What’s Thanksgiving without a hand-print turkey hanging on the fridge?
Ben and I made this one the other day. Actually, we made several because he was pretty impressed after I showed him how it was done. (I love that about kids — everything old is new again in their eyes!)
Anyhoo … Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you had a wonderful day surrounded by the people you love … and that you’re recovering from your turkey-induced coma.
I was so looking forward to the Thanksgiving holiday. I even used two of my vacation days from work to extend it, making a nice, long six-day holiday. Fabulous, right!? On top of that, this was Mike’s year to have his son for Thanksgiving dinner, and I was looking forward to celebrating with the whole family. I had camcorder batteries charged, memory cards for the camera cleared — I was all about making some great memories.
Everything was going great till a mega case of the stomach flu struck half the family. I was in total denial, thinking: I had a flu shot, I’ll be fine! Well newsflash y’all: gastroenteritis (“stomach flu”) has nothing to do with the flu (influenza), so a flu shot doesn’t mean beans. { CRAP } So… what better way to spend a fabulous food-driven holiday than barfing up every morsel of food you even consider eating. UGH!
In my case, I got struck with it on Thanksgiving Day. Starting around 8pm, I was vomiting every two hours. Awesomesauce. You could have seriously set your clock by it. I’d be sick, have a window of about a half hour where I felt pretty good, then I’d be sick to my stomach again. Sometimes I’d fall asleep, but I’d always wake up to be sick again.
Needless to say, my normally much-loved turkey leftovers had zero appeal this year. I was thankful to be able to keep down some Sprite and saltine crackers by Saturday afternoon, but food still isn’t looking especially appealing to me, even now. Yuck.
The Erie area also got blessed with its first snowfall over the holiday weekend (just in time for Black Friday shopping, as a matter of fact!). I haven’t had to do much driving in it yet, but it has me a bit nervous. I grew up driving in lake effect snowfall, but after having spent the last three years in Tennessee, where the city shuts down after so much as a dusting, I feel a bit wary. Not to mention, in the past I’ve always invested money in studded snow tires and this year I’m braving it on simple all-weathers. I’m hoping I’m not tempting fate… eep.
The highlight of the weekend was breaking out the Christmas decorations.
I’m normally not a Christmas person. At all.
But this year, after a generally poopy Thanksgiving (being sick, snow, {ahem} pms, and did I mention the broken toilet? … ya), I just needed some HAPPY.
I got an inexpensive artificial tree, some decorations, and did up the house with lights and sparkles. I really love my coffee table (done with “snow” fluff, gold beads and poinsettias under the glass). It’s pretty when the Christmas tree lights reflect off it.
Here’s hoping Christmas will be happier and healthier!
I can hardly even begin to explain how excited I am to be going home tomorrow. This will be the first major holiday that I’ve spent with my family in three years!
I spent the afternoon yesterday packing. I hate packing. I’m an obsessive list-maker, so I always start out pretty well. I’m great at following my list and remembering to pack things like my cellphone charger and toothbrush, but when it comes down to the clothes, I just get lazy and start throwing things in the suitcase left and right.
…which is why I end up back home northwestern Pennsylvania in 30-degree weather with only t-shirts to wear…
My mother made the point of reminding me to pack warmer clothes this time, and I think I did better. I guess we’ll see when I get up there and realize that while I have plenty of sweaters, I have no pants. (That would be like me…)
This time tomorrow I’ll be sitting at the airport waiting for my flight. I’ll be getting there super-early because Nick is dropping me off on his way to work. I don’t mind; I kind of love spending the entire day in the airport. I know that sounds crazy. But it gives me an entire day of uninterrupted knitting and/or reading time where I can’t possibly feel guilty for doing nothing but reading or knitting. If I were at home, I’d feel bad, like I should be doing laundry or cleaning or something. Not so at the airport! I’m stranded with nothing better to do than enjoy a book or knit on a project and there’s positively no guilt in that!
I’ll try to update my Twitter and my Flickr pages while I’m gone. Hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving holiday!
After much debate, I decided on the Amazon Kindle 2, even though B&N’s nook is getting lots of great press. My decision ultimately came down to the pricing on the e-books themselves: for the books I was most interested in, Amazon almost always had cheaper pricing (either by a few cents or a couple dollars), not to mention no sales tax. I’m more than happy with my Kindle and I’ve been reading like crazy ever since I got it.
