Welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer! We had a quiet Thanksgiving week here in Satan’s Anus (where it’s currently 71F and sunny, so not so Satan’s Anus-y). It’s just the 3 of us now for the holidays–my husband, my adult son, and me. I really feel the shifting stages of my life around the holidays. When I was a kid, our celebrations were also small, just my parents and me, sometimes with brief visits from the few family or friends my father hadn’t driven away yet. Then after I became an adult, and my father died, it was just my mom, my then-boyfriend-then-fiancé-now-husband, and me. Then my son came along, I developed a close friendship with a former co-worker, and we hosted bigger gatherings–my mom, my husband, my son, my friend, his girlfriend, her 2 kids, and me. Those gatherings were loud and rowdy and exhausting–and wonderful. Now my mom and my friend are dead, we live several states away from the rest of that crowd, and it’s just the three of us. And yesterday my son slept late and missed dinner, so it was just the 2 of us. Husband and I went for a drive in the desert and started talking about holiday traditions and how much ours have changed–or, rather, faded away. The last couple of years, we’ve done virtually nothing for Christmas. Maybe a tiny tree and a roast beef dinner, but not much else. I was the one who always spearheaded our holiday plans, and I lost interest. I was tired, it was too much work, no one else seemed to care… but now I think it was more than that. I was mourning the loss of my mom and my friend, the loss of my son’s childhood, the loss of who we all used to be. Then last year there was the pandemic and moving to a new city during the pandemic and just feeling disconnected from everything and everyone. Yeah, I know, all that sounds really overdramatic and emo and self-centered, but it’s true. Which brings us to this year and to yesterday and to a sense that I’ve turned a corner. My holiday spirit is coming back, twinkle by twinkle. We bought an artificial Christmas tree Wednesday night, and it’s assembled in our living room. I hummed and bounced around the kitchen yesterday, cooking turkey with all the trimmings. After dinner, we excavated the storage shed and brought the lights and ornament boxes inside. We’ll decorate the tree today. We might even brave the raving hordes and do a little Black Friday shopping. We’re making plans to visit some displays of holiday lights in December. The holidays won’t be the same as they used to be. Those days are over, those people are gone, and nothing short of time travel will bring them back, and time travel only exists in fiction. But we can build new traditions and, when the pandemic is over, we can meet new people in our new city. We can move forward and find new meaning in the rhythm of seasons and holidays. All right, that’s enough navel-gazing for one blog post. Let me leave y’all with a few laughs. The weekly memes–Thanksgiving edition This one made the rounds last year: More turkey fun: Of course, Thanksgiving isn’t just about the turkey. It’s also about the turkeys we share it with: We may act like Thanksgiving is about gratitude and blessings and family and all, but c’mon… we all know it’s really about eating half our weight in fat and carbs: American friends, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Friends outside the USA, feel free to stuff your faces in solidarity with us. Wherever you are, what’s your favorite holiday (any holiday) tradition?