I guess I never knew I could cook. I mean, really cook. Sure I can make a good dinner for two...but I never knew I had it in me to make something gourmet - and enjoy it! But I discovered this past Wednesday, as I made homemade roasted pumpkin soup for Thanksgiving at the Spence home, that I have the knack. I even improvised a bit with spices and some ingredients and I must say, it was good soup! I think my favorite part was the garnish - a mini-dollop of sour cream, toasted pumpkin seeds and a sprinkling of cinnamon. Everyone said it was tasty and all the bowls were licked clean!

The rest of the meal was delicious. The turkey looked so good, I even had some of it - a little ironic, if you ask me, that after finding out that the boy doesn't like vegetarians, I went and ate some turkey. Totally unrelated events but funny how that sort of thing happens.

I volunteered earlier in the day and as usual, it made me sad to see so very many people without their families, many of them clearly addicts. The guests at the food program were almost entirely men, something I had not noticed in the past. There was one guy there, he couldn't have been a day over 17. He seemed so tripped out, with pock marks all over his face and utter vacancy in his clear blue eyes. I had to look away. I don't know what, if anything, that says about me. But it did make me so sad and the last thing I wanted to do was feel sorry for these people. Certainly they don't need or want my pity. They have pride just like the rest of us and the last thing they probably want is to see judgment in my eyes when I look at them, even if my judgment comes from a place of love and compassion.

At first I felt some liberal guilt - there I was volunteering at a food program, making sure to leave in time to get home, shower and drive to Mill Valley for my own Thanksgiving feast, full of the warmth and protection of my closest friends. But the guilt does not do anyone any good. And soon my guilt turned to gratitude. Gratitude for the life I do have and the fact that I can do a small part (and I know how small it is) to help people have a decent holiday meal - people who might otherwise not have a meal at all. Gratitude that my mother raised me in such a way to know that doing service in the community is a crucial part of being part of that community - even if she doesn't know she did that. And though we did not go around the dinner table and each recite the things for which we are most grateful, I said them silently to myself: I am grateful for my health and the health of my familiy. I am grateful that I have been blessed with a best friend that is also my sister, with an unwavering ally and teacher that is also my mother and with the watchful eyes of my guardian angel and grandma. I am grateful to always know - to really feel - the love of my family and friends. I am especially grateful for the friends who have supported me for the past two years, some of the hardest days in my short existence on this planet; these are the friends with whom I am completely free to be myself and also the ones that really know the essence of me. I am grateful for the intellect with which I have been blessed. I am grateful that I have the use of all my limbs and that I have learned to make sure to use them! I am grateful that I have been able to spend the better part of the last two years really getting to understand myself and even more grateful that I finally feel that I am again ready to share the best parts of me (beyond my safe circle of family and my closest friends) - pieces of Marcy that were hidden under a veil of pain and fear for far too long.

I should be working on my essays right now. But I keep putting them off. I am not sure why. Maybe because I know I have to work on them all weekend. Maybe because I am scared to actually finish them and apply to school? Well, I am committed to at least getting that far in this process. And every time someone does read the essays I have completed they give me very good feedback. So that helps.

It's not that I have an irresistible urge to say something in particular here. As usual there are all sorts of things running through my head that I could write about. Most of those I will save for the journal in my bedroom that I write in at night before I go to sleep. I don't feel like writing about the wacky political situation in this country or events in the world. It gets so exhausting to care so much about that stuff. Sometimes I need to just step away.

So, I guess this will be one of those blog entries that's a non-entry. Because I am not going to keep writing about the boy and the date and the fact that I don't eat meat and what that does or does not mean and how that will or will not impact the potential here. I am pretty clear that if he really doesn't want to date me because I am not as carnivorous as he is, well...that's just not about me so much as it is about him. And the truth is that no matter what happens with this one, I can feel myself moving in the right direction, heading towards what I want and what I know I will one day have.

"If you don't eat meat, forget about it." That's from his online profile (on the Jewish online dating site...which is not where I met him but on which he has a profile posted...as do I...after all, any self-respecting, single, young Jewish person in the Bay Area has a profile on there...even though I don't go on dates from there and I don't pay the monthly fee to get or send emails...mostly I poke around to see who's out there...but I can't seem to make the full-on foray into online dating...not yet anyway.).

So, I don't eat meat. I guess maybe I have to forget about it?

I had a date last night. I had a good time (yes, mom...I had a good time). Uh-oh. This is where I turn into a spaz. So, this should be interesting. Hopefully he won't think I am too much of a dork and we will go out again. As Taylor tried to remind me when I called her in a panic last night after I got home, I have to remember to think one date at a time...that's all it was - one date. And maybe he liked me, too, and we can go on a second date. And then maybe a third? And then I have to stop there and that's that. I marvel at the fact that I can be 31 years old and yet not much about dating has changed since I was 16...the stakes seem higher, I guess. But the whole process is basically the same.

I am really starting to worry that we won't have a good candidate to take on Bush next fall. I think the press is beating up on John Kerry. Dean just does not do it for me...Wesley Clark has it all on paper but he hasn't touched anything deep in me yet and I am not sure how much longer I can give him the benefit of the doubt. If not for the whole Tawanna Brawley thing so many years ago, Al Sharpton might be my man. He is damn funny and I cannot wait for him to host Saturday Night Live. As I write this I wonder if maybe that's my problem with Dean - he does not seem to have much of a sense of humor. There is something about him that is too edgy, bordering on mean. I don't know. I will, obviously, support whoever is our nominee. I just want to feel like we are going to win. I don't want to lose this election on the moral high ground. I hate that liberal Democrats would rather be right than win. Sure, it would be nice to be [morally] pure and win. But as we have seen in recent years, moral purity does not lead to winning. And while in 2000 that may have seemed a worthwhile trade-off, I think most people would now agree that it turned out much worse than we had ever imagined.