Diaries I Read:
Thanksgiving weekend wasn�t quite the relaxing four days of freedom I had imagined.
I�ve already written about Thanksgiving Day. It was filled with not-cooking, cleaning, and entertaining.
Then, on Friday, my mom and I went shopping. Yes, we are crazy. It is our tradition to brave the malls every year the day after Thanksgiving. We get up bright and early, grab a coffee and a bagel, and tackle the traffic and parking lot. We like the crowds and the craziness. It�s part of what makes Christmas Christmas. Without it, the season just wouldn�t be the same.
A couple of years ago, we decided to go to a different mall on the day after Thanksgiving We got there, and there were plenty of parking spots. There were no lines at the cash registers. There was no crowd to fight.
We hated it. We wandered aimlessly from shop to shop until we finally decided that tradition dictated we had to go back to our jam-packed mall. So we fought the traffic and went back up the freeway and fought for a parking spot and reveled in the mob scene that was our usual mall.
So, Friday we shopped. It was actually quite a successful trip. I bought some gifts for B and a dress for my company Christmas party. (The latter was an accomplishment in itself because my months of not running were definitely apparent in the dressing room.)
Then, that night B and I went to an engagement party for some friends of ours. I drank lots of wine and enjoyed myself. (However, we played Cranium that night, and while I pride myself in being the master of the Word Worm category, I got every single one wrong � I misspelled �pharaoh� and messed up on spelling �glitch� and �statistics� backwards. I was thoroughly ashamed of myself and embarrassed after all the bragging I do about being a champion speller, both forward and backward. I�m blaming it on the wine.)
Saturday was the day to clean up from Thanksgiving. (Yes, I let the mess sit around for a whole day.) Then it was the day to set up for Christmas. B and my dad went and got us a nine-foot Christmas tree and set it up in the living room. Then B asked me, �Do you want to get the stuff out of the ceiling?� (Translation: �Do you want to get the Christmas decorations out of the attic?�) So we brought down the five or so boxes of decorations I�ve been accumulating and I proceeded to empty them out all over the living room.
Then we decided to start putting the Christmas lights on the outside of the house. I have to admit that I had been entertaining elaborate fantasies about the Christmastime masterpiece that would be our home this year. We bought eight boxes of outdoor Christmas lights from Home Depot, and I imagined our house looking like the house in �Home Alone� with lights galore (tastefully done, of course.)
However, when I saw my beloved husband teetering atop a mile-high extension ladder to hang the lights from our rooftop and yelling to me, �Make sure you�re holding the ladder real steady,� all of those visions quickly vanished. We have one row of lights around the roof of the house, and I have to say that it looks rather pathetic, especially considering the two hours we spent risking life and limb for the effect. (Oh well. We may try hanging some more this next weekend.)
The decorations in the house look pretty good, although we did leave Dixie out of her crate while we went out for dinner last night, and she tried to rip a stuffed elf to shreds and de-berried a Christmas wreath all over the floor. She also �consumed� an artificial apple and gnawed on a lint roller (both of which had been on the kitchen countertop, thank you very much.)
On Sunday I came down with the requisite vacation-day cold and spent a good portion of the day in bed wishing that B would feel more sorry for me. And to wrap up the weekend, the neighbors held an ill-timed block party to say goodbye to three sets of neighbors who will be moving in the next month. Of course, in true yuppie style, the party was complete with a bounce house for the kids (what a great invention!).
So, that was my Thanksgiving weekend. Thrilling, huh? To make up for the lack of relaxation time during the weekend, I took a sick day on Monday. I really did (and still do) have a cold, but yes, I�ll admit I was milking it just a little.
Working at home - Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004
Toronto - Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004
On the way to Toronto... - Tuesday, Nov. 09, 2004
A Good Day - Monday, Nov. 08, 2004
Another letter - Thursday, Nov. 04, 2004