Well, the 2016 Thanksgiving weekend is upon us...I guess my biggest "Thanks" is for the fact that I'm in generally decent health and I'm still gainfully employed, even if I'm not making too much.

I pretty much worked on Thanksgiving morning, and then I went over to my Vegan Sister's house for a Vegan Thanksgiving. It wasn't too bad. Then today my mother and I cooked dinner for my other sister, who brought her family over. We were able to facetime with my sister and niece who live in California. It was fun and generally low-key.

Right now I'm listening to some mid-90's music ("Crazy Life" by Toad the Wet Sprockett) and just thinking about the Thanksgivings when we were all kids (or just barely out of that) and we all basically lived together. Twenty years ago, back in '95 or '96, we all (me, my mom, my 3 sisters, my oldest niece, and a verging-on-ex husband of my oldest sister's) lived in this townhouse. I remember it being pretty fun- the turkey refused to cook because it was frozen, but we sat around and had fun and watched Winona Ryder "Little Women's" and played Monopoly after dinner. That was such a huge thing for us.

I miss that- everyone's kind of scattered off into their own thing and own lives now, and beyond that, Sister 1 and Sister 2 aren't talking over some dumb-ass issue I'm not going to get into, and we basically had this split Thanksgiving because of it. And my mom's 70 now and I'm realizing more than ever that I probably won't get decades more of memories with her, and some day making Thanksgiving dinner with her is going to be a memory that I'll have to hold on to and cherish because she won't be here. Maybe before my 30's are out.

But yeah, I miss those Holidays. I really do. I guess you just miss childhood in general, but I think back in that time, we had managed to come back together after the absolute hell that my dad had put us through. He was gone, we were all living together, my oldest sister was doing fun things like taking us to the zoo or the movies while the Smashing Pumpkins or the Goo-Goo Dolls played on her car stereo, and there wasn't all these adult concerns and adult worries and adult squabblings. A great Christmas present (I think mine for that year was a Goosebumps ice cream machine) and everything in the world was perfect for a moment. I don't get those moments any more.

Of course, things weren't perfect and I'm definitely looking through things with rose-tinted glasses (my mom's gambling addiction was still there, we could barely afford that townhouse, those 3 sisters still fought quite a lot, and the oldest sister was basically on the verge of dumping her first husband), but I still wish I could spend a moment back in Thanksgiving 1995/6.

What are some of your happiest Holiday season memories from your life?