Today's gratitude goes to Glenna from A Fridge Full of Food for her reminder that (1) it's time to make fruit cake and (2) for anyone turning up her nose or turning away to gag, loving fruit cake starts with examining our expecations. Glenna puts it so well:

I'm a 31 weeks pregnant native New Yorker who lives in London, UK.

While spending time with friends is one of the great pleasures of my life, I have never been big on parties, and I haven’t had a party for myself since I was a little kid and my parents still threw me birthday parties.  So when I decided to host a big party to celebrate the launch of Buckley’s Story, I suprised a lot of people!  The event took place on Sunday, and it was one of the most wond

A close friend of mine lost her sister last week. It was unexpected, as death always really is, even when it’s visibly encroaching. It most definitely was sudden.I didn’t really know the deceased, except that she was too young—the same age as my little sister, in fact.My friend and I have gotten the chance to hold each other and cry. Her loss is not my loss, but it dredges up the heartache of losing my brother three years ago.

Now that I’m a survivor, I prefer to call the disease H1N1 because really, of all the nasty names you can come up with for a disease, throwing the word swine in front of it really trumps anything. I mean really, oh you have measles, mumps, gonorrhea (ok now that’s pretty nasty)??