"Tis the season......

ok, so it's not "the season" just yet but I've already started thinking about it. We're just about done with football season (somebody hold me,,,please) and I've survived tailgating season. You know what? It IS possible to tailgate and have fun without indulging in copious amounts of unhealthy food and drink. I'm probably much less amusing to the folks that sit around me at games but, fear not, that fool will be back next season. Now begins the hardest season of all. I'm not sure that it's possible to fully enjoy the holidays (I'm talking Thanksgiving and the Christmas season) without good foods that you don't consume at any other time during the year.
If I make it to heaven one day I'll know I'm there because my heaven is a place that forever smells like my Mother's kitchen the day before Thanksgiving. I've cooked many turkeys and many pans of dressing but was never able to recreate that heavenly aroma that was "home" in every sense of the word. Perhaps I should just refrain from recognizing Thanksgiving this year and go sit in the mountains somewhere and look at the leaves changing. Or maybe I should just go sit in downtown Athens. I never seem to have an appetite there.
And Christmas - what's Christmas going to be without a taste of potato candy? Before my Mother fell victim to Alzheimer's there were two people who knew how to make it. Now there's only one of us. I guess I'll make a batch of it so that my family will have that connection to Mama. And I'll survive.
Fast forward to adulthood - one of my favorite current traditions is to splurge and cook something fancy and good for my bride the day before Christmas. I'd spend all day Christmas Eve alternating between martinis and cooking. This year she's being a trooper "We can go get some fresh fish and grill it or something..that'll be good." Christmas Day is usually a blur for us and becomes as tiring and stressful as it is enjoyable - rushing from house to house seeing our loved ones. Christmas Eve always seemed more like our holiday than Christmas Day. Again, I feel she's missing out because of my self-imposed change in lifestyle. But we'll survive.
Whenever something gets stuck in my craw, I always feel better after blogging about it. When it lives in my mind, whatever challenge I'm obsessing about seems insurmountable. Then, when I put it in words, I think "I can handle that...."
Totally unrelated ramblings:
Mindless rant #1 Thank GOD that today is election day. I'm grateful to live in a free society where we can have a change of leadership without tanks in the streets and former leaders being hung by their toenails in the square. That said, I'm sick of politicians at this point. Whoever wins I'm glad it's over.
Mindless rant #2 - can we now agree that the SEC was the most overrated conference in football this year? It's Florida and Alabama and then everyone else. Before the season the media stepped all over themselves touting the SEC as the reason God created the universe. This year, give me the Big XII, hands down. The Texas Tech/Texas game last Saturday night was as good a college game I'd watched in....well........hours - at least since I got home from the Tech-FSU game. And what's that loud THUD I just heard? It was everybody jumping off the Georgia bandwagon. Let the word go forth - before the season I proclaimed to anyone who would listen that Georgia was nowhere near the team the national media had proclaimed them to be. And yes, my view is severely skewed by my white and gold colored glasses. But I have one message for the guy that wears #24 for the bulldogs - just play football. Just play football and quit acting like a fool. You looked like a buffoon (is that a word?) patting Charlie Strong on the hiney after picking up a first down. Especially when, a few plays thereafter, your quarterback threw it to someone wearing the wrong jersey. And personally, I could watch that video of the Florida middle linebacker changing your zip code over & over & over....In fact I have. You're a talented young man and I want all talented young men playing NCAA football to get their degrees and succeed. But you'd make it easier to root for you if you'd act like you'd been there before.
WHEW! I feel much better now.