I am going to be completely honest with you. The sweet potato (pronounced "patayta") casserole (SPC) is an understudy to the best Thanksgiving dish ever. The best Thanksgiving dish ever is obviously pumpkin cheesecake…a thousand times over. But thanks (but no thanks) to the lactose intolerance that I have recently acquired; pumpkin cheesecake has the tendency to make me puke. And nothing is worse than puking on Thanksgiving. And so unfortunately I have to pull a “don’t mind if I don’t” on the dairy products and a “don’t mind if I do” on 4-5 helpings of sweet potato casserole (SPC).
Lucky for me, my grandmother can cook better than yours and she made the best SPC I have ever tasted in my life - full of brown sugar and pecans and I gained at least a pound just from that casserole alone. (Hips don’t lie.) I demand orange food at Thanksgiving and pumpkin is my favorite flavor of all. (I seriously like pumpkin anything, and even if I don’t, I can trick myself into thinking I do. I am a master of trickery.) Sweet potatoes come in at a close second. I love orange food like I love autumn and Grandmommy hit this one out of the park.
Speaking of orange, the Texas A&M / Texas game is played every year on Thanksgiving and it’s always the most anticipated game of the season for the Aggies. God knows we are obsessed with beating UT, which is usually rare, but we actually have a decently balanced W-L record over the last few years. This year, the Longhorns beat us by a devastating one point in the last few seconds of the game. I have to give Case McCoy credit though, because that kid has heart and he absolutely won that game for them. Well Case, and their very reliable kicker. What is more devastating, though, is that from now on, there will be no more maroon / orange rivalry. No more Lone Star Showdown. It’s the worst idea A&M has had…ever. I mean did y’all watch LSU play Arkansas? They could beat half the teams in the NFL. We are going to be the SEC’s JV team. And moreover…I guess we should think about changing our fight song since like 3 stanzas reference the University of Texas. TRAGIC!
But as far as Thanksgiving dinner goes, I am so very very very thankful for Grandmommy’s sweet potato casserole.
Here are some pics of the Brown-Rice family in Aggie football mode. This is my favorite place to watch football games, and my favorite people to be with:
God love 'em.
November 25: Verbal Processing
I am typing this to you at 30,000ft or something so I cannot be held responsible for any and all idiocy henceforth. I am tapping out on taking responsibility. I have had a lot of sugar and minimal sleep, so lay off. And to the kind overweight sir beside me: you are breathing on my neck while sleeping and as peaceful as you may look, that’s just simply not going to fly (no pun intended). I am about to stick my empty cup into your mouth to plug it up. Please do not take this action personally because I am doing you a favor. So you’re welcome, or I’m sorry. Or both.
With that being said, let’s continue. Some days I feel like my thoughts are a pre-school classroom. There’s paste and glue everywhere and its snack time and the kids are pulling each other’s hair and screaming at the top of their lungs and the shy kid just wet himself. Do you know what I mean?
Those days I feel as though clarity is hiding behind my windshield in a snowstorm and my driver’s side windshield wiper is broken on the driver’s side and the defroster is being unbelievably slow. And to make matters worse, Hoobastank just came on the radio and my fingers are too frozen to change it.
(Honestly…can you imagine better analogies?)
But then…like a light through the cloud: Enter God who is stable who constantly asks me to trust him in my chaos. Enter the faith to believe that God has all things under control and that He loves me. Enter glimpses of rationality. Enter verbal processing. And subsequently, enter close friend or family member to listen and respond.
I have a chronic need to verbalize because like I have said a million times: I am a geyser of emotions. What can I say? I love to emote.
So I talk about it. To God. To Brit. To you. To anyone that knows me and will listen. The verbal processing, it saves me. And I am learning (SLOWLY) to hand things over to God. And then hand them over to Him again later on because let’s be honest, as soon as I feel peace about it, one of the 3yr olds takes his pants off and runs down the hallway.
And the chaos begins again. So I am thankful for people to listen, or in your case – read as I process through this perfectly crazy life that God has so graciously blessed me with.
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