Tomorrow's Thanksgiving

Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. It will be just Sue and me. We’re keeping it small. When I was at the grocery store today the clerk asked me if I was picking up last-minute stuff. I guess it was because I wasn’t buying very much. Olives. Prosciutto. Rolls. A small bag of beans. A ham hock for the beans. No, I said. One of the kids is in New York and the other is in Florida, so it’s just my wife and me. It sounded kind of pathetic, as the words came out of my mouth. Just a couple of people getting on in years, spending Thanksgiving alone. There’s more and more of that every year as both kids get older and on with their own lives. I remember my parents feeling the same way.

We’re ok. We don’t really do holidays that much anyway, except maybe for Christmas, but we don’t want to ignore them either. A friend of Sue’s called her the other day to see if she wanted to go for a walk tomorrow because her husband will be watching sports all day. I like the holidays, though, and this year it’s been kind of tough. Money is tight since we had to buy a new used truck, and I haven’t found any work since the beginning of the year. And the election seems to take a lot out of you. Just the sheer emotion of it all. The outcome makes you wonder what’s going to happen, and uncertainty is anxiety-making, though we do have plenty to be thankful for, just starting with each other. It’s just the times. Alley Cat Theater is coming along and I have high hopes for that project, but that’s a long way off, too. I’ll know in January when I’m in Vermont at the Vermont Studio Center if I got funding. If I don’t, I’m not sure what I’ll do.

I was going to make salmon but it wasn’t local at the fish store, so I bought halibut, which was out of Boston. I really support local farmers and fishermen, and it has to be wild-caught or organic. Our food chain has become pretty much compromised over the years, thanks to our bought and paid-for politicians in Washington and their lobbying friends. As my mother used to say, they’re all in cahoots, and it’s true. If this past election didn’t prove that, I don’t know what will convince the American people. They’ll just believe what they want to believe.

Bay scallops were $37.99 a pound. Is that normal? I asked, knowing full well it wasn’t. It seems kind of expensive. It’s a little high, he answered, in that understated way some New Englanders have. Martha Vineyards’ scallops are only producing about 100 pounds a day. I guess that’s not a lot to go around. I prefer bay scallops, but bought sea scallops for $20 a pound, and got a little over a half pound. I’m roasting brussel sprouts that came from our garden, and making rice, since we already have it and it’s cheap. I buy everything on sale. I told Sue I’d make French toast for her for breakfast. That’s her favorite, and I don’t usually make it during the week. It’s a holiday that’s all about food (and well, getting together with family, but that’s not happening) so I imagine if the rain holds off we might go over to the Blue Hills for a hike. My one knee has really been bothering me though from me pushing it one day over there in the Blue Hills, so a nice stroll in the woods would be fine to keep the sludge moving.

It almost seems as if we’re doing the holidays underwater, in that slow-motion way, going through the motions but it seems we’re in a dream. Next week is Sue’s birthday, then the week after we’re going to New York for Ferris Wheel Management’s Christmas party, then it will be Christmas, and then I’ll be in Vermont, working on Plank. There’s a few parties mixed in there, but again, it’s the election that I think is throwing us all. I called the election, and I hated the fact that I knew Trump would get elected. Arrogance on the part of the Clintons and corruption in the DNC gave the election away, coupled with the press not doing its job, which it gave up on a long time ago. They don’t report on the news anymore; its job is to just make money now, and that means pushing an agenda set by the advertisers. I keep working on Plank, and want pull up The New American, too. I just keep crossing my fingers that Alley Cat Theater will work and I can put these plays on. I guess what I can be most thankful for is just the chance to do this. Isn’t that what we used to say about the United States? The land of opportunity. Just give us the opportunity and we’ll take it from here?