure via FF!
Lying around all day
with some strange new deep blue
weekend funk, I'm not really asleep
when my sister calls
to say she's just hung up
from talking with Aunt Bertha
who is 89 and ill but managing
to take care of Uncle Frank
who is completely bed ridden.
Aunt Bert says
it's snowing there in Arkansas,
on Catfish Lane, and she hasn't been
able to walk out to their mailbox.
She's been suffering
from a bad case of the mulleygrubs.
The cure for the mulleygrubs,
she tells my sister,
is to get up and bake a cake.
If that doesn't do it, put on a red dress.

--Ginger Andrews (from Hurricane Sisters)

So this Friday before Thanksgiving, think about Aunt Bert and how she'll celebrate Thanksgiving! And how about YOU?

1. What is your cure for the "mulleygrubs"?
Love. Being around people who love me and whom I love. Friends, family, other loving people.
2. Where will you be for Thanksgiving?
We still haven't figured this out yet. Has anyone experienced some "alternative" options for the holiday that may be fun and meaningful? We're thinking of volunteering somewhere to serve food, but the local options are always swamped with volunteers. Other thoughts...?
3. What foods will be served? Which are traditional for your family?
All the familiar Thanksgivingy stuff are our traditions... but one year Jamie and I tried going to a Southern restaurant as an "alternative" :). It didn't work out so well for a holiday-feel.
4. How do you feel about Thanksgiving as a holiday?
Tough question! It is so many-layered and challenging. I tend to celebrate it as a secular U.S. holiday, a time for traditions and families and gratitude (to the Holy, of course, since that's my framework). I struggle with the historical conquest of native peoples, so if we celebrate publicly I try to honor that truth amidst giving thanks.
5. In this season of Thanksgiving, what are you grateful for?
Everything! I have been blessed with a wonderful spouse, a great job, a beautiful (rented) home and fun and loving cats. I have enough to eat, a warm bed and friends who care. I am healthy. My life is a veritable cornucopia of good things - what could I not be grateful for?!! (begone, mullygrubs!)

~~~

The mullygrubs have almost conquered

my spirit

trying to pull me

down into earth-bound disdain for

feeling

Grumpy-angry-old-woman-choice

to groan and diminish or grow and finish

life

on the ups. 

It is a choice, she croons in my defensive ear

it is a way of seeing the is-ness of it all.

What all,

I wonder impertinent

and prayerful

that she will convince me

won't stop at the roadblocks I throw into her path

to my shyly-peeking-open-soul-door.

keep coming, don't stop, hurdle the concrete barrier of my pain

and sweep the door open with Spirit-powered wind

hushing words

silently tucking themselves into my psyche's bedding

ready to sleep, and dream, and never

ever

fear