Thursday, November 24, 2022
Twenty-Two Years of Blogging Thanksgiving
This year we had most of our meal from Boston Market. The husband and the oldest daughter went to pick up the meal. The market accidentally gave us a full pre-cooked bird instead of just the breast to carve, and the husband asked the market worker if he was sure, and the worker just shrugged and said *he* didn't put the meals together. So we've got enough turkey to feed a small army, and just us four. Well, two teens count as four adults with their appetites, so enough food for a week, anyway. I was going to make cranberries and sweet potatoes, but after seeing all the food cut it just back to cranberries. The oldest child likes the family recipe, boiled berries in sugar and orange zest, like me. The youngest likes the canned jelly, which I had been careful to buy a month ago to make sure it was on hand. I did get up and make drop biscuits early. All the four of us have done today is lay around and eat and watch TV and play video games.
Which is a pretty nice holiday, when you think on it. There's been pie. Truthfully though, we eat pumkin pie all year round; it's one of my key comfort foods. It's the bird that makes it all special.
I have below rounded up links to previous Thanksgving posts, as many of the posts from Boston are only available on the wayback machine. I also spent some time looking through LiveJournal. My memory of posting on Livejournal is flawed - I thought I had written quite a bit more on that platform, but it turns out my activity there between 2003 and 2009 was mostly just talking to friends. So here's the line-up. Links should open in a new window.
Thanksgiving 2000 (scroll down to where it says Thanksgiving)
Thanksgiving 2001
Thanksgiving 2002
Thanksgiving 2003 and https://einatlanta.livejournal.com/2003/11/19/
Thanksgiving 2004
Thanksgiving 2005
Thanksgiving 2006 - no specific Thanksgiving post was made over on LJ.
Thanksgiving 2007 on LJ
By Thanksgiving 2008 I was just posting about keeping two babies healthy on LJ, and nothing about how we spent the holiday.
And then I just had to stop for a while, as having two kids was quite a lot. I kept up on FB, but have never really loved that platform. I did search my post history there, and here is what I found:
No posts mentioning Thanksgiving in 2009. I think 2009 was the year my Grandma Alice came up for Thanksgiving and two of my best friends moved to Atlanta. The youngest ran around the table eating everyone's scraps after the meal and we all laughed. My mother's family always loved watching my youngest as a baby, because she looked so much like babies on that side. The older child the husband and I made always looked like his side of the family, and similar delight was had by his few family members in the same way.
I was sick November 2010. No posts about anything but work and being sick. I'm sure we went to Nashville.
In 2011, we ordered the fried turkey from Popeyes. I think friends from in town joined us for the meal.
In 2012, two of our best friends joined us at the husband's parents in Nashville, and the children got their first digital cameras in the form of LeapPads. They started taking their own pictures that year.
2013 we were back in Atlanta, and toasting marshmellows in the fireplace for the first time with the girls, having decided they were old enough.
In November of 2014 I went to Berlin, then helped my Grandfather move out of his coastal home, broke a tooth, and celebrated Thanksgiving on Sea Island, in a set of rooms bigger than many apartments I had lived in. I can't think of any month that summed up 2014 more than the month that included Thanksgiving in luxury (paid for by someone else), while I delt with a crippling dental issue I couldn't afford to fix. That was also the month I finalized a government contract with the CDC. 2014 was insane, and six years later I still can't believe all the crazy shit I did that year.
In November of 2015 we had Thanksgiving in Atlanta again, but this time the husband's parents came to visit, and set us up with dinner at the Intercontinental in Buckhead.
In November of 2016, I was sick again. I think we went to Nashville.
In November of 2017-2019, we were invited by second cousins of the husband's family to Thanksgiving about an hour north of the city.
November 2020 was the COVID quarantine Thanksgiving. We had it at the Lake Claire house with some of my cousins that lived locally. Afterwards I took plates to other family members a few blocks away who had been distancing. I think we ordered from Sweet Auburn BBQ.
Thanksgiving 2021 was the second and last Thanksgiving at the Lake Claire house.
This Thanksgiving, twenty-two years after I started blogging, eighteen years after I was married, sixteen years after my first child, I realize I largely have everything I hoped for twenty years ago, when I was, I thought, burying my white collar dreams by going back to retail work after grad school. I've had a lot of crazy ups and downs since then, but ultimately I am still living in Atlanta, I have two kids, and I pay the bills when I can. It's 2022 and the world is on fire. I suppose, on reflection, I'm thankful that I continue to just try and do my best.
