1. Mug Shots

First things first:

Aerial View of 2006 T-giving Trifle.

Profile Shot of 2006 T-giving Trifle.

You have now officially been trifled with. Because I'm just that kind of a girl.

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2. Bodies, Rest, and Motion

The week before T-giving was exhilarating and crazy. In approximately a ten-day span of time, I drove to Chicago and delivered a paper at a conference, then drove to Forest City, Iowa, to give a reading at Waldorf College, and then a day later flew out to St. Louis to give a reading as part of the River Styx at Duff's Reading Series.

Chicago provided the opportunity to eat compulsively for three nights in a row at a Thai restaurant (that also served sushi!) just down the street from the Congress Plaza Hotel where I was staying (art deco lobby, and the merest bit seedy/frayed at the edges to garnish it with just the right tinge of squalor . . . in other words, my favorite kind of hotel), and I went to the Chicago Art Institute two days in a row! Day One was devoted primarily to visiting the Thorne Miniatures, with a side tour through mid-century modern design, and (my personal favorite) a lengthy visit to the famous Arthur Rubloff Paperweight Collection, where I was in a veritable froth of paperweight ecstasy! Day Two consisted of a leisurely tour of the Modern and Contemporary galleries, where one can find de Chirico's The Philosopher's Conquest, which one might be enamored of for any number of reasons, not least of which are the artichokes.

I was overwhelmed by the kind hospitality at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, where I spent a lovely day meeting with students and faculty (all of whom were delightful!), giving a reading, and attending a play. The drive out there and back was all sulky, honeyed November light ambering the endless fields of stubble corn, the naked dark lace of bare tree branches filigreeing the horizon, and golden rolled bales of hay punctuating the landscape like enormous jelly roll cakes.

In St. Louis, I stayed in a charming bed and breakfast called Brewer's House in the old French historic Soulard neighborhood. I got to see our very own Julie Dill (Best! Stalker! Evah!!) and Laine at the reading, getting ready to head out for scintillatingly scandalous misadventures in Georgia. Many, many thanks to Richard Newman and River Styx magazine for bringing me out to read!

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3. Thanks

This Year . . .

I am thankful for my Brat Cats.

I am thankful for the nice birthday weekend in Casper, Wyoming at the Equality State Book Festival with my parental units, where I gave a poetry reading with my dad.

I am thankful for my many, many wonderful friends who are always so good to me, and who I adore beyond measure.

I am thankful for CH, who sent me a sushi clock for my birthday, which made me mad with joy! Mad! With joy! (Aren't you jealous? You know you are.)

I am thankful for PEP who listens to me obsess (at length) over the phone, even when she has many, many papers to grade.

I am thankful to E, who had me over to her house for T-giving and fed me all sorts of delicious food.

I am thankful for your sweetness, and even your obliviousness . . . for your sweet oblivion.

I am thankful that Poker Alice has a day-after-T-giving gig where I can dance all night with wild abandon.

I am thankful for Appletinis, which come in the most lovely shade of absinthe green.

I am so motherfucking thankful for coffee that it isn't even funny.

I am thankful for the cool, delicious mists of fog which return unexpectedly, and which are tricky, silvered, and disorienting.

4. Errata Happens

LAR: Are you aware that you misused the word "millinery" several posts below?

AH: Well, I am now.

LAR: Millinery is specifically about sewing hats, not seamstressing in general.

AH: So you keep telling me. But millinery just felt right to me at the time . . . the silvery in and out of the I's broken up by the smooth, even, satiny stitches of the L's . . . the evocation of lace, satin ribbons, and maybe even a scrap of tulle?

LAR: That's so typical of you.

AH: I know.

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5. Coda

What's that, you say?

There's a kitten?!?

In my handbag?!?

A very, very happy belated T-giving to all of you out there in the blogosphere from all of us at Artichoke Heart's House of Wayward Cats & Co.

I was on top of the world (or so it seemed) in Chicago.

1. Once Bitten . . .

AH: You are a very, very, very bad kitten!

Nobu: Yes, but I'm cute.

AH: You're very cute. But the way you just bit the earpiece to my cell phone in two while I was mid-conversation? Very, very bad!

Nobu: I have exceedingly sharp teeth. You should fear my fanglets. Feed me turkey until my stomach explodes, or the iPod's getting it next.

AH: I don't even know how to respond to that.

Nobu: You're kind of hurting for blog content these days, aren't you?

AH: Pretty much.

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2. Crack Mail

AH: Okay, so I don't mean to be completely paranoid in that I'm Secretly and Inextricably Convinced that My Mail Carrier's Withholding My Mail way that I sometimes get, but did you read that e-mail I forwarded to you, and did I sound totally spastic?

PEP: Well, it read like you'd been drinking lots and lots and lots of caffeine. Had you been drinking lots and lots and lots of caffeine? You didn't really even sound like yourself. I actually thought it was kind of hilarious.

AH: Hilarious as in the e-mail was in any way remotely funny, or hilarious as in I came off sounding like I was on crack?

PEP: Hilarious like you were on crack.

AH: Great. I knew it! I sent crack-mail. How embarrassing is it that I sent crack-mail?

PEP: Pretty embarrassing.

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3. Bra Mojo

AH: And here's the thing. I was wearing The Good Bra.

CH: You put on The Good Bra?

AH: That's what I'm telling you. I had on The Good Bra. And it's just not right when the semiotics of The Good Bra unexpectedly go all haywire like that. I don't even know if the problem was complete transparency or not enough transparency. And I'm still talking semiotics here, not millinery.

CH: I'm not sure I know what all of that means, but I still get the gist of it. You had on The Good Bra.

AH: Exactly. I had on The Good Bra. And so now I'm worried that I've lost my Good Bra Mojo.

CH: Oh, sweetie! [Laughing.] That's completely tragic! Don't say that.

AH: No. I'm afraid it's true. My Good Bra Mojo's been jinxed.