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So, I wrote this on my new tablet, which is to say I thought I posted this around 1800 hours local and now it's midnight. Oops...Turkey has been in the oven a couple of hours with an hour to go. A pan of sage dressing & one of sweet potatoes w/onion & garlic just joined it. Apples are stewing with spices. A big ol' bowl of green beans is making friends with chopped garlic to prep for steaming, diced golden potatoes are in their stock pot of water, passively soaking up heat from the oven to expedite boiling them for mash while the turkey rests. Scarborough Fair bread is rising ahead of schedule, so we'll have extra starch to go with the other carbs. Cream is whipped & ready to go atop the pumpkin pie I always buy because a) I like store-bought pumpkin filling better than (almost) any home recipe I've tasted and b) it's easy.In short I have time on my hands. So I go online and read the news, I watch TV, and I do a lot of thinking. Dangerous thing, that.I hear & see all the usual Thanksgiving cliche jokes about men watching football while women slave away in the kitchen over a meal that will be eaten in 20 minutes and take four hours to clean up, and it irks me as it always does. First, it's wrong, if that's what happens. Second, I don't know why it should be so much work. I do NOT work hard on Thanksgiving. There's a lots of things in the oven for hours, yes. But work time? Not really. I do all the shop & chop prep in the prior couple of days -- and slicing things while watching my favorite recorded TV shows is just keeping my hands busy. Turkey day is mix, set to cook, clean as I go, and do a lot of relaxing. Movies & TV rather than sports, but I definitely get in my recliner time, so to speak. And the cleanup? Anything still dirty after supper is Spouseman's job. Period.No, we don't go out & about. We keep quiet holidays, Spouseman & me. Our families are scattered wide across the country and we are nesters. Thanksgiving is about contemplation, gratitude for the bounty we collect and consume, and lately, a lot of bemusement at the weirdness of the holiday itself.I worked retail for 23 Christmas seasons. (True confession, I loved the challenge of Christmas season in retail. It was FUN. But then I worked in a bookstore, so it was a wee bit different than most retail. ANYway. ) Thanksgiving Day often marked my last real day off until the new year. It was the calm before an exciting storm, a breather before the home stretch, the last chance to marshal up physical reserves and buckle up the emotional armor. For all those reasons I have long loved the third Thursday in November.Also a bunch of staple foods I love go on steep sale, so I can stock up like a squirrel preparing for cold winter. This day is a tasty "once-a-month cooking" occasion that once saved me hours on exhausted work days and now just saves me hours.Notice I didn't mention loving any of the theoretical reasons for Thanksgiving? That's because those reasons, as have been pointed out by people far more eloquent and knowledgable than me, are purely dangerous bullshit. I loved the Pilgrim story when I was 6 and 7 years old (who wouldn't? Spunky underdog rebels being embraced by their new neighbors?) but I am a history teacher's daughter. As soon as I could read she began to inoculate me against the comfortable mythology of colonial heroism. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a detailed survey course, but a foundation of "white Europeans were NOT good neighbors" was well-laid. Any lingering nostalgia was rubbed out over the years as the holiday's "ideals" became fetishized even as its dirty, bloody roots were dragged further into the open.So anyway. I love this day off, but not because it's Thanksgiving. All the Thanksgiving lies are pretty awful, really. But this day can be a time-away-from-work festive gathering day AND an educational springboard to raise awareness of poisonous lies. Events can be more than one thing.True confession 2. I also love Christmas, but in the same way I love Thanksgiving--not the materialistic consumerism, not even the Christian holiday itself, but as a storyteller, all the layered mythologies that swirl around midwinter appeal to the deepest parts of my psyche.Also I was raised in Advent traditions, and they hold a special spot in my heart. What's not to love about elevating the quiet work of preparation to a place of honor, and appreciating the importance of anticipation as a facet of celebration?But that's a post for another time. Not tired of my words yet? My published works are available on Amazon and all the other usual online retailers, or you can take free peeks at them on this page here. Science-fiction thrillers, science-fiction romance, and science fantasy, full length novels and shorter works. So many choices!