The Poems – Thanksgiving

If you have read the post regarding our first steps in getting our Brick Beauty renovated, you know that my husband and I spent a LOT of time trying to purge our house of the lingering bins and boxes of items that have been following me, house to house, over the past 20 years. Although the sifting and sorting was painful, there were some moments of joy and hilarity. I found items that I thought were long gone and some that I had forgotten had ever existed. The original post about the PURGE is here: https://watchusdostuff.com/the-renovation-first-steps-the-purge/

Do I have writing in my bones?

I have dilly-dallied around about starting a blog for ages, knowing that my love of cooking and presenting food, was not going away. However I was not sure of the writing bit of it. I am an Industrial Engineer by trade. Writing for me over the past 25 years has been process or support documentation, or most creatively, training and customer interaction docs. Not the most earth shattering writing, for sure. However, while digging through bins of “stuff”, I found so many written letters, postcards and cards from family and friends, as well as many letters that I had sent to John, well written and, admittedly, sappy as hell. I missed my soap opera writing calling, for sure! This is simple stuff, but it jerked alive memories of, indeed, writing for joy in my past. Writing for fun will be part of my life therapy going forward.

The pièce de résistance

One of the items we turned out while garage digging was a book of poems that I thought had been lost forever. A group of poems written in grade school that I took the time to bind into a folder for safe keeping. It is labeled on the front as “Poems and Stories”, in what seems to be #2 pencil, likely out of my school pencil box. Note that these were not poems written for class, but written for fun at home. Some of these poems, I remembered and have thought about through the years, as simple and ridiculous as they are. Others were funny to read at this point in my life, portraying a very different kid than the adult that I have become. Some are literally, laugh out loud. John and I have had a few returns to the pages, just to get a daily fill of giggles.

The picky eater knew there would be more food in the future

Well, I will stop short of saying that I am a clairvoyant or seer, but I will say, that for a kid that existed on cereal, cheese ravioli, Pastina and rice with butter and milk because of my fickle eating nature, I apparently knew, there would be more and bigger eating in my future. I am not sure if I was seeing this turkey dinner through my eyes or those of everyone else, because, other than the pie noted and the plain turkey, I am not sure I ate anything else until late in my teens. Note: my mom had a meal on the table every night of the week, with the exception of Friday when we typically got pizza or fried fish (I ate only the chips), so the limited diet was not due to lack of meals available, but my absurdly, picky nature.

Check out my Thanksgiving poem. An ode to the ability to get older and EAT MORE FOOD!

So, my venture into food and home blogging for fun, was somehow and weirdly boosted by the uncovering of a simple poem written by an 8 or so year old. It indicated to me that writing was always one of my things…and food was going to play pretty large in my future…what is my now. I am older and bigger now and have more room!