Thanksgiving to all and to all a goodnight.

I realize it's been awhile, but I'm back. What better time to rejoin the world of bloggers, but at the most wonderful time of the year. Let's get to business, I have lots to discuss.

First, I would like to talk about Thanksgiving. I have discovered that my favorite holidays are the truly American ones, no matter how sordid and twisted the true story of "what was" has become. The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving are ours, and nobody can take them away or replicate them. These two holidays know no religious bounds-they are just American, and we all share them. Sure the declaration of Independence wasn't signed by all of our forefathers until November of 1776, and we all know that the Pilgrims didn't show up on Plymouth Rock to a welcoming delegation of Native Americans. We know that for the most part, that everything we grew up learning about these holidays is a romanticized version of the truth, but not unlike most other cultures in the world we have taken these days and made them our own celebration of the fundamentally good things-and as days of thanks for our freedom.

The 4th of July and Thanksgiving are also my favorite holidays because of a little thing we like to call FOOD. I enjoy that both of these holidays have their own pies respectively. Any holiday that has a pie associated with it is a good one in my book. My dad must feel the same way, his birthday is Columbus Day, and he decided years ago that apple pie would be the official birthday baked good of his birthday as well as Columbus Day. It goes to show that I am my father's daughter that I judge the relevancy of a holiday with it's baked goods. We would carefully place birthday candles in the top of the pie, but if it was one of the ones with the full pastry top there was always the risk of losing the irretrievable birthday candle through the outer crusty shell, only to have it surgically removed by my mom prior to serving. Luckily Thanksgiving does not involve birthday candles or candle risk management.

I have some great memories of Thanksgiving, and some not so great ones, but on the whole I'm one lucky gal. These are a few of my favorite things:

1.) The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on NBC.

This was and is to me the most important part of Thanksgiving. Yeah, I said it. I love the parade. It's magical. The tradition of loving parades was handed down to me genetically on both sides. My (maternal) Grammy always loves a parade. She dragged my mom and my uncle to every parade under the sun in Pittsburgh growing up, which I'm sure later inspired my mom's four year career as a majorette at Oliver High School. She wore big white boots with brown and orange pom-poms on the front, a spiffy uniform and twirled a baton with the best of them. She told us stories of how they always prayed they wouldn't be behind the horses in the parade so they didn't have to pretend they were marching in a mine field.

Meanwhile, my dad was the drum major at our shared Alma mater. Those were the days! He wore a tall white furry hat and a a full drum major uniform, much like we see in college these days. Dad was the cats, and he kept everyone in line and steppin' right.

So it comes as no surprise that the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is/was and will be a family favorite. We are super music nerds, so we actually get up early to see the parade broadway pre-show. I think of it as our preliminary research for our detailed analysis of the Tony awards in June. I remember as a kid waiting eagerly for several very pivotal floats: Spiderman and friends ( the Marvel Comics float), the Sesame Street float (still in the parade to this day), my favorite kids group of the moment, and that one car/rocket ship thing that I later learned oddly resembled phallus, that typically delivered somebody like "The Jets" or "Menudo" to Herald square in style. My sister and I would anxiously await our favorite floats, only to be disappointed that most of them changed every year.

We would watch the whole parade from beginning to end and still do. I did a brief stint in my twenties when I couldn't stay conscious for the parade, and would wake up drooling on myself mid-way through the Terrier Group in the National Dog Show. I have since learned that copious amounts of coffee and sitting on the living room floor remedy my narcolepsy. One way or another we watch the parade, and we love it-we love it even more now that DVR and cooking a brined turkey breast have come into fashion-nobody is up at 7:00 a.m. anymore!

2. The Thanksgiving Pageant

Most any adult you poll would report that at one time or another during their elementary school career, they too participated in a Thanksgiving Pageant. I couldn't tell you if they do these things anymore, but I AM here to tell you that the 80's version was about as politically incorrect as they come.

