It's Black Friday

2011.  My inbox on yahoo must have sixty messages, shop here,
find the best deals here.  One day only.  No, wait, TWO days only.

I have to admit, I have a 'thing' now about Black Friday.  I'm in my fifties.  That means I have to say things like "See!   This is what's wrong with America!"

But, I'm sorry, it is.   We take a day that is about gratitude, (that's Thanksgiving, by the way), and focusing on family, friends, abundance, and then top it off with commercial madness.

How can anyone focus on all there is to be grateful for when they are knowing they have to be out at midnight, standing out in the cold, to get that Asus Tablet for a hundred bucks off?

How can you sit back, relax, look around, and just feel the awe at all there is for you in this life when every commercial is about all you can save if you just bust your tail a bit more?

I admit, I sat here last night and saw a commercial that said if you go to their store at midnight you get this way cool camera.  I looked at the clock and I could just make it.  I thought that would be funny, all the spouting I did yesterday about people and their shopping madness to have the boys wake up and I show them a camera I got as a doobie prize for standing outside.

I stood outside last night and felt the quiet, listened to the stream, looked up at the beautiful sky through the trees.  No one even offered to give me a camera.  But, that's okay.  Until I am sucking pudding through a straw and forgetting my kids' names, I'll remember.

This morning, I was so grateful to see an e mail from the Chopra Center saying, "Don't let black Friday get you down!"  I was almost in tears!  They understand!!  Soothe my disconcerted soul, silly Indian man!  

I clicked it and it was about skip the mall frenzy, buy our meditation packages for cheap.

They didn't understand.  But, that's okay.  I do.

I had the best Thanksgiving of my life.  I am healing from congestive heart failure.  Long story.  Stay away from Actos, if all those law commercials don't convince you, take it from me.   A year plus of walking up the stairs left me winded and scared.  All because of one stupid pill.   Now, sadly taking drugs, but grateful for those happy pills, I cooked for seven plus hours and other than noisy feet, could have cooked for more.

("I could have cooked all night...." )

I kept thinking about "What is a feast?"  and it made me so happy.
A feast...celebrate...what to celebrate...I celebrate my sons.  I celebrate that I am fifty and now I know family can be a good word.
I celebrate I have created, with them, a nest where I am safe.  Where I am not criticized, belittled, afraid, but I can say how I feel, I can crawl in and point to the outside world and find comfort, peace.  I can ride in the wind with two amazing people and yell WAHOO!!!

If that's not a gift, well, it is a gift.  It's the greatest gift there is.

I celebrated having work that I'd go insane not doing.  Last year, we had a blizzard and no one could get here for a whole week.  No teaching voice!  I ended up teaching the family dog to sing "If you're happy and you know it, bark real loud..woof woof" and "How much is that doggie in the window?  woof woof"

She got it too, only barked on her lines.  She started to get excited and barked on mine.  I stopped and I said, "Sweetheart, you're stepping on my lines."    She kind of grumbled.  But, hey, she got it.

She passed away later that winter.  But, boy, she was a miracle dog if ever there was one.

The boys laughed at me singing with Sheba.  They said, "Mom, most people can take a week off of work."

I'm so grateful to earn my keep by doing my favorite thing with this line up of one amazing person after another.  I feel like I am watching a parade on teaching days.  Everyone so different, everyone so much fun, touching.   Then we get to explore music.  That thing that saved my life.  That thing I will never understand but always love with all my heart.

And, as cliche as it may be, boy do I celebrate having a wonderful circle of friends.

A feast!  We humanoids have been feasting since the dawn of humankind.  People feasted to honor Jesus, people feasted to honor coming to this wonderful land.  Now we feast to be stoked up to go to the mall?  I don't think so.  Not us wolfies.  We feasted for all the right reasons.  ha ha  We feasted because life is so darned good, it deserved a special day just to say thanks to it.

And feast we did.  Pineapple glazed yams, malt marinated turkey, wow, the best ever, stuffing with leeks, bacon and mushrooms.  We went around the table, praying, thanking God for things in our lives.
Of all the good food, good laughs, nothing will ever top hearing my youngest say, in a choked voice, that he is grateful for me, that he doesn't know how he would have made it without me.

Feeling is mutual, dude.