Thanksgiving 2014

I love Thanksgiving.  No, for real, I do.  It's cozy, and thankful, and wonderful, and I just love it.

Not the food.  But I've said that before.   (I just searched by blog under the "Thanksgiving" label and came up with like 10 posts about Thanksgiving.  I'm not kidding, I love everything about Thanksgiving but the food!)

Also something I've said before is that for the last several years I've had my Sunday School girls write thanksgiving lists in class.  We read verses about being thankful, talk about why we should be thankful, and to Whom we should be thankful, and then try to think of things for which to be thankful (this year I remembered to be thankful for Chipotle.  Mmm).  Usually gets some pretty good results (one of our most frequent Sunday School-and-Gospel speakers is famous for reminding us to be thankful for everything, including chairs, so almost all the girls remembered this and marked that they were thankful for chairs), but this year I heard one I hadn't heard before.

While reading around an item or two from our list one girl shared that she was thankful for my eyebrows.

"Uh, my eyebrows?  Specifically me?  Or you're thankful for your eyebrows?"

"Oh no, Miss Joanne, not my eyebrows.  Yours.  I think they look okay with your face."

"Mmmmmmmnmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmk."

And that, my friends, is the story of how I got a complex about my eyebrows and I'm not even sure why, because, comfortingly enough, they are "okay."

(Just because I couldn't resist, I searched the KJV for references to eyebrows.  There's only one direct reference, and in this reference the guy is straight-up shaving his off.  Maybe eyebrows are meant to be expendable?)

Lent

So, I think Lent is crazy. If you wanted to give something up to one-up your flesh or whatever (still not sure I understand Lent, truth be told) then you should do it at any time. Like I decided caffeine was bad for me, and stopped taking it. Done and done. My sister gave up gluten for Lent last year, my best friend went off Chipotle, and last year I gave up nothing. This year, for some reason, I got sucked into the whole Lenten celebration (oops, Lent is supposed to be sad), and have given up... cheese.

Why cheese? Well, as I was explaining to someone the other day, I don't have a lot of vices to speak of. I don't spend a lot of money using a bank card of any sort (someone suggested that I use only cash during Lent). I don't drink or smoke, I don't drink coffee or any such habitual drink (no caffeine, remember?). I can't give up "worldly music" because they play it at work, and I don't think I could convince them to not turn on the radio for the next month and a half. If I didn't hold a job, it would make sense for me to not read fiction during Lent, but truth be told, I rarely get time to read these days, so it wouldn't feel like I was actually giving something up. Ditto movies, I don't even have time to watch them, nor the inclination, nor the ability. So that left me with... cheese.

But again, why cheese? Well, in my family, cheese is a big deal. Not that we gather round and give thanks to the brilliant men who first figured out how to make cheese delicious, but rather that we eat it a lot. Eggs, casseroles, spaghetti, macaroni, quesadillas, pretty much everything we make in a jiffy has cheese involved. Meals without cheese take more time, because they require actual planning involving flavour not derived from cheese.

So fare thee well, cheese, I shall devour thee once again come Easter.

Oh, the best part of Lent this year? My two best friends are giving up pop and going out to eat, respectively. I think we'll all be a little worse for the wear by the time it's all over. Huzzah to strength in numbers!