last night's thanksgiving dinner menu:

baby portabello mushrooms stuffed with crab

sweet green-chile cornbread

roast turkey

garlic-parmesan mashed potatoes

white wine gravy

cornbread stuffing w/basil-garlic sausage

green bean casserole

three cheese and truffle oil mac and cheese

bacon and white cheddar mac and cheese

candied yams

ginger-orange cranberry sauce

pumpkin pie & pecan pie from costco (didn't want to deal with desserts this year)

not making the desserts from scratch this year made a huge difference, making it one day of cooking instead of 2. the key to a tender turkey is longer cooking time at a lower heat (i go with 325 for 5-6 hours, basting with drippings and homemade broth every 20 minutes). usually i "healthify" all the recipes, making healthier substitutions where i can, but this year i splurged a little with 2% instead of whole milk, and heavy cream and real butter in a few of the recipes. i don't really feel there was a big difference since i'm pretty good at making substitutions that still maintain the integrity of the dish, though the three-cheese mac and cheese was probably the sluttiest thing i've ever made...

it took me from about noon until 8 to get everything ready, and it went smoothly because my aunt came over to help with the chopping and dish rotation, which was huge. after dinner, i was playing with my cousin jonathan and rie's baby, and i kept finding my butt gravitating towards any seating apparatus or the ground. i thought, now you've done it...you've gotten so fat you can't even support your own body. but then my mom pointed out that she hadn't seen me sit down at all since noon, and the only break i took was to take a shower which was also standing up, so i must be exhausted. i suddenly realized i was incredibly exhausted. sometimes i get so task-oriented that i can't read my own internal signals. it was a huge relief to know that standing all day was the reason i kept feeling this urge to sit or lay down, not that i'm on my way to becoming one of those women who stays in bed for 30 years because they're too heavy to get out. 

*****

the day before when we were in the supermarket shopping, i noticed a lot of people, men and women, would look at me. nothing i can read one way or another, but just really long looks. and it wasn't checking me out or anything--i was just wearing an old sweatshirt over gym clothes since i'd come from the gym. i told my mom to watch for it...how in the last year, it's been really noticeable. there was an old lady...i saw her and i got the feeling she was sick...a long illness. later, i was waiting outside, and she walked up to me and i smiled at her, so she approached me and talked to me. something about the wheels of the carts. a joke. it was a small conversation, i actually didn't understand what she was saying but i think what was more important was some kind of warm human connection. there was another guy who was near the door when i walked in--i smiled at a woman with two young children, and he walked by me and said, "hello, nice person." i said hello back. later, i was leaving and he caught up to me and said, "thank you, nice person." i told my mom that i think that the greatest human fear is that of disappearing, and that sometimes people just want to feel like they are seen and that they exist. i think sometimes they just want to connect, even with a stranger, even if for a fleeting moment, because it somehow makes them feel more real...more here. 

one weekday, i was walking around old seattle, and there was a woman with a copper colored mullet holding a laptop with attached webcam, pointing it at the sidewalk. she looked like she was doing a geological study. i was really curious about what she was doing, but i tend to be non-intrusive about approaching people, so i watched her from a few feet away. a black homeless guy in his 50's walked up to her and asked her what she was doing, so i got closer to hear her explanation. 

she said she was making a documentary about the street cracks, about how the sidewalks were scored and that people were coming out to break up the sidewalks. she said that there was something going on, that there were people living underground, because at nights, if you looked through the grates, you could see lights from the tunnels. i remember walking home one rainy night, and there was a red light emanating from one of them, and i figured it was city workers or something. i asked her if it was just the city and she said no, because they don't do work at night. she said there was a whole underground city. i asked her if maybe it was homeless people camped down there, and she said she's been homeless 3 times in seattle, but there's no way to get down there...she'd tried. she said that years ago, there were a lot of people on the street, lots of birds, but that's gotten scarce. that she thinks they're planning to move obama and the cabinet to downtown seattle in case anything goes down, because the only way to access that area is through some canadian pass. she talked about 3 years ago, in 2006, the police suddenly raided the whole area, took all the homeless people away, and no one knows why or where, that we're closer to a police state than most people think.

the guy and i listened to her attentively, because she seemed articulate enough, she seemed intelligent, but the things she was saying were pretty out there. she said that there were entire underground cities in san francisco, los angeles, philadelphia, new york. that there was some major stuff about to go down in the world. but when she said that the reason there weren't as many birds was because the government took them all and threw them in the ocean to cause tsunamis, that's when the guy and i looked at each other like, oooh-kay. 

she said she had to run to a meeting but gave me her website to check out (sadly, i lost that slip of paper in my wanderings that day). she hurried away, but then stopped and turned around, saying, "thank you for listening." it was really sincere and surprising. that's when i realized that one of our deepest fears is of disappearing.

*****

i stopped near this park where people were loitering. some of the people wandering through were clearly crackheads from their gait and eyes. i was just standing there writing what the woman had said in her notebook when the guy who had also been listening walked up.

do you believe all that stuff she was saying?, he asked me. he had intelligent eyes behind wire-framed glasses.

well...i think what was most interesting was her level of conviction. whether or not it's true, what seemed to matter was that she believed it, i said.

what are you?, he asked. are you a student?

i'm just traveling through, i said.

so you're a tourist, he said. have you been up to vancouver and those parts?

i was there a couple of months ago, i said. but i didn't really get a chance to explore it. i'm saving it for later.

he looks me deep in the eyes, sizing me up.

are you really rich or something? so you can just travel the world?

i choose my words carefully. in my spirituality, i have been very lucky, i tell him.

he nods. i can respect that, he says. he asks me how long i'm going to be in seattle.

as long as i need to be, i say.

he tells me that it's going to be a really harsh winter, that all the signs are pointing at it, but he's going to be okay because he's got insulated jacket and pants, and a new heavy-duty blanket. he opens up his backpack to show me. i tell him to keep warm and to take good care of himself. 

he asks me what my name is and i tell him, shaking his hand. his fingers are long and graceful, indicating a creative thinker, and his grip is firm. in the back of my mind, i know my parents would be freaking out if they knew that at this moment, i'm standing in a park filled with addicts and shady characters, shaking hands with a homeless person. but they are not here right now, and he is. for whatever reason, i've suddenly found myself in this exact place and time, and i have to believe that where i am right now is  exactly where i'm meant to be, however unorthodox it is, or whatever my own fears or feelings about it may be. when i push all judgments and assessments out of my mind, i'm aware of how before this moment, we were two people traveling two separate and distinct paths, and after this moment, we will again be two separate people traveling two separate and distinct paths. but within the electricity of this current moment, we are suddenly looking each other in the eyes, connected and completely present. for a breathless moment, it wasn't time that was real, but the life flowing within us and the life flowing outside us. and within the eyes of another person, i recognized it all as one and the same.

i walked away with my head filled with questions.