cooking and me

well, today I am home getting ready for about 20-30 people to come over tomorrow night for a Thanksgiving dinner. I started doing it the week before because the siblings usually had other places to go and I wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving at my house. So today I am thankful for the ability and the desire to learn to cook.
I had been helping in the kitchen for quite some time before I attempted to bake anything. I was 11, I asked my mom and she said if I made something edible, that was fine. It seems my two older sisters had wasted a lot of baking supplies by dumping them in buckets and such, not really practical applications for food.
So I began. I made chocolate chip cookies, yellow cake with chocolate frosting, peanut butter cookies. I still maintained the "prep" status by peeling potatoes, cutting up onions and celery for whatever needed to be cooked. I used to cut the last class on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving so I could go home and do prep work for the Thanksgiving dinner. That should have given me a clue as to a future occupation, but of course, I didn't take it.
And as I begin the prep work today, I am reminded of the gift my parents gave me by allowing me to experiment in the kitchen. I am also reminded of my parents' presence in gathering my siblings together. I am very thankful that I have been given this talent and gift for cooking. I'm not always so thrilled to cook on a daily basis (I get tired from work) but basically I do enjoy it. And I get cranky when it's a long week and I want to cook but I'm too tired. It doesn't make any sense, does it?
So far, I have the pound cake baked and the stuffing bread made. It's time to stop fooling around on the computer and make the chocolate cheesecake....hmm, chocolate cheesecake......