Let me set the stage. I was a late bloomer. I was always tall, and always the tallest kid in the neighborhood and my elementary class. Most of the time, I was unfazed by it. My mom says that I was born thirty, which later explained why I thought elementary school was so stupid. Don't get me wrong, at times I had a blast, but it was events like the Thanksgiving Pageant that would prove to be glimpses into themes that would continue into my adult life.

Mrs. Kuholski's first grade class was responsible for telling the first part of the Thanksgiving story. We were divided up into equal parts Pilgrim and Indian. I of course wanted to be an Indian, because they got to wear colorful vests fashioned out of inside out brown paper grocery bags and headbands with feathers. I felt that if I was going to be up there, I would rather be accompanied by a stunning head piece and paper vest of my own design, not to mention I saw no point in playing a WASP-y pilgrim. If I was going to be up there I wanted to exercise my acting abilities by playing a disenfranchised paper vest Indian. But alas as a predecessor of things to come-I was chosen to be a pilgrim. We were told that we had to wear a white shirt and dark pants or skirt, and were handed a piece of 81/2 by 17 white construction paper and were advised of how to make this into a pilgrim bonnet. I remember finishing up folding my hat and thinking, "These people have gone crazy. They want me to stand up in front of the entire school, God and all our parents wearing this?"

There was no getting out of it. Due to my extremely active pituitary gland, I decided it would be best to be in the chorus, why draw undue attention to myself while wearing misuse of construction paper on my head? You must also understand that my mom, God bless her heart, had been an elementary school art teacher herself, so she knew how these things rolled. She was always terribly optimistic with me, I know secretly hoping that I wouldn't roll my eyes back in my head on stage while doing my box step. I came home and told her, "they want me to wear this hat, and Mrs. Kuholski said we have to wear white on top and black on the bottom."

My mom found a white turtleneck and a black skirt for me to wear. She also had found a half apron that I was convinced was so old, it most certainly had come over on the Mayflower. Apparently, she must have thought that my ensemble was missing something because in a game time decision she added a little black vest that I had which had little gold coins sewn randomly all over its front. So now I was a gypsy-napkin hat-pilgrim. This is the stuff therapy sessions are made of. Therapists have been paying their kids college tuition for years just off of holiday pageants.

Nonetheless I am sure I marched proudly off to school in my get-up, ready to stand proudly in the chorus and sing a song that talked about Indians and Pilgrims being best friends forever. I got to class that day to find out that Bethany Scholl had come down with the stomach flu and would not be able to perform her duties as partial narrator of the pageant. The only thing I can guess is that they looked around the room that day, saw my gypsy coin vest glistening in the florescent lights and said, "Chelsey must be the narrator, it is clandestine." Maybe this is where my stage anxiety started. They gave me a paragraph, said "memorize this, kid-and we go on in an hour." I couldn't have explained it to you then, but what I experienced was most definitely an anxiety attack. My worst fears had been realized. I poured over my paragraph of American historical lies, and decided I was going to do this, I had to do this, I had to do it for the honor of my family and for my gypsy vest.

We filed in, single file. I am almost positive my mom and dad have a picture of me going into the gymnasium. They have many pictures of me waiting to "go on." I was always very serious, lips pursed, wide eyes, and demonstrating "excellent self-control." Soon the moment approached, it was time to step up to the single mic, in the single spot light. This was it. While Bethany Scholl was home puking her guts out, I was saving the show from imminent peril and a most-certain pan in this week's issue of Variety. The crowd silenced. My pursed lips parted, "The Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock..."

As I finished my speech, the crowd went wild. The singing commenced, and I had delivered my first public speech, while wearing a napkin on my head.

3. Consistency.

Thanksgiving is not about being fancy. It is about being consistent. We typically always had the same things for Thanksgiving dinner growing up and we were fine with it. I was looking at Turkey recipes tonight and I decided that I don't need my turkey to be "perfumed by herbs." It's fine the way it has been for the last thirty years and it will continue to be delicious. I'm all for being all foodie every other day of the year, but on Thanksgiving, give me Pillsbury Crescent rolls or give me death. Creativity does not score bonus points.