Thursday, November 17, 2022
You're Going To Have To Slow Down, and It's Going To Cost You
As the storms from last week hit the coast, cold weather arrived in Atlanta. I had the experience (not for the first time) of chasing teens with sweaters and jackets and trying, for the love of god, to get them to dress sensibly. The dance between parent and child over sweaters is performative; they know they need a jacket, but they want to tell their parents no. After a day or two of being cold, there’s no more discussion, the jackets will happen anyway. I haven’t decided yet if this is the last year I’ll bother to argue. Maybe they want me to fuss, but I don’t like being in the role of enforcer. They’re old enough to know what they need to keep warm.
Even though I’m the mom, I’m the one who got really caught in the cold on Monday. I’ve written here before about how much I have enjoyed my twice a week eBike rides home from work. After work Monday I walked to a fully charged Lime bike and started my ride home. I had forgotten gloves, but it wasn’t yet so cold that my hands would go numb or anything during the ride. The first third of the way home went as usual, but as I turned from Irwin street on to the Beltline, the bike suddenly went heavy and slow.
The company that I rent eBikes from had decided to put a speed governor on the bike for Beltline travel. Maybe it was just the particular bike I was on, but suddenly it was like I was on the heaviest bike pedaling up hill. I panicked, cold and trying to get home, and pedaled harder, only to encounter more resistance. It’s worth mentioning here that the Beltline is built on an old railroad path, and so is perfectly graded. On an eBike, I’m used to some light pedaling and mostly coasting the mile and a half I ride the thing home, before really pedaling uphill to the house the last few blocks. With the speed governor on the bike engaged, I couldn’t coast on the perfectly level path, but instead was suddenly challenged to lift the weight of the heavy machine for a mile without warning.
I pushed and puffed. I was determined to build up speed to get ahead, but the bike wouldn’t let me. The rules on getting home had changed, and it took me a few minutes longer than usual, resulting in a higher price of rental. As I ended the ride, cold and angry, a couple more dollars fell out of my bank account, and I considered screaming. Instead, I limped inside, texted the family that I was in pain from the bike ride, and curled up under the covers for the next 24 hours. I was the one who had caught a cold during the weather shift, and hurt the muscles in my legs to boot.
So I have to figure out now how to get home after work. Likely I’ll switch to renting the city’s regular old pedal powered bikes, as hopefully they won’t have speed governors on them. I can’t afford to buy my own eBike, or any kind of bike right now. Things just keep getting more difficult and more expensive. It’s 2022, and the world is on fire. Nobody knows anything. We’re all just trying our best.
Even though I’m the mom, I’m the one who got really caught in the cold on Monday. I’ve written here before about how much I have enjoyed my twice a week eBike rides home from work. After work Monday I walked to a fully charged Lime bike and started my ride home. I had forgotten gloves, but it wasn’t yet so cold that my hands would go numb or anything during the ride. The first third of the way home went as usual, but as I turned from Irwin street on to the Beltline, the bike suddenly went heavy and slow.
The company that I rent eBikes from had decided to put a speed governor on the bike for Beltline travel. Maybe it was just the particular bike I was on, but suddenly it was like I was on the heaviest bike pedaling up hill. I panicked, cold and trying to get home, and pedaled harder, only to encounter more resistance. It’s worth mentioning here that the Beltline is built on an old railroad path, and so is perfectly graded. On an eBike, I’m used to some light pedaling and mostly coasting the mile and a half I ride the thing home, before really pedaling uphill to the house the last few blocks. With the speed governor on the bike engaged, I couldn’t coast on the perfectly level path, but instead was suddenly challenged to lift the weight of the heavy machine for a mile without warning.
I pushed and puffed. I was determined to build up speed to get ahead, but the bike wouldn’t let me. The rules on getting home had changed, and it took me a few minutes longer than usual, resulting in a higher price of rental. As I ended the ride, cold and angry, a couple more dollars fell out of my bank account, and I considered screaming. Instead, I limped inside, texted the family that I was in pain from the bike ride, and curled up under the covers for the next 24 hours. I was the one who had caught a cold during the weather shift, and hurt the muscles in my legs to boot.
