Thanksgiving and Holiday Prep

Thanksgiving was celebrated here last week Friday.  It zipped on by and thankfully, my pants still zip (though barely) so I count it as a success.   

I really do need to focus on getting regular exercise again; so far this week I have dropped the ball one more time.  What happened to waking up and going directly into my exercises for an hour?  Amazing what a fickle creature I can be.   Ever since Mom passed away, I just haven't been consistent with my plan.

As you may recall, the week prior, I blew off house cleaning for outdoor decorations and urn decorating in the days leading up to Thanksgiving to lift my spirits.  

 I knew I'd have to pay the piper eventually, and of course, falling back on my procrastination-y habits,  I waited until last week Friday morning to go full-out scream-cleaning mode on our abode. 

I give Carl such credit for tolerating (and helping) with the cleaning process; I truly don't know what I'd do without him.  But even he had a few moments of panic early Friday morning, "How about we just tell everyone we're going to a restaurant, our treat?"

I was shaking the scatter rug out the back door when he came up with the idea and my attention was temporarily captured by the amount of gravel we track into the house.   With each violent shake of the rug, small stones were pinging off the back porch steps. 

Hmmm, I wonder, can we really pull this house together in a few hours?  The thought of just giving up and going out to eat was very, very tempting.  After all, celebrating on the day after Thanksgiving meant any restaurant of our choice would be open and I wouldn't feel guilty making people work on the holiday.  But I had already put the chicken (I know, why not turkey?) in the Nesco roaster and had prepped a cheesy potato hash brown casserole for the oven when Carl made the suggestion.  

No, it's now or never, I said to myself; just as garden walks force me to weed extensively and keep the hoses and pots at bay, having company for dinner forces me to get at the housework.  And then I realized this is just a resurgence of an old, bad habit, the need to have a deadline to function.  I can get more stuff done when in crisis mode than at any other time.   Yet another character defect to tackle, sadly.  My life is always the pursuit of progress and definitely not perfection.

Ann was joining us for supper, too, and ended up having to work for her meal.  Ann is the sister I never had, I am always and ever grateful to her for her support.   She immediately set to work, peeling potatoes and making a fruit salad, washing dishes in between and setting an expert table while Carl vacuumed, and I dusted and scrubbed the floors on my hands and knees.  It is truly amazing what can be done in the space of a few hours with three people working steadily.  We had the place spic and span and ready to eat when Joel, Abby, Audrey, David, and Emily arrived.  

My mind has definitely been elsewhere lately, though.  As I sat down to a helping of the aforementioned 'cheesy potatoes', I noticed something was missing, namely, the cheese.  Huh.  How did that happen?  

I was immediately wondering to myself what else I forgot to add to the rest of the meal, but as far as I can tell, that was the only really big goof up.   The chicken was dry, the stuffing was straight out of the box (I did remember to remove the cardboard) and for some reason, the chocolate and frosting layer separated from the top of the 'Peanut Butter Finger Bars' I habitually crank out for festive occasions, but as long as you held on tight, you could eat them as one piece.  Or two pieces, if you cared to.  Hey, it's a kit.

There's our little Audrey with her Daddy, Joel.  Hasn't she grown?  Surely we're not aging as rapidly.  Right?

The night passed pleasantly, we played a few rounds of cards and then the younger people headed for home.  Ann stayed for an hour or two of three-handed Sheepshead, which was fun.   We don't get to play cards as often as we'd like anymore. 

Our weather has been very unseasonably warm lately; this past week would have been perfect to get more outside work done, but I've put it off again because of being busy with both of our parent's estate needs and a slew of meetings, phone calls and trips to the nursing home.  

While I was having my IV treatment on Monday, the nurse came in and asked Carl if he wanted to see a glorious sunset.  She apologized to me for the sunset wasn't visible from the IV room.  I was hooked up and obviously not going anywhere, but Carl took my phone and captured it for me.

 Many of the trees haven't lost all of their leaves yet which is very odd for the end of November.  Such beautiful weather, how we're going to miss it when winter finally does arrive.

Gun deer season passed uneventfully here, I wasn't outside as much as I usually am, so I didn't need to break out the blaze orange to be safe in the garden. I saw one good-sized buck running with four does a few days ago, but nothing since.  The wild turkeys must have all gone into the witness protection program over Thanksgiving; I haven't seen one in a few weeks.  

When Carl and I were on our way to my IV appointment, we were a little early, so we took a new road.  We came across an abandoned house in the photo below:

The house was a long way off the road out in the country and this was as close as I could get with the zoom feature on my cellphone, but wasn't that a huge house?  We always wonder about the history, who lived there, what happened?  

The meteorologist is warning us all that the mild days are nearing an end and winter is on the way.   I have been tossing some Christmas lights up here and there, but as usual, there's more burned out lights than ever.  Can anyone relate?  Oh, those darn lights drive me batty.  Carl and I argue over the lights every dad-blasted year; especially the ones on the four wire reindeer and horses.  

Carl has the patience of a saint or an electrical guru; he can sit down and patiently go through each light bulb, one at a time, to see who the culprit is.  In an hour (or three) he usually has the string fixed, but my argument is, 'Is it worth the effort?'  By the time I get the herd outside again, another set would go out.  Outdoor lights have a hard life around here.

Apparently even Carl had second thoughts this year when none of the outdoor animal sculptures would light up fully.  We went to a big box store and purchased enough new sets to redo the entire menagerie.  I was happy and very surprised; this is great, take off the old sets, put on the new ones and voila, headaches eliminated for at least another year.  

On Sunday night, I sat down with one of the horses in the kitchen, grabbed my special metal-cutting side cutters and proceeded to snip the old light sets off the sculpture.  Cutting them off saved me the bother of having to unwrap them, it was much easier.  Apparently, we weren't on the same page about this because when Carl saw what I'd done, he was upset.  

"Why did you do that?  You didn't have to cut that set up!  I could have fixed them.  All they need is a little work."

Cue the wifely frustration.  

"Well, why did we buy new light sets, then?  I guess I'm confused,"  I said, with just a 'touch' of sarcasm.  Just a smidgen.  A tad.  

But then I got to thinking, maybe I missed something in our conversation at the big box store when we were buying the new lights.  After all, I did leave out the cheese on the potatoes, it is possible I'm not hitting on all cylinders myself.

He really didn't have an answer to my question.  To his credit, he's been trying to clean out the garage for the last three weeks so we can fit two cars (and the garbage cans) in again for the winter, but with all of the coming and going we've been doing, time has been in short supply.  And just as Carl feels about the Christmas lights, he has a plethora of stuff in the garage 'that just needs a little work' which he cannot bear to part with.  He is beyond frustrated with what he feels he must fix and will freely admit he is a gigantic pack rat.  And then I get beyond frustrated with him.  As you can see, it is a vicious circle.   After 39 years of marriage, the junk remains our biggest (and sole) obstacle to bliss.

I doggedly tell him that though his wish to fix the broken things of the world is noble, it is not practical, and dear man, we are getting older by the second.  We must choose our battles, remember all the stained glass projects we want to get on with this winter?  Let's work on the things that matter, time grows short.  Ok, off my soapbox again.

Now, I have to find that side cutter, I have some horses to rewire.

 Time's a wastin'.