life is full. life is good. my living room is painted red and my Thanksgiving was contentment despite a nasty headcold.

you heard me. red. dark, deep, warm and cozy red. it's really quite beautiful. people are so scared of color in their homes but walls are meant to be painted. and all those colors at the paint store aren't there just to look at.

i'm sure i've mentioned once or twice that i adore my apartment. it's so me. but something wasn't right. it felt really blank and empty in there, even with great art hung on the walls and new furniture. there was just way too much white.

i'd always planned on painting my living room. and i'd always planned on red. i even paid an additional large chunk of money on top of the ridiculously large chunk of money i paid in deposit so that i could paint the apartment however i pleased. there's just something about have four walls that are themselves art.

wonderful Amber (my friend not my sister) volunteered most of her weekend to help me. those walls are dedicated to her because without her, i'm not sure it ever would have gotten done and certainly not as the quality job it turned out to be. sure, she occasionally got paint on her forehead and sure we stayed up until nearly five in the morning painting, but the end product was worth every effort.

oh, and Thanksgiving was a feast. as it should be. that's the point, right? let us give thanks that for another year my stomach did not explode all over the cabin like that nasty scene in that Monty Python movie. amen.

it was a different gathering this year. something felt amiss to me. could be i'm getting older, wiser, and beginning to notice the annoying familial idiosyncrasies that have always been there. could be it was only the second Thanksgiving spent at Shasta Cabin since my grandfather died. he really was that tying bond. or is it binding tie?

still, it was family. grandma sat proudly near the fire, suggesting how pleasant it was to see daughters and grandchildren taking over the legacy she'd taught them. she was beaming just a little, if it's possible to only beam a little.

we were only thirteen around the table as other parts of the family were off visiting the other half of their in-laws. but thirteen is plenty for a feast. we had the usual fare: turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce (the homemade kind and the kind still holding the shape of the can it came in), peas, gravy, and mom's signature cauliflower and proscuitto in cream sauce (yum). oh, i said "usual" but i don't mean at all "ordinary" or "basic". perhaps "traditional" better states it.

we sat and chatted and drank and ate several platefuls of everything. and when i say -we- ate -several- platefuls, i mean me. apparently, the family never got used to my eating habits and insisted yet again on hypothesizing that i store all my intake in a hallow leg. of course, the family also never got use to Uncle Jeff (a.k.a. Uncle Fuzzybeard) being the first to fall asleep after the meal. many pictures were snapped.

in all, it was delicious and warm and yet slightly incomplete. or perhaps that was just me.