So I have to figure out now how to get home after work. Likely I’ll switch to renting the city’s regular old pedal powered bikes, as hopefully they won’t have speed governors on them. I can’t afford to buy my own eBike, or any kind of bike right now. Things just keep getting more difficult and more expensive. It’s 2022, and the world is on fire. Nobody knows anything. We’re all just trying our best.
Thursday, November 10, 2022
While Fleeing the Apocolypse, Be Sure to Visit the Gift Shop
I was sitting in a hotel conference room on Jekyll Island Monday. Behind me on the mainland, the port of Brunswick was on fire due to a problem at one of the chemical plants. In front of me, the Atlantic was pushing a storm surge as a hurricane built up a few days off coast. Everyone’s phones at the conference were sending off emergency alerts, which could not be turned off. Men from the state cyber security office and the federal department of homeland security were there to tell us why libraries are now targets for Domestic Violence Extremists. Librarians spoke in hushed tones to each other about how worried we were that someone might get shot in line to vote this week. There was a full blood moon lunar eclipse, and the winds picked up, the waves crashed, and Stacey Abrams lost the governor’s race. It was hard this week not to feel like I was somehow in a movie about the end of the world.
When I was given the opportunity to travel for work again, I was excited to get back to Glynn County. I’ve written before about my trips to Brunswick and the coast – in fact, nineteen years ago I was at a similar professional conference in Savannah. That conference in 2003 must have been one of the last times I was in the low country before I married the husband. Both of my maternal grandparents are from the region, and not just from there, but descended from the first big wave of European settlers four hundred years ago. Nineteen years ago, I stayed overnight with my Grandma Alice, and she was so pleased to see me in suits giving professional presentations.
I thought about her a lot on this trip, and even made sure to drive through her favorite fast-food restaurant, stop at her grocery store, and even cruise by her old condo on the way out of town. All these things are on the same road and on the way to I-95 anyway. These places were full of meaning to me, but I couldn’t ignore the way things had and had not changed. The roads on Jekyll are completely different, and the beach narrower as the sea rises and storms rip at things in a way, they didn’t twenty years ago. The dollar store next to the Piggly Wiggly looks like so many US retail stores have started to look the last couple of years – half empty, with merchandise just sort of thrown around. The Piggly Wiggly was unchanged in an almost creepy way though, smelling the way it always had, store inventory exactly where it had always been. I considered for a moment buying Diet Dr. Pepper, grandma’s soda of choice, but instead just grabbed the phone cord that hadn’t been available in the dollar store on the way out.
Then I started driving back to Atlanta, which took nearly all day. I made it home around 8pm, and the hurricane – just a small one, category one falling then into a tropical storm – hit before dawn well south of Jacksonville, so hopefully Brunswick and the Georgia islands will be ok. Not that any of this is ok. It’s not ok that Jekyll Island will be much smaller in the next twenty years. It’s not ok that the Torras causeway to Saint Simon’s will have to be rebuilt to avoid the kind of flooding that happened this week. It’s not ok that the chemical plant blew, and that the election was so frightening. Maybe I’m just scared because I’m older now, I don’t know. It’s hard not to look at the everyday unraveling of things like retail stores and see the frayed edges of society. I guess I’m just rattled by all the emergency alerts on phones around us, but we’re not going to be able to fix any of these things unless society changes in some very real ways.
Just over the Glynn County line on the Eulonia interstate exit, which was my Grandpa’s exit the last twenty years of his life, I stopped. Someone had taken an old restaurant, some house paint, and with a small business loan had made something now called “Georgia Peach World”. I stopped because I found this hilarious and because I respect a good hustle. The owners had collected locally made peach flavored things, and because pecans are a bigger crop, half the store was pecan themed as well. If my family had never left the area, I suspect I’d be working at something very much like Peach World, repurposing an abandoned restaurant to sell what I could to tourists riding I-95 down to the end of everything. We might be living some sort of apocalypse, but there’s always someone ready to sell you locally made soap, saltwater taffy, and lemonade with peach juice added in to keep with the theme. It’s 2022, the world is on fire, and nobody knows anything. We’re all just doing our best.