I hope this Thanksgiving you will celebrate one of the last bastions of Americana with us. I hope you are with the people you love, whoever they are, and I hope you use the time you have to thank God for for your blessings and the fact that no matter how crazy it might seem sometimes, we live out our days in America. Regardless of how we all got here, Thanksgiving is ours together, one nation, indivisible, with Turkey and Stuffing for all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

God Bless America

The stuff I get myself into.

Alright, so listen here, last night I was talking to my “gym boyfriend” via text message. We have learned that he is in fact Macedonian. I figured it best to research where Macedonia actually is because to tell you the truth I thought it might be situated just north of a place I think we are all familiar with called B.F.E.

I consulted the most reliable source I have these days for quick information: Wikipedia. I spent about 30 minutes reading all about where Macedonia is, the geology, history, topography, governmental and economic structure. What I learned was, apparently Ned Bailey’s 11^th grade mandatory, geography tests did not stick. Not only did I learn where Macedonia is, but I also learned that I apparently did not understand where Greece is either, which is disappointing considering my love of all things Greek, including but not limited to: Feta cheese, Baklava, Annual Panegyri Greek Festival at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Erie, PA, Nia Vardalos (writer of My Big Fat Greek Wedding), My Life in Ruins, Mama Mia!, and Jesse Katsopolis (Uncle Jesse on Full House).

Apparently, Macedonia is just North of Greece and was formerly Yugoslavia. So, automatically I am thinking of people driving around in Communism in unusually small cars with deadly gas tanks.

Turns out, Macedonia is a very beautiful and interesting country. The culture has survived occupations, communism, socialism, the Holocaust, Nazism, and a bunch of other isms I can’t even pronounce. Macedonians are a resilient breed, culturally rich, dedicated to history, architecture, and the arts. They even have an annual jazz festival in their capital city. Who knew?

For a long time I thought my “gym boyfriend” was Greek, and so discovering where Macedonia is, only supported my theory and proved that I was not far off. As a matter of fact for years the Greeks fought for the rights to the word “Macedonia.” Since there is a region in Northern Greece also called Macedonia. Typical Greeks, they think they invented everything: The Gods, the heavens, the underworld, the stars, incredibly delicious baked goods, gyros and the Olympic Games. Give the Macedonians Macedonia. For heaven’s sake, you got everything else!

In 2011, I seem to keep acquiring new friends from different countries and cultures. I think this is great considering that I have grown tired of being a wasp. Wasps don’t have fun cultural things, genetic traits or dances that make us fun. Basically we have Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, anxiety, a love for cocktails, and I don’t think we can even claim the hokey pokey because I think it’s closely related to the chicken dance, which is a polka. We can’t claim guilt either because the folks of the Jewish and Roman Catholic faiths have had that sewn up for years. We do however have the Royals, the Crown Jewels of England, and the late great Dudley Moore to name a few.

The best thing about having friends from different cultures/countries where English is their second language is text messaging with them. I think it’s great because they actually write their accents into the words as they text them. For example: “I would go to Zumba class with you, I know I would make a full of my self (insert Macedonian accent here).” Or, “Hey Shels hony can you bring of you have some lemons (insert Cuban accent here).”

I personally think these text messages are the greatest thing I have ever seen or heard in my entire life. First of all, if I were dropped off in either one of their countries, I would not be able to read or speak and would inevitably be found lifeless in a gutter somewhere sucking my thumb and asking for my mommy. So the fact that they are here, working, communicating, facebooking and texting, blows my little wasp mind.

