Giving thanks

The month of November for many is a time to give thanks for our blessings culminating in the thankiest day of the month, Thanksgivng. Thanksgiving in the US is followed by its dark sister, Black Friday, perhaps the greediest day of the year. What did I do, American in Poland, on Thanksgiving? Yeah, I cooked turkey and stuffing and all the fixings from scratch baby, from scratch. It was on Saturday and we still have turkey in the fridge 5 days later, but whatever.
I am thankful though. I know I like to complain a lot. It’s the Polish in me and a blog written by an eternally contented person would be pretty boring to read. No? You don’t think so? Let’s give it a go.

The sun is shining again today. I never knew that the sky could be so blue. I ate 7000 calories of chocolate again yesterday and lost 3 pounds. Isn’t that amazing? Everyday when I look in the mirror I am happier and happier with what I see. Hmm, what shall I wear today? My new book is coming out today. I should look nice for the premiere. Some people are saying it is going to be bigger than the Bible. Isn’t that hilarious? Back to the clothes - I have an amazing array of clothes to choose from as numerous world famous designers have decided that I am the new “it” girl (what are the odds at 40?) and have stocked my wardrobe with literally hundreds of designer looks for any occasion. I would ask my children to help me pick out something but my elder daughter is sitting her university exams. Yes, it is unusual for a 7-year-old to be a freshman at Harvard but she really wanted to go and they offered her a full scholarship. My younger child cannot help either as she is preparing her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. She’s discovered the cure for some nasty illness or something. What a precocious little thing. I’d ask my hubby to help but he is at the lottery center collecting our second win of the year. Isn’t that unusual? Gawd, we are just the luckiest and happiest family in the whole, wide world.

Ok, I stand corrected, that life would be interesting to read about.

I am thankful for all that I have achieved, big and small –ok, small and smaller. I am thankful that I could go to university and graduate on time without huge debt. I am thankful that we have a roof over our heads and are mortgage free. I am thankful for all the contacts, personal and professional, that I have made over the years. I am proud that I learned a bit of another culture and language. I am thankful and proud that I finally reached a level of maturity where I can stand up for myself. I am thankful that I decided to write to this blog and that somebody besides myself takes some enjoyment from reading it. I am thankful that I have parents who took care of me and are still together taking care of each other. I am thankful for my sister and her wicked sense of humor. I am thankful that my grandmother taught me how to cook. I am thankful that I came to Poland and met my husband. I am thankful for those two little boogers we call daughters. I am a lucky, lucky lady.

Here are some other things that I am thankful. Let’s call it November’s Top Thanks. I’ve been collecting them.

As I bent down at school to help my daughter with her new kozaki, I heard a terrible ripping sound. So I am thankful that my trousers ripped across the knee and not up the backside.

I am thankful for the Facebook defriend facility allowing friends and family I haven't seen or spoken to in 20 years to edit me from their lives.

I am thankful to be invited to the annual auction benefiting children with cancer. I am thankful that I quickly and inexpensively found something to wear to the auction and it fulfills the requirement from my husband that it not be gray (my whole wardrobe is gray). I am thankful that my children will attend the auction as guests and not as former patients.

Thankful that when I wore a dress this week, nobody asked me who died.

Thankful that I managed to buy a picture at the charity auction - it required a loud comment that I had no chance against the guy in front of me who bought about 10 pictures, but whatever. Thankful to everyone who told me what lovely children I have. Thankful to have such lovely children...that's why I chose that handsome husband, lord knows it wasn't for the money.

I am thankful that when husband and doctor were discussing whether to put child in the hospital or not, the issue of whether our insurance would cover it was not even on the table.

I am thankful for the people who come to my home, ignore the mess and even say 'it's not that bad, you can still see the floor'.

I am thankful that people have started replacing the word 'poor' with 'hipster' as in "Chris is a hipster" which sounds way better than "Chris is poor".

I am thankful that so many people don't like me that my Christmas shopping list keeps getting shorter and shorter.

Thankful for the crew who fixed our fence and reported that every woman in our village is a whore, excluding me of course.

Thankful that my group gave me props for my new hoodie. When I changed the color of my hair, nothing, but a new hoodie cannot go without comment.

