Catching up.

[I keep composing LiveJournal posts in my head and then not writing them down. I seem to have the same problem responding to e-mail. If you've been dying to hear from me, I apologize.]

I had a lovely, quiet, family Thanksgiving. curiousangel and minnaleigh and I drove up to Elmira, New York to spend the holiday with my family. Well, most of my family. Juanita and Jon went to visit his cousin in North Carolina, and Steve and Rachel stayed in California - which I'd expected, given that it's awfully far to come for the weekend. Steve called in a panic on Thanksgiving afternoon to say that they had rented a cabin in the mountains and brought a 12-pound turkey with them, only to find that, despite what he'd been promised over the phone, the kitchen had no conventional oven. He wanted to know whether you could cook a turkey in a microwave. My mother thought not, but she did successfully Google for instructions on cooking a turkey on a grill. There weren't any frantic return calls, so apparently that saved the day.

We had a Traditional Dinner. I swear, my mother's been cooking gargantuan turkey feasts for so long that they no longer appear to involve significant effort on her part - she spent much of the afternoon sitting in her recliner with her feet up, and still managed to serve turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli casserole, peas, cranberry-orange sauce, cornbread, biscuits, and two kind of pie (pumpkin and pecan). All of it but the breads was made from scratch, and all of it was delicious.

Everyone was mostly cheerful all weekend, which is a major family accomplishment. My sister Judy brought her new boyfriend Conrad, who likes Irish wolfhounds and the West Wing and is therefore obviously marriage material. Debbie was less tired than I've seen her in years - her sabbatical seems to be doing her a world of good. She had pictures from her Inca Trail hike to Machu Picchu, and was very defensive about having drunk tea made from coca leaves to get herself over the high mountain passes. ("But it's different there! It's totally normal to drink coca tea in Peru!" Yes, and that's why you're protesting so much.) The whole family was utterly besotted with my parents' new dog, Cleo, a four-year-old Lab mix adopted from the SPCA. She's a lovely dog with a sweet disposition, and the household pretty much revolves around her.

My parents are well and happy... but I can't remember when they got old. I don't know if I was seeing them through fresh eyes because minnaleigh was there, or because we pulled out photo albums and I saw pictures of them from my childhood, but suddenly on this visit they looked old to me. Like grandparents, which I suppose they are.

The whole family, except for Mom, went to see Chamber of Secrets on Friday. My five-year-old niece insisted that the spiders were her favorite part. (I guess she never got the Girly Manual.) I went on a long bracing walk with my father, talking church politics and guns and family gossip while the dog ran long looping circles around us. I taught my niece Alexis how to knit. My mother and I talked about babies. minnaleigh got roped into building a lot of Lincoln Log structures. All in all, not much happened - which is not a bad characteristic for a family weekend.

I'll miss them at Christmas.

Genes.

More and more, lately, I've been thinking about wanting to have a baby. It's partly to do with wiredferret's pregnancy, and partly to do with turning 29, and partly to do with the fact that finishing my dissertation is finally on the horizon. That's been my self-imposed limit: no babies until they'd have to call me Doctor Mommy.

Someone asked me recently whether my disabilities are genetic, and how that plays in to my decision to bear my own genetic children if I can.
( here's what I said: )