When I was texting with my Macedonian friend and he said he needed to go to bed, but he was trying to look up or identify a song that he heard using the Internet. I tend to pride myself in being particularly adept at “Name that Tune” so I asked him what the lyrics or artist were. He said he didn’t want to tell me because I wouldn’t like it. Turns out it was a Sting song covered by some Cuban band: Sting: Fragilidad Rhythms of Cuba. I said, “What makes you think I wouldn’t like it? I like Sting. I like Cuban music. Sounds good to me!”

I asked him if the reason he liked this song was because he liked to dance, possibly at weddings or a little smile and a two-step in the corner at the club. He told me, “I like dancing at weddings and Macedonian dances.”

Perked interest.

“A Macedonian dance, what does that involve?” I asked.

“You Tube it, it’s fun for us, but maybe funny for you.”

“Okay, I’ll check it out.”

“Haha don’t laugh.”

(As fast as possible) Pause. Safari. File. New Window. Google. Macedonian Dances. Go.

Check out the following links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaVD9sNN_CU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYvv7kzRJrQ&feature=related

Me: “Okay so do we get to hold hands and dance in a line and a circle? …And Sing? Because I’m really good at all those things.”

“Yes. And Yes.”

Me: “Can I be the girl that runs around twirling the little string? Because that looks fun.”

“How is that u Macedonian too? You are funny, see it’s fun.”

Ohhh, it’s fun alright. I haven’t seen fun like this since the bubble machine on The Lawrence Welk Show reruns on PBS Saturday nights at 7 p.m. Honestly, I can’t wait to try it.

God Bless America. I love this country. Give us your tired, your poor and your hungry and we’ll let them text message. It will be great.

Solitary Conflument...

There is probably nothing more disruptive to the life of any human being than having the flu. It's kind of like Christmas, every year you know it's coming, no matter what, but you're never ready for it.

Try as you may to avoid it, the germs will find you and proceed to swim right through your generous applications of Purell and multiple shots of Airborne. I always find myself trying to isolate the moment when I might have come in contact with the infectious germs. Maybe it was that snot-nosed kid with his mother that I waited on? Or, maybe it was when I ate those five almonds from the Ziploc in my purse without washing my hands. After never being able to isolate the point of contact, I find that it is indeed time to give up, wave the white flag, surrender to illness, and my new home for the next however many days...the couch.

There is always the thought in the beginning of the flu, "If I just lay low for today, maybe it will go away and I'll feel much better tomorrow."

The germs love hearing this. They know that they have you now, and it's only a matter of time before they've got you right where they want you, filling Trader Joe's bags full of countless amounts of Puffs Plus. I'm convinced that the Mucinex commercials are in fact not cartoon animated, but are rather documentary footage of what is actually going on inside my sinuses during flu season. I believe that the booger depicted busily working out on the inside of my sinus cavity with a jackhammer is real, and resides just behind my left eyebrow. I’ve had plenty of time to develop this hypothesis because I grew up a sickly child, and we don't really know why. My lung doctor once told us it was because I was deprived of oxygen at birth, I think it's because my immune system likes watching The View more than it likes outsmarting viruses.

The result of growing up a sickly child is that I have become an excellent diagnostician. If we lived in Mexico, I could have a job at the "Minute Clinic" writing scripts for appropriate antibiotics. For years my co-workers have called me Dr. Chez. Don't know what ails you? Ask Dr. Chez. Don't know how many Advil you should take for that headache? Ask Dr. Chez. I have an affinity for drug dosage, interaction, moderation, and treating the symptoms. Which is fascinating considering I completely self-taught. I have to stop myself from explaining to people what drugs will specifically treat their symptoms, as well as when and why they should go see the doctor. I can also tell you if your snot looks infectious, whether or not you are dehydrated based on urine color, and I am an excellent forecaster of tonsillitis. I'm sure to the objective observer it might seem that I am a hypochondriac of sorts, but I like to see it as an advocate for the good health of myself and others.