Thankful for the dentist who fixed my tooth today and his understanding reaction to having a witch like me in the chair. When he said that my tooth (which was repaired there 4 months ago) would be charged, I only commented, "Maybe, but not to me."

That puts me in such a good mood, I might have to put up the Christmas tree.

What are you thankful for?

I will pray for you

Recently I was asked how I felt when someone says, “I will pray for you”. Well, I have to say it all depends on the situation.

I know some non-believers are very sensitive to this issue. Some say offers of prayer to an atheist are passive aggressive, while others liken it to being given the middle finger. I don’t feel like that. When somebody who knows and cares about me and knows I am having a tough time tells me that they will pray for me, I know it is their way of telling me that I am in their thoughts. I like it. It is nice to be thought about.

However, more often than not when people tell me they want to pray for me, it has absolutely nothing to do with sending good vibrations my way. It usually occurs about 5 seconds after finding out I'm an atheist. It has more to do with protecting my soul from eternal damnation for my atheist ways. Then I’m not so happy about it. I keep my cool though. I don’t want to offend anyone’s religious sensibilities. For some reason those same people often think that my sensibilities cannot be offended.








So, back to my recent conversation and how I really feel inside when somebody wants to pray for me. I guess I feel indifferent. I mean how would you feel if a Voodoo shaman offered to slaughter a chicken and dig through its insides for you. Would that have any meaning to you? No? Ridiculous, right? I mean that Voodoo religion isn’t any less made-up than yours if you have one.

Voodoo follower in prayer. Check out the rest of the intriguing photos here.

Jesus vs. Doctor Who

And for Thanksgiving, an atheist prayer.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Polish Thanksgiving

Along with Halloween, we celebrate Thanksgiving here in Poland. When I say “we” I mean our family. Thanksgiving hasn’t made it into the Polish holiday line-up ;) I’m always kind of bummed out on Thanksgiving because I know my family in the US is sitting down together for dinner and I am…at work. Our Thanksgiving always takes place on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Not quite the same but good enough.
Do you know what is the best thing about Thanksgiving (besides family and giving thanks and all that)?
The pumpkin pie! I had to practice to make sure I remember how to make pumpkin pie from last year. Here’s my first practice pie. My second one didn’t turn out.

And now the best thing about NOT having Thanksgiving in Poland…no Black Friday! I am much thankful for that.
Chris’s Pumpkin Pie Recipe – The no-crust version (which is really my mother’s pumpkin pie minus the crust and some sugar)

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. salt

spices to taste (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg)

½ square butter

¾ cup sugar (white or brown)

2 eggs

½ tsp. vanilla extract

1 can evaporated milk (non-sweetened)

3 cups pumpkin (cooked and mixed)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease one glass pie pan with butter (bottom and sides) and set aside.

1. Sift or mix together flour, baking powder, salt and spices.

1. In a large bowl, beat together sugar and butter (slightly softened). Beat in 2 eggs.

1. Add dry ingredients and vanilla. Mix.

1. Add pumpkin and mix.

1. Add milk and stir with a spoon.

1. Pour into prepared pan. Bake at 180°C for about 1 hour. Let cool before cutting.

1 cup=235 ml
tsp.=teaspoon
1 tsp.=5ml

Enjoy :)

blah, blah, blah…czyli what’s up with me

I know this blog is supposed to be mainly about Poland but we shall digress for a moment and talk about….me!

I am working, working, working as usual as is Misiu. We celebrated Thanksgiving last weekend (it had to be on the weekend for us, but hooray – no Black Friday!) and have started to think about Christmas. Santa Claus Day is the 6th and Lizzie and Rosie per our new tradition (because I forgot Santa Claus day last year) will leave letters to Santa under their pillows. Santa will take their letters so he knows what to bring them for Christmas and leave them something sweet . That’s how we cover the issue of Santa visiting us twice. So far our story holds water ;)

We have received the girls’ passports finally. So what that the photographer made them look like orphans from some forgotten Siberian orphanage. What’s important is that they are little American citizens.

