Giving Thanks and Diving In
The holidaying season is UPON us ladies, man fronds and gentlepeoples of all sorts. We have recently come home home from being up north with family for the day of gratitude, platitudes and mass turkey consumption by the meat eater population. Or, as I like to call it, Spanksgiving.
Needless to say I am raring to dive into this season of celebrating, fighting, gifting and being alive with family and friends. I LOVE this time of year.
Especially as I will be having one of the siblings from my cohort of like-minded losers visiting over Christmas and the banter will be ripe for the plucking. Give us a nice gin and tonic precious and see what fires we can stoke at the table.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it’s still like two ish weeks away. All in due time, first let’s be giving November a nice big fuck you finger as we dust her off and turn to D ecember with some naive hopefulness of ‘maybe this might be a nice, kind, non-doom times sort of month?’
Ah who am I kidding? Sure we wouldn’t be living if we weren’t wading through the muck looking for a little wisp of a thing alive and surviving to move us to keep going. At least we are all in it together.
READS
So, end of times eh? How do YOU feel about it? Are we genuinely considering that this is the de-volution (is this a word?) or de-gression (is THIS a word?) of the current world system we occupy. Some food for thought perhaps and maybe a legitimately interesting topic to bring up with beloved family members across the holly jolly dinner table of dodging minefields in conversations. I read this fabulous article last night, How I became ‘collapse aware' by Rosie Spinks, and can’t stop thinking about it. I would say this is perhaps one of the most richly provocative articles I have read in response to the current American elections and the fallout of how it played out. Spinks writes with language the way my deepest thoughts sound to myself even as I fail to articulate them on an external level. When I read her work I get a pain in the back of my neck from nodding my head so frequently and I basically highlight and rewrite a line every five because it’s just that good.
As always it’s good to balance this deep, brooding, exterior focused conversation with some thoughtful discourse on our beautiful interior selves. Parenting children at home as a focused job means that many of us humans live life with some measure of isolation and solitude. I myself have been trying to figure out how to seek friendship and community in a different way now I no longer go to a physical workplace which was my primary natural socialising zone. Last week I listened to a podcast where the two hosts said that female friendship for them was defined in some part through sharing an emotion with the other person and having them treat is as the most precious gem they have ever beheld. I LOVE THAT. Can it be true?
weeps in woman speak
Read this and dare not to cry.
The Monarchs, Music, and the Meaning of Life: The Most Touching Deathbed Love Letter Ever Written
BANTS
I know the internet sucks and our creativity is diminished our attention spans zapped and our health in the toilet. But jaysus , there is also so much good-good being made out there that it’s almost shocking how hard it is to train our selves to perceive and entwine with it.
The Wicked film is here, of course it probably flew T O T A L L Y under your radar my dear readers. >:^)
Juuuust kidding of course I for one am di-hi-hiyyyying to go see it specifically with my two sisters who live in a different country and who also have children. Can some fairy godperson make this happen for us please?
If you live any significant amount of time on social media then I am sure you have laid eyes on the Ariana Grande/Cynthia Arivo ‘bestie friend forever and ever’, emo girl in your deep-feelings-holding space-vibe press tour. It’s…sweet and bizarre and well feels very amusing and interesting to watch. Not to mention the noodles of funny spoof videos percolating on our socials out there. Wicked could be terrible, I would be ruined, but it could (probably) is amazing. The sets, the costumes, the sheer commitment to zealous work and high energy of the cast and crew. I hope it’s a dream, please if you have seen it and have thoughts share them with me.
EATS
I was tasked with bringing a dish to the festivities. I do not personally eat animal flesh (apart from sea dwelling ones) but wanted to bring a dish symbolically reminiscent of my homeland. I was gonna do scotch eggs to honour ye old Scottish lands but instead went with a tried and true Shepherd’s Pie. In the UK I believe (correct me if I am wrong) Shepherd's Pie is made with lamb, which tracks with the name. In Ireland we make it more often with beef. I substituted red lentils and mushrooms in mine. I have made this dish for Thanksgiving before and it was yummy noshy comforty food. ‘Twas really easy too, the hardest part is chopping all the annoying things one has to chop, and of course attempting to make anything when you have a stage five clinger toddler-baby.
This photo is crap. I know but seriously look at them buttery ‘taters.
I don’t know about you my loves but I am having a rough time right now. Spirits are low, and I find it challenging to keep myself going forward without rage quitting my life. I started this website as an accessible way to feel like I was making creative things that brought me joy and positively impacted people’s lives. Maintaining this site is costly financially and time wise. I wonder in this headspace I am in if it’s worth the using up of few and far between precious hours of freedom I get in a week. I feel weary going into the end of this year, I am hoping I am not alone in that. I hope this silly site of mine brings you, my few and far between readers, some positive contribution and is not just something you feel is obnoxious content trying to distract and deny you a fully lived life. Hopefully your weary feels seen by my weary and it emboldens us both to keep going for we know the darkest night will come and go and we are not ever alone in it.
Sorry for the rapid tone shift. Catch you later alligators.