When I was given the opportunity to travel for work again, I was excited to get back to Glynn County. I’ve written before about my trips to Brunswick and the coast – in fact, nineteen years ago I was at a similar professional conference in Savannah. That conference in 2003 must have been one of the last times I was in the low country before I married the husband. Both of my maternal grandparents are from the region, and not just from there, but descended from the first big wave of European settlers four hundred years ago. Nineteen years ago, I stayed overnight with my Grandma Alice, and she was so pleased to see me in suits giving professional presentations.
I thought about her a lot on this trip, and even made sure to drive through her favorite fast-food restaurant, stop at her grocery store, and even cruise by her old condo on the way out of town. All these things are on the same road and on the way to I-95 anyway. These places were full of meaning to me, but I couldn’t ignore the way things had and had not changed. The roads on Jekyll are completely different, and the beach narrower as the sea rises and storms rip at things in a way, they didn’t twenty years ago. The dollar store next to the Piggly Wiggly looks like so many US retail stores have started to look the last couple of years – half empty, with merchandise just sort of thrown around. The Piggly Wiggly was unchanged in an almost creepy way though, smelling the way it always had, store inventory exactly where it had always been. I considered for a moment buying Diet Dr. Pepper, grandma’s soda of choice, but instead just grabbed the phone cord that hadn’t been available in the dollar store on the way out.
Then I started driving back to Atlanta, which took nearly all day. I made it home around 8pm, and the hurricane – just a small one, category one falling then into a tropical storm – hit before dawn well south of Jacksonville, so hopefully Brunswick and the Georgia islands will be ok. Not that any of this is ok. It’s not ok that Jekyll Island will be much smaller in the next twenty years. It’s not ok that the Torras causeway to Saint Simon’s will have to be rebuilt to avoid the kind of flooding that happened this week. It’s not ok that the chemical plant blew, and that the election was so frightening. Maybe I’m just scared because I’m older now, I don’t know. It’s hard not to look at the everyday unraveling of things like retail stores and see the frayed edges of society. I guess I’m just rattled by all the emergency alerts on phones around us, but we’re not going to be able to fix any of these things unless society changes in some very real ways.
Just over the Glynn County line on the Eulonia interstate exit, which was my Grandpa’s exit the last twenty years of his life, I stopped. Someone had taken an old restaurant, some house paint, and with a small business loan had made something now called “Georgia Peach World”. I stopped because I found this hilarious and because I respect a good hustle. The owners had collected locally made peach flavored things, and because pecans are a bigger crop, half the store was pecan themed as well. If my family had never left the area, I suspect I’d be working at something very much like Peach World, repurposing an abandoned restaurant to sell what I could to tourists riding I-95 down to the end of everything. We might be living some sort of apocalypse, but there’s always someone ready to sell you locally made soap, saltwater taffy, and lemonade with peach juice added in to keep with the theme. It’s 2022, the world is on fire, and nobody knows anything. We’re all just doing our best.
Thursday, November 03, 2022
It All Ends Up Under Water Anyway
The first Friday in November was supposed to be the closing day on the Lake Claire house. Someone wanted to buy the place, and we wanted to sell. The difficulty came when it was revealed that selling to at the price the buyer wanted to pay would cost us over 40k in realtor commissions. It was a simple miscalculation on our part; we thought that commissions were part of closing costs. SURPISE! The husband and I laughed our asses off in panic and fear when we heard about the 40k, as we didn’t have 1k to clean up the yard in Lake Claire, let alone 40k from anywhere to pay realtors’ commission. Even if someone offered to loan us 40k, I wouldn’t continue to throw good money after bad on the place.
Maybe on Friday some sort of strange financial miracle will have occurred, and the house sale will have gone through. I seriously doubt this. Loads of well-meaning friends and neighbors have offered us bits of advice, because no one can believe we’re losing the Lake Claire property. I remain convinced that foreclosure is the best move, as any other option presented to me somehow puts us in more debt. Even having part of our mortgage forgiven (unlikely, but whatever, we’re trying everything) would generate tax debt, as having loans forgiven is measured as income.
We need to take the loss, but no one can believe that betting on Atlanta real estate generated anything less than profit. I have assured everyone that we played every delaying and COVID relief card we could, which is why we’re losing the house thirty months after quarantine started. I just really want the financial hemorrhaging to stop by the end of the year. It is unknown if that will happen, but I can hope.
