My favorite (unusual) Thanksgiving tradition

One of the options for the EtsyBloggers blog carnival this time around was to describe your favorite Thanksgiving tradition. I must admit, I usually don't think about Thanksgiving much any more because it tends to make me a bit sad; my mom always organized these incredible turkey-day dinners for anyone and everyone who wanted to join and she passed away 4 years ago, so Thanksgiving has never been quite the same.

Still, sometimes it's good to squeeze through that initial sadness to remember something good.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a house with giant dining room (we could seat 25-30 people in there--no, I'm not rich, my parents just happened to buy a run down country "estate" for a song and fix it up before I was born). My mom was a very inclusive person--she definitely lived by "the more the merrier" cliche--and this willingness to have anyone and everyone sometimes translated to some pretty odd collections for Thanksgiving dinner.

See, my dad had been married twice before he married my mom, and had kids from both those previous marriages. My mom not only invited her step-children, but their mothers and even their mothers' other children (the ones not from my dad) and parents to join us. She'd also invite and neighbors and family friends who didn't have a big gathering of their own to go to.

It's funny how what you grow up with just seems normal until you get enough exposure to other people's families--I think I didn't realize just how unusual it was for my mom to invite her husband's ex-wives and the family of those ex-wives until I was 12 or 13. Still, even after I'd realized it was a bit "weird", it never stopped seeming anything other than perfectly suited to the spirit of the holiday itself, no matter how un-traditional a tradition it was. My mom was never terribly big on very "traditional" traditions anyway--that's her pretending to pour the pot of stuffing on my half-sister's head in the picture above.

Us procrastinators will unite--one of these days...

In the meantime, I have some catching up to do: I'm part of a fun tag game, and I've received the Brilliante award from 3 different places and still haven't posted it. Now I'm procrastinating from studying for my big exam, however, so now I'm miraculously finding time for everything but that .

First, the tag game from BeadedTail: I get to name 5 unusual things about me, and tag 5 other people. Rather than pick people to tag, I'll let you choose--if you want to play, leave a comment and I'll add a link to you here.

Oddity #1: My middle name is Ryan, a "boy's" name, but I went by that name until I was 10 and got sick of being teased all the time (I switched to an abbreviated form of my first name instead). Now I kind of miss "Ryan" though, so I use variations of it for internet aliases and pseudonyms all the time--for example, I'm "Rya" or "Ryarianne" most places online.

Oddity #2: I'm unbelievably frightened of spiders but I love snakes. Go figure.

Oddity #3: My fear of spiders actually causes me to catch and release them when I find them inside, rather than kill them, because I've convinced myself that if i don't hurt them they won't hurt me.

Oddity #4: I'm enrolled in a PhD program in (basically) writing, yet I feel far more comfortable talking about intellectual ideas than writing about them.

Oddity #5: I love the smell of coffee but absolutely hate the taste of it. I drink ginger or licorice tea instead (which I guess should count as an additional oddity, since I don't know anyone else who likes licorice tea).

Second, the Brilliante award. BeadedTail, Miz Allie Cat, and TeamSquidEtsy were all kind enough to give me this award. Since I just nominated 7 blogs for my cat award the other day I'm not going to nominate any more at this time (plus it seems everyone I read has already gotten this, and it irks my self-centered creative side to be passe--lol). However, I am very grateful to be the lucky recipient of this award--thank you so much!