There really has only ever been one national holiday that consistently excited me year after year, and it is Thanksgiving. Going forward into the next week, however, I don’t have much excitement to muster up. I was sick for both of my days off this week, though I started to feel better, I then got cornered into working a 12 hour day yesterday, and now I feel like crap. The positives are that I only had one day of bloody sinuses and phlegm of a color other than yellow.

Oh, to be an artist with chromatic phlegm!

I’d prefer to be with open cookbooks planning the feast, but simplicity and economy will weave the theme of eating this year. I think many Americans will choose the same this year, too. Present realities aside, I’m already aware of a cornucopia of gratitude I can sit myself on. To quote a mantra I held when I first moved to the West Coast, but to a rather dismal part, “If nothing else, California.”