The turkey is bathing in a liter of wine and butter
the green beans are blanched
the cranberries are sauced
the portabellos are marinating
the salad dressing is made, though the salad is not

I still have to make the stuffing, eggs, potatoes, yams. Finish the beans, mushrooms and salad. I also have to do laundry, beat the Kid into vacuuming, and misc other cleaning stuff.

And because a former stable boy (hot, brilliant and 10 years younger than me) has just come back into town and is coming tonight I need to bathe, shave my legs, change my sheets and clean my room and my bathroom. The turkey may not be the only thing getting stuffed tonight. Meow.

I have some lovely, well meaning, liberal, environmentalist friends who every now and then start bitching about population control. Whenever I hear population control I hear a dog whistle for “Why do poor brown women keep popping out babies they can’t afford” because if these well meaning liberals were really serious about population control they would get vasectomies at puberty.

The thing is, I understand carrying capacity and what happens when a society exceeds carrying capacity (either there is war which decreases the number of people in a system, a new technology has to be invented to change the carrying capacity, or the civilization collapses). I get that we are looking at a future where oil has or is about to peak and global warming is going to have serious effects on food production and water resources (just look at the current drought in the south east ). But what does not work to keep populations from booming is hand wringing by imperialist countries over exploding populations in India and China. Shaming women for doing one of the few things that they are ever given any credit for in misogynist societies doesn’t work. Limiting assistance funds so that more people will starve or die of disease doesn’t work. Hell, even China’s one child per family program hasn’t worked at keeping fewer children from being born. It just lead to girl babies being abandoned in favor of boy babies.

What works (and works VERY quickly- within one generation usually) is to give women access to education and economic opportunities. Women who have opportunities to do something other than being a mother will choose those options and women who choose to have children and an education will have fewer children. Period. No hand wringing. No guilt. Just education and economic opportunities. It’s very simple.

And while you’re thinking about all those “women having babies they can’t afford” maybe you should take a look at these numbers. The situation may not be as dire as the hand wringers suggest.

The Kid is playing a character who dies of illness in a Turkey day play written by his classmates. originally he was supposed to be shot int he head and thrown over the side of a boat. They decided illness was more realistic.

I have some issues with the hoopla of Thanksgiving, being that a large chunk of my DNA comes from people who were killed off by the colonizers of the New World. I once heard a story about a native guy who took a flag to Spain and claimed it for the Iroquois(I could be wrong- I was 7 at the time.)I thought that was the height of awesomeness.

But we still celebrate carb fest every year. We don’t do long tortured days spent with family members who hate us (anymore). Instead I have a giant party full of people I love and who love me back. And I do like the idea of being thankful for stuff- so here’s my list of things I am thankful for.

1) I have an awesome, tenderhearted kid who is more thoughtful thn most grown ups.

2) I have the best set of friends a girl could ask for. This year, since everyone knows I am broke, they are all contributing cash to the Carb Fest fund. I felt horrible for having to ask because I love to feed people, but everyone has just been incredible.

3) I live in a place where I can have as much sex as I want and as many kids as I want. I was thinking about this the other day. I think that if there is a god, s/he must have decided that all the work of making an individual thing is to tedious, and so we have sex instead as a reward for doing the hard work of creation.