Friday, November 26, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving 2010!


Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a lovely turkey day yesterday. We had a wonderful feast at our friends David & Eve's, and I was ever so thankful Eve made the turkey and amazing stuffing gluten-, dairy-, and egg-free.

We brought some stewed Kabocha squash and cranberry pear crisp; after freaking out that the "crisp" didn't turn out so crisp (I followed the recipe's instructions but it didn't turn out!), I also baked the back-up brownies (literally Plan "B").

After 4 years of living with fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue syndrome, there are some things you learn: If you put in too much effort/energy into something beforehand, you cannot enjoy the party!

So I was trying to preserve as much energy as possible. I cooked the squash the day before, and asked for help as much as I can from Daniel. I skipped blowdrying my hair and putting on any makeup, took extra cortisol, and gave myself a Vitamin B injection. Even then, after the Plan B mishap (lol), I was slightly in over my head.

Back in the day, I used to go all out for the big T-day. I'd brine the turkey overnight in the special concoction overnight, prepare some exotic stuffing, cook buttermilk & bacon mashed potatoes and other usual suspects, bake the special cranberry bread, and prepare a couple of pies plus maybe a pumpkin chocolate cheesecake. (OK, writing this, now I realize that may have been a bit much.)

I wanted everyone to be happy. And I reveled in seeing people enjoy the feast.

As I don't have the energy or wherewithal (it usually really hurts after I do some cooking) right now, the hardest thing is to restrain myself and not give into the desire to contribute more to the feast/party. Because that would result in not being able to enjoy the company.

This is really hard for me. On top of bringing what I can eat, I almost want to bring really decadent stuff that I can't eat but others can. Which at this point is impossible.

I guess the lesson here is that unless you are healthy and happy yourself, it's really damn difficult to make others happy. I'm not as afraid to ask for help from others anymore, so that certainly helps for regular occasions, but I do hope I get better enough to host a Thanksgiving dinner one day in the future. For now, I'll try to give myself a permission to be a perpetual, but grateful, guest.

-A

P.S. It's been said that many fibromyalgia patients are former type-A overachievers - maybe a part of it comes from wearing down your adrenal functions too much too quickly. Maybe I was a Thanksgiving overachiever - maybe it is good to relax and enjoy simpler things. :P

2 comments:

mick(^o^)k said...

It's good to know you are still updating your blog. I thought you stopped blogging, and switched your channel to other social network. I prefer blog sites, for it won't bother me at all. The pages are waiting for me to open them. [f] and [t] have no respect to my privacy, and very annoying. Keep blogging, please, and enjoy the left-over.

Aya said...

Mick-san:

We did enjoy the leftover! I don't write about much personal stuff on [f] (& never [t] for that matter...), except amongst family. I didn't think anyone was reading this blog, though, so I was actually thinking of stopping! But you made me think otherwise for now :P

Thank you for stopping by...

-A