Magic Thankfulness

It's been a busy few weeks here, and between waitressing and grad school and everyday life it feels as though I've had very little opportunity for reflection lately. There have been a few wonderful, magic days though that I am going to take this opportunity to document my thankfulness for. First, a couple of weekends ago we started out on a hike up the canyon from our house through Temescal Gateway Park in the Santa Monica mountains. We started at our house and headed up the street, through the park, up the canyon trail, past a weak but precious little waterfall, and up and up the side of the mountain to a ridge where we could see studio city, part of downtown and across Santa Monica and Venice to the beach. A passerby stopped to tell us that we could make a loop down, and we crossed the ridge and walked back with amazing view after amazing view of the hills and coast headed up to Malibu on the right and the city stretching to the beach on the left. As we descended we could dissect the town that we live in and begin to recognize landmarks. It was a wonderful serendipitous journey; walking from our house up the canyon, over the mountain and coming home with a whole new perspective on where we live.

I had another magic day last weekend, when one of my dearest cousins and his old buddy came to visit, bringing the fun as they always do. They introduced us to an incredible ramen dive in Little Tokyo that is worth it's weight in gold. A culinary pinnacle of the ramen form. Also, they brought some wetsuits and enticed me out into the waves with them for a couple of hours in which we frolicked in the sun and rolled in the surf on an empty beach in November. It was lovely, and made me so grateful for cousin/friends and to live near the ocean in this beautiful climate.

I'm grateful that my garden is up! Especially thankful now that it is almost December and I will have fresh peas and greens soon.

In the larger picture I am grateful for where I've come in my life. Five years ago I was on my homestead putting on a really work intensive Thanksgiving feast. We had grown the potatoes, squash and pumpkins ourselves, and had also raised, killed, cut the bung from and plucked the turkey ourselves. (Plucking turned out to be another one of those time consuming, largely forgotten and now anachronistic traditional skills that I really took to and am pretty good at. Where was I in the 1800's? Why didn't I get the texting and twitter aptitude?) Anyway, her name was Ferdinand. I cried when we killed her, but she didn't suffer much and she wasn't afraid. We brined her and cooked her the next day for our families. As I washed the free-range turkey from the store this morning and rubbed it with oil and fresh herbs from the garden I said thank you for it's life and I could imagine what it's rib cage was like as a living, silken cage for it's turkey soul. I am glad that I know such things with my hands. I'm glad that I know what I know, and I'm glad that I was brave enough to leave what I knew to expand my life and have the creative path and the loving family that I have now.

And I am very thankful for today. I walked the dog down to the bluffs last night and watched the sun set over the Pacific and felt the whole next day stretching out ahead of me. We are having a very quiet Thanksgiving. Just Tim, Shannon and myself. I have no obligation today other than cooking (a store-bought, pre-plucked turkey), which seems like a good deal to me. A happy and magic day of thankfulness to you.