Author: ldp67

This whole week has been a mess. I planned on pulling a Christmas with the Cranks and skipping Thanksgiving to go to Mexico with my mom instead, but sadly that didn’t happen. I foolishly believed I could order my passport two weeks before the Thanksgiving holidays and get it on time.

My passport was expired but my mom’s wasn’t. I really thought I could get the passport in just a few weeks during the holidays, the peak time that everyone is ordering their passports. Well I ended up spending money on the plane for nothing.

The day I was supposed to leave came and no passport arrived. I called and couldn’t get my money back, so that was a bummer.I was pretty depressed because I had already planned out all the places I would be going with my aunt and eating tamales and agues frescas at the mercados. In the end, I had to call the rest of my family and tell them I was going to celebrate thanksgiving with them after all. My mom decided to stay behind because she didn’t want to leave without me.

Thanksgiving day came and I was in charge of making the mashed potatoes. That’s pretty simple, so I decided besides that I would be making a salad too. The problem was that I did not have preparing any dishes planned for Thanksgiving since I was planning to be there, so I did not have any ingredients to make the mashed potatoes or my salad. When I decided I was going to stay and celebrate Thanksgiving after all, so I had gone on Wednesday night to go to HEB and get ingredients for my dishes. If it was up to me, I would have gotten the ingredients since the weekend before because I hate to be that person that goes to the store on Thanksgiving day and am the reason the employees don’t have their day off, and also I like to avoid crowds, but I had no choice since I was staying now and I had to bring my share of the food, so I went to HEB. I headed over there I tried to find parking for about twenty minutes because all the parking spaces were taken. There was a lot of other people like me doing last minute shopping. When I finally did go inside to the store, several items were missing there, luckily there was potatoes, so I grabbed a bag of potatoes and some milk and butter. I also got the ingredients to make my famous salad. It is made up of chicken, spinach, avocado, almonds, cranberry, strawberries, and cucumber. It is delicious and never disappoints.

I bought my ingredients and left the store. When I got home, I started preparing the mashed potatoes. My entire family was already here. My sisters and brother in laws and my nieces and nephews, my mom and  my aunt Rachel that lives in the states came with my cousin Joey and his wife Valerie and their kids. It was a full house. Everyone was busy preparing their own foods or helping cut vegetables. I peeled the potatoes and boiled and putting the finishing touches my side dish for the thanksgiving dinner. It took me a while to do everything since we were short on time as well . It was so good. My mom and my sister Lydia had done a taste test and approved. I was just about to move on to making the salad when from the corner of my eye I saw my sister Anna messing around with the potatoes. “What are you doing?” I yelled. She was pouring lactose free milk she had brought on to the potatoes. “I just want them to be creamier. I know what I am doing”. But she didn’t know what she was doing. I tasted the potatoes and they were ruined. They tasted sour. I spit them out .I made my salad but my mood was ruined. When it came time to sit down and all of us to eat, I made sure to tell everyone before tasting the potatoes that the taste was not my fault and that it was Anna that had ruined them. As expected, everyone made a face when they took their first bite of the potatoes. My nieces and nephews did not even touch theirs. The mashed potatoes are usually the best part of the meal and my sister had completely ruined that.

Anyways thankfully there was a lot of other delicious foods, and we had three different cakes and three pies for everyone to choose from, so the potatoes were soon forgotten. My salad was a hit and everyone asked for seconds, so at least I had that to be proud of that. Things didn’t turn out how I expected, but I had nice Thanksgiving. I have learned my lesson to not order my passport late and to order months in advance. Luckily once the passport arrives, I won’t have to worry about that for another ten years.

Something about me that everyone who knows me can tell you that I love cats. I always knew I was a cat person since I was a child. What attracts me about them is their curious and independent nature. They have so much love to give, but they also want their own space. I guess I can relate to that since I tend to be a very independent person that enjoys my alone time. And they are so cute and funny. 

First came our cat Cookies. Some cats have intuition. They can just sense when a person or family is kind. She was pregnant when she wandered at our door and gave birth to a litter cat’s. I pleaded with my parents to keep her. My mom could not say no to little old me or to a defenseless animal that just gave birth, so we watched the kittens grow up and slowly adopted them out to loving homes. Cookies lived with us eleven great years before she said her goodbye to us.

Next came Gino. I had just entered middle school when my mom picked me up and told me my dad had found a little kitten hiding behind one of our trees. He is a white cat with brown and black spots on his face and body. His eyes are blue and round. I think Gino might have been traumatized from the time he spent outside alone because he is an extremely nervous cat. He reminds me a lot of Courage, the Cowardly dog. He jumps at the sound of anything. Anyways, Gino hid for several days behind our tree before finally coming out. But I held out hope he would approach us one day. He must have been hungry and thirsty because one day he approached my dad and caressed his face against my dad’s leg. It has been 16 years and I am glad to say Gino is still with us. He has watched me grow from a young girl to a woman. And I have watched him grow from a kitten to an old man. He cannot run like he used to. His brown and black hairs have now been replaced with white hairs. Watching him grow old reminds me that time has passed, and I have grown older as well. I fear for the day he leaves because it will mark the end of a chapter of my life, but most importantly, it will be like losing a best friend.

 

 

 

 

 In the last four years, my family has adopted three more cats: Foxy, Herb, and Pepper. Foxy is the mother of Herb and Pepper. First, Foxy is a grey and white cat with big green eyes. And Herb is a greyish cat with blue eyes. He is very fat, and I have reprimanded my parents about how fat they let him get. He is full of love. I do not think you will meet a more loving cat than him. Pepper is a grey and white fur ball that looks like Foxy. She is incredibly nervous, and she reminds me of Gino. Sometimes I make an excuse to visit my parents just to see the cats. Currently, only Gino lives with me. I take him everywhere. He has been there to see all my accomplishments and failures. He has always been my roommate. But I am interested in taking Herb off my parents’ hands to get him in shape. I am determined to get him healthy. 

I have always had a soft spot for cats. I used to spend my teenage years volunteering at San Antonio Pets alive and bottle-feeding kittens. Friends would tell me they had cats, and I would come over just to meet them. Sometimes my parents would convince me to go to relative’s houses I did not want to go to if they told me they had cats. Oftentimes cats are misunderstood. People always say they are mean and use that to justify their dislike for cats. They say that cats just scratch and hiss, but the truth is cats are extremely loving creatures. They will only do that if they have grown up abused, have never been around humans, or if they are in a situation where they are in danger. I guess the negative things a lot of people say about them have driven me closer to them. Even negative stereotypes that have been passed on for years like “the crazy cat lady” or saying black cats bring bad luck is harmful because it has added on to the negative image people give cats. And it discourages people from wanting to adopt cats. All these lies I see spread about cats makes me feel like I need to protect them. They are defenseless creatures. But they are also amazing companions. Was this all a persuasive piece to convince you to love cats? Maybe. But now you know a little bit about me and my never-ending love for feline creatures