Stone cold killing and other Thanksgiving cheer!
Yes, I did it again — I ran over a squirrel. This time two were chasing after each other and as I was rolling up, the one in the lead picked up the pace and, like the poor critter a couple of weeks ago, the one following decided to cut back and return to the curb. Nope. Wasn’t going to happen. I wonder if squirrels die in threes, too.
Since Iz missed her Tuesday class last week and it was the first in this session, I didn’t know that there were now 10 enrolled. I liked it much better when there were only four and the lobby was nice and quiet. This is no longer the case and normally that wouldn’t be a huge deal. Unfortunately, this week I was seated in such a spot where I had the unpleasant experience of overhearing some blather about how bringing prayer back into the schools would “help the craziness in the world.” As if such a solution was appropriate or sufficient to accomplish such a feat.
Later in her yapping she went on to whine about how hard girls are and how she’s glad she has boys. She babysat girls once and the girls were bad. And you know how science embraces anecdotal data . . . She talked about how girls are high maintenance and how you have to do their hair and then teach them how bla bla bla. She went on to point out that she loves sports and other boy activities which made me roll my eyes. Check your porch to see if you can find them. I wasn’t sure if she realized that the activity her son was participating in was gymnastics, a primarily female populated sport. Not to mention that it’s 2007 and girls do play sports. They allow that now. I suspect she meant “real” sports like football and hockey not realizing that there are teams that have girls who participate. Oh well. She will never know the joy I get from my girls. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t offended by her. She doesn’t want girls and I’m thankful she doesn’t have any. Win/win. However, I think she’s the unlucky one not to at least be open to the joys of having a girl. Hell, maybe she always wanted one but this is self-preservation for her. Who knows.
What made me sad for the women, however, is when she was talking about her son’s development. Apparently he’s not speaking much and is four. This is, of course, raising red flags with his preschool teacher and others who have observed him but she insists that it’s because he’s a boy and that they do all the talking for him. If he were two I might buy that. Might. Sometimes it happens and the kid presses on and starts talking anyway. However, this boy is a touch older than Iz so there is no way that there aren’t problems there. She mentioned a few things that raised flags for me but I just kept alternating between trying to read my book (it’s no surprise I couldn’t read given my ear was filled with a conversation I wanted no part of) and watching Iz in the gym.
I’m not sure if Neocon Denial Mom bothered me more, however, than Detached Hairdresser Mom. DHM, as I’ll now refer to her as, arrived unfashionably late for class, dragging her crying son behind her. It was obvious he did not want to be there. I’m not sure what was bothering him but he did not want to be in that gym. As she stood blocking his way out of the gym proper, she threatened him with no more “Bob” movies and no more wrestling (please let her not be referring to pro wrestling on TV). She shoved him in the door and and shut it while he was wailing and pushing up against it. No sooner did the door’s latch click than she plopped her butt down into a chair and proceeded to make a much-too-loud cell phone call. Things I didn’t care to know about her but do now include something about kielbasa and Christmas and the fact that she had to do colors for two days straight <le sigh>. I really hope next week will be more pleasant. If not, I’ll hang with Wendy the secretary and we can talk about her trip to Vegas she took this week.
Thanksgiving was nice but not without some snafus along the way. It was technically our year to host but obviously that wasn’t going to happen so Jeff’s cousin took this year and we’ll do next. We were asked to bring a ham and I sent Jeff to the meat market to pre-order one. Three words: spiral sliced ham. That’s all he had to know and repeat to the counter clerk. Spiral sliced ham. Did we end up with spiral sliced ham? Well, we did eventually. I gave the first ham to our favorite teacher at school who will use it for Christmas and Jeff returned to the meat market to fetch the correct kind. Problem solved, no one died.
This morning, I went to make my famous chocolate cream pies. I set up everything I needed and went to grab what he purchased for me the day before out of the bag. What did I find? The wrong stuff. This is not good. My pies are legendary and I was told no matter what my MIL says, I am never to come to a holiday without them. Not a problem. They bring culinary joy to the family and I’m all about pie. He dashed off to the store to get the right ingredients and thankfully the store still had the stuff I needed in stock. One year he waited too long and by the night before there was no pie stuff to be found. Second problem solved, everyone ate.
When we pulled up to his cousin’s house I noticed that there weren’t many cars in front. I joked saying that after the things he’s had to fix in the last couple days, it would figure that Thanksgiving would be at someone else’s house. It wasn’t but instead of things starting at three like Jeff thought, it was set to start at four. Much better to be an hour early, however, than late. The last time we hosted Thanksgiving he told one set of family members everything started at three and others that it started at four. I was thinking that it was at four so it was odd to me that people were showing up so early. And guess whose turkey wasn’t set to be done for another hour? Yep. Men. Oy.
Jeff is going to brave the Black Friday crowds with his friend and go shopping. Well, I use the term shopping loosely since they mostly go to see if they can score anything without sweating bullets that they have to be first in line. We don’t buy into the have.to.have thing at Christmas so Black Friday is very low pressure for Jeff. He goes out, they see if they can get a couple of things they saw in the paper the night before and then go out for breakfast. They get a chance to observe the crazy that is shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving, laugh and catch up. I don’t have the energy to go out at 4am in the cold. The low will be 22 tonight and I doubt it will be much warmer than that come butt-crack-early in the morning.
I told him the only thing I really want for Christmas is a new bluetooth headset for my BlackBerry. I lost the free one that came with Jeff’s phone and now that I had gotten used to it and the convenience, I’d really like another. I told him not to spend more than $20 sale price on one because there is nothing that a $50 sale model can give me that the old free one couldn’t. I’d just like to be able to drive or do work around the house while having a conversation and have both hands free. It really does make life easier and if any of you out there can, go buy one. Even if it’s just for around the house so you can fold towels and talk to a friend at the same time, do it. You’ll thank me.
I’m going to push myself tomorrow to get some more things packed. I slacked off the last few days so now I have to catch up and gain some headway now that Jeff will be off until Sunday. Easier said than done but I have work to do nonetheless.
Good news on the mental health front — I’ve not had any more hypomanic episodes so that’s good. I saw my doctor for my scheduled appointment on Monday and I told him about what happened. He just said to give him a call if it happened again. Here’s to not having to take him up on that. At least not for a very long time.
I should get off to bed now. If you’ve made it this far, you’re a far better person than me. You’ve earned your place in heaven (or whatever or wherever you think you’ll be after you kick it) so now you can go on your merry way.
Happy Thanksgiving!
