A Week in the Life: November 28, 2021

This week went by fast. Work took up a lot of my mental energy because I was the only one from my small department present this week. I had a lot to do and not enough time to do it. When I wasn’t working, I was getting ahead on my Thanksgiving preparations since I’ve learned that the only way to run Thanksgiving is to make as much as you can before Thanksgiving itself. The work did pay off—all the food came out tasty and we had minimal chaos in the kitchen before the meal.

Consuming

Here are some things I’ve recently read, watched, or bought.

Books and Other Words

This week I read Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This is an urban fantasy vampire story set in Mexico City. It was an enjoyable read. What I liked most about it was the concept that there are different sub-species of vampire. The protagonist, Atl, belongs to a group that is native to Mexico and served as priests to the Aztecs.

Meanwhile, on the internet:

• What you learned about the ‘first Thanksgiving’ isn’t true. Here’s the real story via Cape Cod Times. This is the best account of the actual first “thanksgiving” that I’ve read.
• U.S listed as ‘backsliding’ democracy for the first time report by European think tank via The Washington Post. Experts taking note of what we’re feeling here is good to see even if it feels bad to live.
• What to know about the omicron variant of the coronavirus via The Washington Post. New covid strain just dropped. This is how we live now.

Rampant Consumerism

As is my tradition, for Thanksgiving, I made a point of sending money to some Native organizations and causes. It only feels fair to me that, if I’m going to observe Thanksgiving, I send some cash to the people harmed by the events we’re supposedly celebrating.

• The Cultural Conservancy: a bay-area organization working to restore indigenous cultures and maintain traditional knowledge.
• National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center: working to end violence against Native women.
• Nevada City Rancheria: This is the organization of a local tribe, the Nisenan.
• Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project: A language school dedicated to return language fluency to the Wampanoag Nation. This is the tribe involved in the first contact story with the pilgrims. This year, I decided to set up a small, monthly donation because languages are a subject close to my heart.

Finally, it’s a great time to donate to your local food bank. Last year, I set up a monthly donation (it doesn’t have to be big!) to the Elk Grove Food Bank.

Making Things and Doing stuff

There are some things I’ve made and stuff I’ve done.

Knitting and Crafts

I want to note that I didn’t knit for maybe the last two months, but finally started up again this weekend. My brain had been too full of other thoughts and I felt too tired to focus on it. Now I’m back at it and I’m happy about that.

Kitchen Witchery

This year I tried out a couple of new recipes for Thanksgiving including the mac and cheese stuffed sweet potatoes from The Kitchenista and a braided onion bread from 101 Cookbooks. The sweet potatoes were really good and, I thought, fun. Putting a big-ass sweet potato topped with a pile of macaroni is the essence of Thanksgiving excess. As for the onion bread, I was a little disappointed at first because my loaf didn’t hold together as intended, however the bread was very good and the loaf still looks striking, so I can’t be mad.

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Cat Therapy

Finally, here are some cat photos for your nerves. Fritz has been going hard on being an asshole teenager lately. He peed on the new bath mat we bought (which we bought because he was systematically tearing apart and eating the old one). He wants to scratch everything. He keeps trying to scratch a certain part of the couch, so I put one of his scratching posts there. He went around it and kept scratching the couch. Why, my dude? He has also decided that he is king of the house. He took over the top level of the cat tree, which has traditionally been a Huey spot. Huey remains non-plussed by his presence.

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