Plan C

by | Dec 8, 2019

This year, I wanted to be home for Thanksgiving. I love my remodeled kitchen and I wanted to cook in it. I wanted to play host.

I asked another soloist in the building what she thought of a communal Thanksgiving dinner. She thought it was a great idea, since she typically goes to the grocery store, brings something home to eat, and eats alone. She said she would come. We planned to use my place if there were just a few people, the community room if there were a lot.

For a backup plan, I reached out to a friend in Chicago. She said I would be “more than welcome” to join her family. I knew I would be since I spent Christmas with them a few years ago.

With Plan B firmly in place, I focused on Plan A. There are 34 soloist-occupied units in my building, 30 with email addresses in the resident directory. An email went out to the thirty.

Six responses came back, all declines, including one from the woman who said she would come—a cousin had moved to Cincinnati and she would be spending the holiday with her. Plan A was nixed.

I called my friend in Chicago. Her elderly mother was in decline and my friend would be spending the holiday out east. Plan B was nixed.

There are several friends in Cincinnati to whom I could have reached out. All I would have needed to say is, “I have nowhere to go” and they quickly would have said, “Come here.”

But I had a feeling that this Thanksgiving I wasn’t supposed to go elsewhere. I was supposed to stay home. So I did.

On Thanksgiving morning, I woke up and brought a candle to bed, lit it and said a prayer for the day. I experimented and made a new recipe for breakfast—sweet potato pancake sandwiches. They were delicious!

For lunch, I invented a mashed cauliflower and sliced turkey combination that tasted like stuffing and was better than I had hoped. For dinner, I cooked another new recipe, Thai Pineapple Shrimp Curry, with jasmine rice made in my new Instant Pot. The meal tasted as if it had come from a Thai restaurant, not my kitchen.

The candle burned all day as I thought and dreamed and tended to things that needed tending. I carried the candle to bed and closed the day with a prayer, offering a thank you for such a lovely Thanksgiving.

I didn’t have ‘nowhere to go’ on Thanksgiving. I had my own home. Soloists need to be flexible, to make plans and make adjustments. A soloist’s life might look different than a coupled life, but it’s a good life. It’s a life to be thankful for.

PS: The next morning, I loaded Leda and our things into the car and we went on an adventure!


Update on the Something

I’m going to send Something to everyone who wants one. If you got an email from me yesterday confirming that I have your land address, and your left- or right-handedness, we’re good to go!

If you didn’t get a confirming email but thought you had responded, something went awry. Or maybe you hadn’t responded yet. To make the whole response process easier, let’s skip SurveyMonkey. Just send me an email with your address and if you are right or left-handed. 

Not only am I excited to send a Something to you, so is the person who is making them! She’s making enough so that everyone who wants one gets one and she and I are going to pack them for mailing together. It’s fun all the way around on this one!

I love, love, love that the tools of production are now in our hands.


Chewing the Cud of Good

oil making a smiley face in a frying pan

Sometimes when you smile at the world, the world smiles back from the strangest places.

4 Comments

  1. Anna

    Sounds like you were the love in the room for yourself.
    I can’t wait to see what that Something is!

    Reply
    • Jule Kucera

      Anna, I was the love in the room! I’m so glad you let me know about that Elizabeth Gilbert interview because my Thanksgiving would have been different—less—without that perspective.

      I’m excited about the Something and now becoming a little anxious that it’s not that big a thing so I may have overly elevated expectations. It’s just a little Something that makes me happy and I hope it makes others happy, too. And I love the idea of the Something being in Finland in your hands!

      Reply
    • Jule Kucera

      Thank you, Adam!

      Reply

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