I Am Thankful

I’ve had a good run so far in 2014. I can’t complain because I feel like I’ve had great opportunities and experiences. 2014 has been yet another year of change! And the changes have been good.

Asparagus Ferns
The tiny asparagus ferns I gathered at my sister’s home to bring back with me

This year, I declined the invite to my cousin’s house for Thanksgiving. There is usually a plethora of great food and many people and this made me want to avoid it for a few reasons. One, was the fact I didn’t really want to talk about myself to my relatives, and the other was that I just wasn’t in the mood for it this year. The third, I won’t mention.

I spent lunch with my sister’s family, which was really nice. She had prepared a spiral cut ham, some potato salad, and had a chocolate mousse cake of some kind. My contribution, was a jell-o brand no-bake pumpkin pie and it was pretty decent! We ate together and then I hung out and talked story with my sister while the niece took a nap. I went into their yard and gathered some of the asparagus ferns that grow wild throughout, and put them in a tiny clay pot to bring home.

Asparagus ferns like shade and indirect light. I noticed they tend to grow in the shade of trees and shrubs at my sister’s. In my apartment, they’re near the anthurium I bought recently since that’s also a shade plant. So far, so good and it’s been a couple of days, so I hope to keep it alive long enough to grow it into a nice, sizeable fern. I read asparagus ferns are actually not ferns, but part of the lily family. They are often used in corsages and floral arrangements and have wispy needles. While I could have selected a larger fern, I wanted some tiny ones to raise up. There is a fern over 10′ tall growing in my sister’s yard alongside the trunk of their lime tree.

I drove back to my apartment, stuffed, and they headed out to the big Ohana gathering. At my place, I decided to play with the new rice cooker and made my jalapeno, avocado, and cheese congee (rice porridge). It was pretty fun overall and I have to say I had a great Thanksgiving.

Orchids in the Kitchen
My stripey Halloween pumpkin ended up lasting through the month and has been serving as an excellent Autumn decoration on my kitchen windowsill. Yay!

I’m thankful for my life. I truly believe all experiences, good and bad, contribute to make us who we are and I value all I’ve gone through and learned up to this point. I’m lucky for all the things that have happened throughout time in order for my existence to even be possible. Thanks to mom and dad! Thanks to my sister and her family for spending time with me! Thanks to my friends and people who have interacted with me throughout the year. Thanks to my Ex for the crazy times (good and bad), the screenwriter I met this summer, my librarian pals who wrote me letters of recommendation, my old boss who also wrote me a letter of recommendation, the chair of the department for letting me into grad school (along with UH Manoa’s grad school division office), Sue: the artist who taught me to love gardening, Boots: The Tuxedo cat who I believe loves me, The students and faculty at LCC who were in my math and chemistry courses, my art instructor at KCC, The Smithsonian museums I visited in the summer that inspired me to take the art class …

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