Lizzie and Rosie have hit the pre-school social circuit and they have hit it hard. They have invitations to birthday parties practically every week and last week they even went to 2 parties on the same day. One party Lizzie  described as the “best party in my whole life” – props to the mom who pulled that off. I don’t know if it means anything but my girls were the only girls invited to the last 2 parties and Lizzie is going to a party next week and she is the only girl invited. I noticed that those birthday boys like cars, dinosaurs and Spiderman just like Lizzie so I suppose it is a birds-of-a-feather thing.

We have plans to end our reign of village coolness and install central heating in our village house. Well, we have more than plans and would like to spend Christmas there without huddling in one room, but I say no more – don’t wanna jinx it.

We are also looking for a new apartment in the City. There’s nothing wrong with our current apartment, but as the kids grow the apartment seems to shrink. We thought we’d get on top of the problem and start looking now. Yesterday we went to an open house of one of the local developments. The apartments were nice if not a little to0 small for us (the biggest on offer was 72 sq.m.). The sales associate who accompanied us pulled a “ja tylko sprzątam” on us and knew almost nothing about the building, parking, garages, finish dates, etc. From our own investigation we found that this development will have no on-street parking. None. Well, there are 6 places currently at the sales booth but we alone would occupy 1/3 of that parking lot. That means garage only. Bleh, 50,000 PLN to park your car in a spot among all the other cars. Bleh.

On a brighter note, we went to the Christmas fair in the Market  Square as we do every year. The kids checked out the fairytale presentations and then took a few turns on the carousel and the race track (very Christmasey, don’t ya think?) and we perused the stalls to see what’s new in Christmas trends. And what’s new in   Christmas trends? Apparently trying to pass off Christmas ornaments made in China as made in Poland – that’s the only trend we saw. And thank you to the lady who gave us 3 tickets to the carousel after her child got bored. We used 2 of them and re-gifted the third. Thanks again.

Merry Christmas preparations!

Thanksgiving decorations for KIDS

It’s Thanksgiving Day in the US tomorrow or Turkey Day as some people call it. It’s usually a pretty melancholy day for me as I am here (Poland) and my family is there (the US). But I have a new family now, my husband and my children and since our introduction of Halloween to Poland (ok, starting from our klatka only) was so successful, we’ve decided to push ahead with our Thanksgiving celebration. We’ve invited some friends with kids the same age as ours because we want to share this meaningful holiday with them and also because we don’t want to clean so diligently and people with small kids are less critical of your housekeeping skills. They also agreed to cook a few dishes.

To get the Thanksgiving mood flowing in our home, we decided to make some decorations.

A turkey family

You know that you are jealous and that you want to make them so I’ll tell you how.

Here’s all the stuff you’ll need-

Turkey pumpkin

You’ll need:

a pumpkin and a squash

paper – crepe, construction, self-sticking

tape

a stapler

some skewer sticks

a tolerance for mess

Start by cleaning your pumpkin and squash. Using a skewer stick, connect the squash “head” to the pumpkin “body”. Tie a red crepe paper scarf around the neck to hide the connection and make the wattle. Cut out eyes and a beak from self-sticking paper, stick them to the “face” and your head is complete.

Next make the tail feathers. Create a fan of crepe paper in various colors and tie or staple off. Stick the tail feathers to the pumpkin using a skewer and some tape to secure.

Next, make the wings by cutting out your children’s handprints in various colors of construction paper. Glue or staple together and tape to your turkey and you’re finished.

Gobble, gobble.

Toilet paper roll turkeys

For one turkey, you’ll need:

2 toilet paper rolls or a paper towel roll

crepe paper

construction paper

lightweight piece of cardboard

tape

glue

an even bigger tolerance for mess as there is glue involved

To make the body, you’ll need one TP roll and a half of another one. Wrap the rolls with brown crepe paper and secure with tape. Tuck the excess on each end into the roll. Glue the head onto the body. Create a face out of construction paper and glue a crepe paper wattle under the beak.

Make a tail feather fan out of crepe paper (or a colorful napkin). Crease in the middle and bring the ends to meet and staple to secure. Glue the body onto the fan.

For the feet, glue a piece of construction paper onto a lightweight piece of cardboard. Trace your child’s hand and cut out. Glue the body onto the feet and you are all done.

Re-glue the face on repeatedly as Rosie likes to peel it off.

Gobble, gobble.

Happy Thanksgiving!