I talked to my mom yesterday, on my way home from work. I’ll often do that - call her as I walk to the train station - for two reasons. One, she’s on Eastern time, and she works an early morning shift, which means she’s often getting ready for bed at around 8PM her time, if not a bit earlier. Two, we can keep our conversations fairly short. It’s not that I don’t mind talking to her, but we’re not really terribly chatty to begin with, so about five or so minutes in, after we’ve both ascertained that both parts of our family are still alive and doing well, we hang up fairly abruptly (Me: “How’s Grandma? Uncles? Aunts? Cousins? OK, bye.” Mom: “How’s Josh? Ava? OK, bye.”).

So there I was yesterday, on my way home from work and thought that I should do my weekly check-in with Mom and so dialed the number and we chatted. “How’s Josh… How’s Ava… Oh, we’re not having turkey for Thanksgiving this year.”

I may have been crossing a street when she dropped this bombshell on me. “No… turkey? What do you mean, no turkey? What are we… I mean… who…” I babbled incoherently.

“We’re having ham,” she declared. Ham. We’re having ham.

I have nothing against pork products; indeed, there is precious little else in this world better than a crispy slice of bacon. But on Thanksgiving, I want turkey. On Thanksgiving, I want my Grandma’s stuffing. I want to wake up on Thanksgiving morning because the smell of roasting turkey and stuffing woos me from a deep slumber.

Instead, ham. “Why?” I asked.

“Grandma just can’t do it anymore,” Mom said. Grandma has had a hard year, and I haven’t written much about this. Earlier this year, she developed bacterial pnemonia, and then what the doctors said was a cyst of some sort (which Mom was convinced she’d given to Grandma because “the casino was built on an old nuclear power plant”), which then turned into some stray gall bladder stones stuck in a duct somewhere - never mind the fact that her gall bladder had been removed about fifteen years before. This year was definitely not the year of the Grandma, by any scope of the imagination. The rogue stone is gone now, and within days of its laparoscopic removal, she was tossing back beers at my uncle’s.

I got off the phone, after I assured Mom that ham would be perfectly fine on Thanksgiving, and immediately called Josh. “Josh,” I wailed. “There is no turkey for Thanksgiving this year. There will be ham. Ham.” We discussed this change of events and lamented our late arrival into Connecticut for Thanksgiving - we’re arriving on Thanksgiving day late in the afternoon - had we been able to schedule our trip for earlier, we could have helped make the turkey, and thus, the stuffing, under Grandma’s tutelage. But we’re being whisked from the airport to my uncle’s for dinner, and there will be ham. Ham.

This past Chinese New Year, my uncles and mom were talking about how next year, we’d be doing Chinese New Year at a restaurant. Step by step, things are changing. New traditions are forming and old ones are slowly fading away. My youngest cousin will be in high school soon, and my other two cousins are engaged. The more things change, the more things stay the same, and all of that jazz.

And until then, I have ham to look forward to in a month.

In chatting with Cyn, I searched for the name of the restaurant Josh took me to for my birthday dinner, and found this link to the most highly rated sushi joints in Chicago. I see this as less of a “best of” list and more of a “to do” list, if this gives you any idea as to how very much I like sushi.

The other day at work, we talked about what kinds of foods we liked and I thought to myself, “Man, there is very little in the way of food that I don’t like.” I love Japanese, Chinese (picky here - only love my grandma’s food because all else is horrifically unauthentic, except for dim sum. Love dim sum!), Korean, Italian, French, Greek, Mexican, Vietnamese, Thai, German - you name it, I’ll probably like it. One of the things I love most about living in Chicago is that I have yet to want for good food. If I have a yearning for chorizo, there’s a great place right down the street from us that serves a mean breakfast with ground chorizo. If I want some fresh and tender fatty salmon, raw, there are at least three places in the vicinity that can calm that urge.

Social scenes for us revolve around food. When we plan vacations, we plan out what to do around what restaurants we can go visit. When we invite people over, it’s for dinner or a potluck or out to eat at a new restaurant where we can gnosh and catch up on each others’ lives.

Mmm. Food.

Five reasons why Josh is, hands down, the coolest husband ever:

1. He kept birthday plans for me secret. I couldn’t even woo him with my feminine wiles to get him to give up the goods.

2. Birthday dinner was tonight at a new sushi restaurant and I got to choose the appetizer (and have the extra piece).

3. Gift Number 1: Margaret Cho’s Revolution DVD. We saw Margaret twice during our exile in Massachusetts and I cried with laughter both times. Excellent show.

4. Gift Number 2: French Silk Oreo Creme pie. Not cake - pie.

5. Gift Number 3: Taking me on a date to see Margaret Cho, live at Borders in Chicago, buying me the book, and giving me the chance to blubber in person.

Awesome. 29 is going to be a good year.