Collard Greens Are Gross and That Baby Has A Gun.

It's natural to give thanks.

You know what's better than one thanksgiving meal?
Two thanksgiving meals.

My family hosted lunch at our house, then we headed to my grandmother's house for dinner.

This is a list of food I ate yesterday in no particular order:

Macaroni and cheese
Sweet potato casserole
Turkey
White rice
Brown rice (I'm not racist)
Gravy
rolls
deviled eggs
stuffing
more gravy
broccoli
Ham
collard greens (They were gross...my mom made me try them)
Pumpkin pie
Gravy
Pecan Pie
A couple of M&Ms (they were in a bowl on my grandmothers coffee table)

I realize that's an embarrassingly long list....but I skipped breakfast, so it's okay.

My mother's side of the family came over for thanksgiving lunch.  In the middle of eating, I look up to see my baby cousin Eva standing on the stairs holding my brothers rifle.  It's a good thing it's broken, because she is very feisty and it would not have ended well.  My uncles and brother argued about football and something about Joe Montana and the civil war.  My aunt and I stole my cousin's phone and changed her background to a picture of my tongue and recorded farting sounds and set it as her ringtone.
My big brother and I pinned down our little brother to the ground and force fed him broccoli.  We watched Little Rascals and Love Actually as our food digested.


I love thanksgiving for many reasons, but if I had to pick one,
it would probably be because there is a chance that I will see a 3 year old with a gun on my staircase.


I love my family.

A Walk in the Woods

It's natural to explore.

I live in a nice neighborhood, a nice house, with a nice yard.
To the left of my backyard, the lake, to the right, seemingly endless woods.

When I was a kid I spent endless hours exploring and pillaging those woods. I was a hopeless tom boy.

After my run tonight, I walked to the back yard to cool down, and looked into those woods where so many memories were made. I hadn't been in them for years.

So I started walking.

It was a little different but mostly the same. My old tree house is rotting, but it was glorious in its prime. I stepped on a nail back there, and had even built a bridge across a ditch once. Once I stumbled upon a group of teenagers smoking pot deep in the woods. I've never seen pot heads run that fast. And with damaged lungs too! Impressive.

I was walking down the newly made four-wheel trails, when I came upon a grave yard. I had discovered the grave yard when I was about nine, walking through the woods one day alone. I was completely freaked out that there were dead people buried in my back yard, ran back home, and then apparently blocked it out of my mind because I had forgotten about it.

As I walked towards it, a deer jumped out and scared me to death. I felt like the female lead in some zombie movie as I opened the rusty gate, and stepped inside the tiny cemetery.

It was a family cemetery, with the name Mcartha etched across every worn headstone. Most of them had died in the late 1700s-early 1800s, as young as 20 and as old as 94.

Across every stone, the phrase "Gone but not Forgotten" was carved.

There were a few roses scattered around. A tree had fallen across the gate.

I wondered if there were any surviving Mcarthas, and if they knew that their relatives were buried out here in the middle of nowhere, where boys drove four wheelers and teenagers smoked pot.

I walked slowly home, pondering life and death, and listened to the birds sing.