Jan from RevGals offers this week’s Friday Five:

The Cure

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”? Depends on what’s causing them! Sometimes I need to do something creative (like baking bread, knitting, sewing). Sometimes I need time out of the house with a friend. Sometimes I need sleep. And sometimes, I need to tackle a chore that I’ve been avoiding (and will get a monkey off my back if I just DO it.)

2. Where will you be for Thanksgiving? We will be here — both The Johnnie and Reedy Girl will be home. We are opening our home for folks from church who are away from their own families and want to have a dinner with us.

3. What foods will be served? Which are traditional for your family? A turkey, spiral sliced ham, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, some form of sweet potatoes. Friends are bringing venison! We’ll be baking pies. Here at home, we tend to stay with the tried-and true. Now if we were at the beach, it would be a tasty bit of mahi-mahi or some other fresh-caught fish, grilled to perfection.

4. How do you feel about Thanksgiving as a holiday? I think it is a good idea, however, it seems to get missed by many and used as a warm up to the December buying sprees. (Of which I am a part…)

5. In this season of Thanksgiving, what are you grateful for? I have been doing a “30 Days of Thanksgiving” every day on Facebook. Every day I have found it really quite easy to write about something that I am truly blessed to have. I won’t repeat them here. 🙂

BONUS: Describe Aunt Bert’s Thanksgiving. I’ve spent Thanksgivings where I’ve divided my attention between the role of chef and caregiver. It’s emotionally, physically and spiritually exhausting to pretend that nothing is out of the ordinary, and to try and make it a “normal” Thanksgiving. I learned after a couple of experiences that it is just easier to “buy the dinner in a box” from a place like Whole Foods. Even the sides. It was less stress to just warm it all up, and it meant that we had a dinner together, even if I was not creating culinary masterpieces. It was about time and love and caring – not looking like the next Top Chef.