My maternal grandfather appeared in a dream to me this week, as he sometimes does. He wanted me to move back to the low country, back to the area his family had lived continuously for 400 years before his death. I had to explain to him again that the Atlantic is rising, and most of the coast of Georgia will disappear within my daughter’s lifetime. He just shook his head. “Not all of it”, he insisted. “There are places with high ground”. Maybe I argued, I can’t remember. Probably the dumbest property purchase I could make – assuming I ever have the capital to own anything again - would be on the coast, so maybe it’s in my future anyhow.
I have a similar dream about Grandpa whenever I’m about to drive to the low country. Grandma only shows up in dreams about travel to far away places. I dreamt of Grandma Alice when I was in London, in Berlin, in Costa Rica, in Hawaii. Grandma Alice wanted me to see the world, and when I’m asleep I wish I could have her with me to see everything. Grandpa Brown wanted me to stay connected to the family, so he shows up when I’m anywhere within a couple of hours of Brunswick. Now there's no close family there, but part of my brain still thinks he wants me on the coast.
No matter what happens with the Lake Claire house, the husband and I will be living within our girl’s High School district for the next three and a half years. Our youngest is just in the first half of ninth grade, so it would take something extreme to make us leave. Frankly, I hope to stay in our current rental townhouse for at least that long. I hate moving, having done it so many times before I was thirty. If I live until retirement though, maybe moving to the coast won’t be such a bad idea, as the land should be very cheap by then. Going out in a hurricane any time after seventy doesn’t sound like a bad way to go either now that I think about it. So maybe climate disaster will have the upside of cheap real estate and a quick natural end in my family’s traditional lands by the end of my life. Who knows what will happen? It’s 2022, and the world is on fire. Nobody knows anything. We’re all just doing our best.
Maybe on Friday some sort of strange financial miracle will have occurred, and the house sale will have gone through. I seriously doubt this. Loads of well-meaning friends and neighbors have offered us bits of advice, because no one can believe we’re losing the Lake Claire property. I remain convinced that foreclosure is the best move, as any other option presented to me somehow puts us in more debt. Even having part of our mortgage forgiven (unlikely, but whatever, we’re trying everything) would generate tax debt, as having loans forgiven is measured as income.
We need to take the loss, but no one can believe that betting on Atlanta real estate generated anything less than profit. I have assured everyone that we played every delaying and COVID relief card we could, which is why we’re losing the house thirty months after quarantine started. I just really want the financial hemorrhaging to stop by the end of the year. It is unknown if that will happen, but I can hope.
My maternal grandfather appeared in a dream to me this week, as he sometimes does. He wanted me to move back to the low country, back to the area his family had lived continuously for 400 years before his death. I had to explain to him again that the Atlantic is rising, and most of the coast of Georgia will disappear within my daughter’s lifetime. He just shook his head. “Not all of it”, he insisted. “There are places with high ground”. Maybe I argued, I can’t remember. Probably the dumbest property purchase I could make – assuming I ever have the capital to own anything again - would be on the coast, so maybe it’s in my future anyhow.
I have a similar dream about Grandpa whenever I’m about to drive to the low country. Grandma only shows up in dreams about travel to far away places. I dreamt of Grandma Alice when I was in London, in Berlin, in Costa Rica, in Hawaii. Grandma Alice wanted me to see the world, and when I’m asleep I wish I could have her with me to see everything. Grandpa Brown wanted me to stay connected to the family, so he shows up when I’m anywhere within a couple of hours of Brunswick. Now there's no close family there, but part of my brain still thinks he wants me on the coast.
No matter what happens with the Lake Claire house, the husband and I will be living within our girl’s High School district for the next three and a half years. Our youngest is just in the first half of ninth grade, so it would take something extreme to make us leave. Frankly, I hope to stay in our current rental townhouse for at least that long. I hate moving, having done it so many times before I was thirty. If I live until retirement though, maybe moving to the coast won’t be such a bad idea, as the land should be very cheap by then. Going out in a hurricane any time after seventy doesn’t sound like a bad way to go either now that I think about it. So maybe climate disaster will have the upside of cheap real estate and a quick natural end in my family’s traditional lands by the end of my life. Who knows what will happen? It’s 2022, and the world is on fire. Nobody knows anything. We’re all just doing our best.
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