Amanda Blog and Kiss

So it didn’t hit me until late this week, but today is (apparently) Thanksgiving!  Right this very moment in the States all of my friends and family are gathering around dinner tables and scooping up helpings of mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, and eyeing that pumpkin pie in the corner, just waiting to slice into it shortly.  I understand that it snowed in New Jersey today, so everyone is wrapped up in cozy sweaters and the heating is on, and the food is warm, and the conversation is flowing.

As a holiday, Thanksgiving doesn’t rank high on my list of favorites.  First of all, you don’t dress up in costume- mark one against it.  Second of all, as a self-righteous vegan I obviously can’t stand behind a day that means slaughter for lots of innocent turkeys.  Mark two.  And last of all, it stands for complete and utter gluttony- just pants-busting, zipper-popping, straight up-and-up gluttony- which is something that makes me uncomfortable to think about, pained to take part in, and worried for the health of the nation every November.

So it’s not the day itself, and it’s not the food.  (Although pumpkin pie is not safe in my vicinity.)

But the people.  Yes, it’s the people that I miss, and the gathering.  I miss the gathering.  I woke up this morning, rolled over in bed and thought, “It’s Thanksgiving.  Everyone will be gathering today.”

And here in Amsterdam it’s just another day. 

It’s not that people aren’t gathering today.  There are plenty of expats that are hosting their own Thanksgivings today or this weekend, and there are two vegan Thanksgivings that I am missing due to work.  But sometimes with these expat get-togethers, it’s more that we’re all lonely sheep separated from the crowd, huddling together with eachother in the hopes to form a rag-tag flock and make some semblance of a tradition while being so far away.

Today, I want to be with my family.  And because that’s impossible, I’m just a little annoyed and not-right with the world right now.  So small things are bothering me more than they should, and I’m taking things more personally than I need to.

I started this post thinking that I was going to give thanks to all the good in my life (see the title?) but it’s turned into a rant as it grew, which gives you an indication of how my night is going.

If I can’t be with my family, I’d just rather be home sleeping.

Hope everyone spent (is spending) Thanksgiving treasuring those you love!  Have a piece of pie for me please!

I was walking through De Pijp the other day and came across this scrawl of graffiti (*remind me to tell you a story about the word graffiti).  I wondered, as I always do when I see poignant urban scrawl, “What if this were written for me?”

If it were (it wasn’t), here’s what I would say to the person that wrote it:

It’s ok.  I’m ok.  Nothing that you have done or could have done could ever really break me, maybe just wind me for a moment.  And as for the existing part…I’m existing more now than I ever have.  I exist so much that it seeps out of my pores and I literally stink of existence.  So don’t worry about me.

For clarification, I am not talking about any one person here.  But maybe, just maybe, three or four people who have been a part of my life could learn from it…

(* Graffiti.  When I was in third grade, I had a trapper keeper with a page in the back that you could doodle on, and the word “Graffiti” written across the top.  I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how to pronounce the word on my own.  “Graph-ity”?  Huh?  What the hell is graph-ity? So I went to my teacher and asked.  And the next day I forgot again, and had to go ask her again.  I probably asked her 6 more times over the course of the school year, because I just couldn’t get it to stick in my head.  To this day, when I have to type or write the word, I still stumble over it as “Graph-ity” in my head.)

Drugs (seeds).
To Spain.
Go figure.
Always the Spaniards. Always.

Oh no wait that one was Portugese.  Same difference.

The noises the black one made carried on for another half hour.