My Primary Care Physician decided to take a job at the Veterans Affairs Hospital about a year and a half ago. This was utterly disappointing to me because I had finally found a doctor who was happy with the prescription pad, and always seems to agree on my frightening accurate self-diagnoses. Since then, much to my mother's chagrin, I have been using Urgent Care as my PCP. There I see Walter Scott's Personality Parade of doctors, whom I will most likely never see again. On my last visit, I had some sort of flu/cold thing. The doctor was convinced I didn't have any sort of infection and prescribed me a practically pediatric dose of Amoxicillin and suggested I only have it filled if I got worse. He said, "You seem pretty capable of diagnosing yourself, so here's the script, call me if you have any issues."

Fair enough. I had decided I was sick on a Sunday, this was Tuesday and I was at Urgent Care. By Thursday morning, it was obvious that I wasn't getting better. It was time to go to the Pharmacy. Now, the last thing you want to do when you feel like crap is go to the grocery store, but you do what you gotta do. I packed it up and went to my neighborhood Kroger. Mind you, I looked more like I was going to rob a bank. In lieu of washing my two-day-old hair, I had put on a skullcap, and since I was frightened I might worsen my condition, I made sure I put on enough layers to only rival Ralphie's brother in A Christmas Story. Armed with tissues in my pocket and my doctor's script, I stormed the “Krogue.” I picked up my cart and blazed past the Clorox Disinfecting Wipes dispenser. I mean those were of no help to me now! I had a strategy. Pharmacy first, drop off prescription, then strategically hit all necessary sick food checkpoints. I'm sure the way I looked the college-aged pharmacy tech probably thought I was some sort of crystalmeth-tweeker who had come to rob the place of over the counter Sudafed and the narcotics just for fun, but alas, I had a prescription. How pedestrian. I handed the pharm tech my script and he said, "Would you like to pick it up or wait?"

I replied in my clothespin nose voice, "I needah to waid for it, well I meand I have some shopping to do so...(inner dialogue: I hope you can fill that before they find my lifeless body in front of the Progresso soup display) thanksth."

The pharm tech said to me, "Well let me just make sure we have this one before you go."

My inner dialogue; "If you don't have this prescription then you can just call the squad because I am going to go jump in the river, and further, you have no right calling yourself a pharmacy if you don't have Amoxicillin, the most elementary of all antibiotics!"

Pharm tech, "I checked. We have it. I'll page you over the intercom if there are any issues."

Inner dialogue, "Well thank God. And please spare me the joy of being paged over the Kroger loudspeaker. Should I? Shouldn't I say something snarky? It's the flu talking, shut your mouth. Say thank you."

I replied in clothespin nose voice, "Thanksth, see you in a feweh."

For some reason when I am sick all I want is a list of all the things my mom gave me as a sickly child. The list is as follows in geographic order as these items are found in the grocery store:

ü Wheat Bread

ü Thomas English Muffins

ü Progresso Chicken Noodle Soup

ü Campbell's Tomato Soup

ü Mrs. Weiss' Noodle Soup or Lipton Cup of Soup

ü Welch's White and Concord Grape Juice

ü Goldfish Crackers (Saltine)

ü Orange Juice

ü Cheerios

ü Canada Dry Ginger ale

ü Milk

ü Colby Cheese

I will literally walk around the store looking like the lost member of the Cullen family until these items are obtained, and will convince myself that if I can't have my actual mom there to take care of me, that these are the only things that will make me feel even remotely better.

I completed my list, checked out, went to the pharmacy and picked up my so-commonplace-they're-FREE antibiotics and headed home to my cozy nook on the couch where I would stay.

A person can learn a lot while in solitary confinement flu mode. Your best friend becomes cable. Normally, I have an adversarial relationship with Time Warner Cable. I mean paying $120.00+ a month for something that floats through the air doesn't foster the most warm fuzzy customer relations. This particular week though, I put our differences aside and embraced the world of HDTV, Premium Channels, and a lovely thing they like to call “On Demand.”

On Wednesday of my flu saga I had texted my best friend to report my discovery that new release On Demand movies were now going for a whopping $4.99 for a 48 hour rental! She informed me that $4.99 is now the going rate in America and worldwide because that's what they cost on the gold standard of all media, iTunes. I told her that I thought this was the fleecing of America, but if I were to participate in such a sham, I would most definitely be renting, Life As We Know It with Josh Duhamel and that blonde girl that left Grey's Anatomy. I told her that I thought it was an informed purchase because staring at Josh Duhamel for two hours was bound to make me feel better. However, I was going to try to hold out and utilize my over one thousand already paid for channels and my dozen or so premium channels. Famous last words. My best friend said, "Girl, give it one more day on the couch and you will be chanting, Rent! Rent! Rent!"

Thursday morning after my fieldtrip to the grocery store, I broke down like Kirstie Alley in a bakery. On Demand was mine! I think I wouldn't have cared if it cost $100 a movie, I just wanted to see Josh Duhamel, NOW! Oddly enough, it did make me feel better.

In addition to staring at Josh Duhamel’s pearly whites, I feel I turned my 2011 flu into as much of a research and information gathering venture as possible. I learned a lot of interesting things while trying to entertain myself.

Did you know?

· Barbara Walters is 81 years old

· Dr. Dre is 45

· Hasni Mubarek was appointed Vice President of Egypt in 1975, and assumed the presidency on 14 October 1981, following the assassination of President Anwar El Sadat.

· I think Mohamed ElBaradei seems to make a lot of sense and maybe they should put him in charge of Egypt.

· Gloria Vanderbuilt is still alive and she is 87, and she is also Anderson Cooper's mom who was married to Wyatt Cooper, Anderson Cooper's dad who was an author.

· Cardinal Health is worth like 87 Billion Dollars.

· Amoxil comes in two oral doses, 875mg or 500mg

· There is a new hair removal system called the No! No!

· B. Mackowsky bags are on HSN and "B" Mackowsky looks totally "G" but is married to a famous handbag designer woman.

· It is possible to go through 3+ boxes of 180 sheets of Puffs Plus over the course of four days.

· Lauren Bacall and Jason Robards son Sam Robards plays Nate Archibald's father on Gossip Girl.

· Andrew McCarthy from the 80's brat pack directs Gossip Girl.

· CBS Sunday Morning is the best news magazine on television.

· Joan and Melissa Rivers have a reality show. This I did not know.

· J.Lo looks flawless all the time and her skin looks like coffee ice cream

The greatest thing I learned while in flu solitary confinement was that I'm really lucky. I'm lucky I'm actually a healthy person who has a great family and friends and a life that I am very grateful for. There are a lot of folks out there that their everyday is solitary. So, lesson learned. Please, call your grandmother, she loves you. Take your friends some juice when they're sick, even if you have to drop it on the doorstep. Think and pray for those who can't be out and about all the time. Everyday on this side of the grass is a good day, and I'm thankful for it. 'Til next year flu bug you’re foiled...adios.

Inspiration...

I can't tell you how many times lately I have found myself saying to friends, "You know what? We should have a blog, because we couldn't make this stuff up."

So, here I am. My fear with blogs is that they only help us to subscribe to the ever-present threat of cyber-narcissism. Cyber-narcissism occurs when the facebooker, blogger, or tweeter, actually begins to believe that everyone on the planet cares about what they have to say. In light of my awareness of this affliction, I just want to share with you life's little hilarious moments, so you may begin to feel that you're not alone out there in Crazy Town, U.S.A. As a global society, we are more connected than we have ever been, and yet often more lonely and isolated than ever before. Often, we are left feeling like, "does this only happen to me?"

I'm here to tell you, yeah it might, but there is also a good chance that you will find that there are underlying themes and similarities in the experiences of navigating the social scape in America these days. My hope is that by sharing my stories, maybe just maybe we feel a little more together, and at the very least I hope I make you laugh til you pee a little.