lights, really bright lights

Monday night I had my first of the season ‘Oh my’ moments about Christmas lights. On one of my neighbor’s houses they have, in lights, a train with the wheels and steam moving, and Santa and his reindeer with Santa’s arm with a whip and the reindeer’s legs moving. It’s a lot of moving lights. Another neighbor has these snowflake lights that I think are supposed to look like they’re twinkling, but the blinking lights are blinking a little fast to look like light is shimmering off of the snowflakes.

Then last night I drove down my town’s Broad and Main streets…it was an experience. There are sections that are just very bright, and many blow up figures. I don’t really know what a light house has to do with any of the upcoming holidays, but okay.

I’ll be putting up my Christmas flag and getting a tree this weekend. And unless they peer in my windows, that’s pretty much all the holiday decorating the neighbors will see from me. I have lots of Christmas and winter decorations, but they are all for indoors. I may eventually get lights to line my roof, but I love the look of just a tree through the window. I can’t wait to get my tree. Part of me wants to leave work a little early Friday and get it, and that way it has all night to acclimate to the indoors before I decorate it.

what i learned over thanksgiving

1-Sometimes my sister and I are the same person, as emphasized my the fact that we picked the same Christmas cards this year

2-Sunday 10:30am is my breaking point for listening to my sister complain about her in-laws. It’s not that I don’t think she has a right to complain about them, because believe me she does; it’s the incessantness of it that drove me crazy.

3-Kitty Cat has been with me for three years, and no matter how many times I have changed my sheets in that time it is still a big game to him. Only one of his shaky mice gets him that wound up.

4-In deciphering recipes in my mother’s hand writing I realized my messy hand writing comes from her. It’s only in the recipes that were written fast that look like my writing.

5-My family can hear me think, I know I do it to them, but I just have to think of asking a question and once there done speaking to whomever they were talking to they ask what my question was. We’re a little freaky that way.

6-My cousin is a skater boy, he skateboards, has the haircut and the last letter in his name is an ‘S’ which he turns around when he writes it. (We put our names on cups at family functions, it’s just easier that way) He’s the same age I was when he was born (14), I changed his diapers and now he’s only an inch shorter than me, and has gone out on his first official date, to the mall of course. I didn’t date until two years later than him, but I did in fact go to the mall.

my inner klutz

I am a somewhat coordinated person. I've taken years of dance, played softball and soccer. I've worked on being coordinated and I have a pretty good sense of balance, but sometimes my inner klutz comes out. Like Monday night at tap I stepped on my own toe and when you're in steel toed tap shoes it really hurts. Also we were attempting these heel kick things and we all kicked ourselves in our ankles a few times. Last night while packing for going up to NY I tripped over my own two feet, I caught myself before I fell, but I get the feeling while I'm making pies tonight I need to be extra careful, my sister's kitchen floor doesn't need any chocolate pudding.

tonight i pack

Tomorrow I drive.

Instead of packing for my Thanksgiving trip last night I cleaned. A neighbor is watching Kitty Cat and I don’t want the house a mess for her, at least not the downstairs. As for what I’m thankful for at the moment is that we haven’t had anymore fires at work, but we could use one in the ladies room or for them to turn the heat back on it there, I know they’re doing electrical work, but it started yesterday, enough is enough.

Driving thoughts: It’s going to suck. Although, because people travel on several of thel days leading up to Thanksgiving, Wednesday won’t be nearly as bad as the Sunday return trip. I need one of those massage chairs in my car, or just one of those seat cover type ones.

they've gotten to me

As I was strolling through the grocery store aisles I realized I was humming Christmas carols. The grocery store wasn’t even playing Christmas music, but enough places are that it’s in my head.

OUr server at work decided to take a nap every afternoon. Internet, email and the internal server have stoped working for several hours after lunch since we movedc to the new building. I'm loving the commute, but the people at my new coffee place aren't nearly as nice as the one's at the old place.

like smoke and gossamer

I didn’t start the fire but my need for a heated office led to the events that started the fire in the baseboard. Everyone is fine, the room is aired out, the electrical panel will be replaced, and the above is what I thought the Office Manager said it smelled like, ‘and gossamer’ turned out to be ‘in Ol’ So and So’s room.’

i need a vacation from my weekend

I got up Saturday morning at the time I usually get up for work so I could drive up to Queens. My Grandma’s in the hospital, hopefully for the last time. The hopefully part is for her sake, over the past year she’s gone downhill. And maybe it comes from being the daughter of a nurse but I can tell that Grandma should make it through Thanksgiving, but most likely won’t make it through the end of the year. Anyway grandpa did tell a few stories from the war that I hadn’t heard before. He was on a ship in the South Pacific (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Alabama_%28BB-60%29), everyone got to do a month of KP duty. When you were on KP you didn’t sleep in your quarters, you slept down there in hammocks. The CO told them that you will fall out of the hammock a couple of times before you got used to it, grandpa said he fell out twice.

I drove home in the afternoon, saw the aftermath of a big accident on one of the bridges, but otherwise was not a bad drive. It’s nice driving when it’s not a holiday. I got home, whipped together a batch of cookies for Sunday’s baby shower and went over to a neighbors house for dinner. My friend's little girl ‘Sweet Pea’ is two and a half and has a repertoire of dances she has created. Of course we showed her off to the people who hadn’t seen them yet. After we went through them, the ones we knew about at least, she said “and the Hula Dance”, we asked what that was and she proceeded to do a little hula dance. We’re pretty sure she got it from Lilo and Stitch.

The baby shower was nice, lots of food, and it managed to be a surprise. Last evening I went to an audition, it went well. I don’t know quite what the director is looking for, if it’s caricatures then it won’t be me, but if she wants more real, then I have a chance.

An update on the flag: no one had one, so I made my own. I got some fabric with leaves on it. It looks nice but because it’s not nylon I don’t know if it’ll make it past this one season. It’s good for now and next year I’ll know to look in September for a Thanksgiving flag.

thanks savvy

all I want for christmas is some thankgiving decorations

Tuesday I went shopping at lunch for a baby shower gift and to look for a new flag for outside my house. I have a Halloween flag and then the next appropriate flag I have is a Christmas flag. AC Moore is next door to Babies R Us so I ran in there to find that they only had Christmas, Chanukah and general winter flags. The only Thanksgiving looking items they had were some fall colored leaves and a mailbox cover with a turkey. Then on my way to actually getting something for lunch I ran into Home Goods and that store didn’t carry flags.

Thursday after work I needed to get kitty litter bags, so off to Target I went. To tangent off for a moment, know how sometimes you read something too quickly, well instead of ‘cat box liners’ I read ‘boy cat liners’, which made me reread it a little slower, I have my dyslexic moments. Back to topic, after grabbing the liners I went to see if I could find a flag and maybe a nice decoration or two, I have decorations for other holidays, just not this one. I see all the Christmas stuff and figure on the edges there may be some Thanksgiving stuff. Nope. I ask an associate, they don’t have any Thanksgiving decorations and she’s pretty sure they never put any out. Yup, they went straight from Halloween to Christmas. Then I run to Party City and bless them they have a whole wall of Thanksgiving stuff: plates, platters, tablecloths, table decorations, wall decorations, door decorations…but they don’t carry flags. I grab up a table decoration, which is currently looking very nice on my coffee table. Last stop I run to Michael’s. They have Christmas flags and some very summery looking flags, but none for Thanksgiving.

In my errands after work tonight I’ll be going by Wal-Mart. It may be futile, but I’m going to give it a try.

* V * O * T * E *

Bush said "Saddam Hussein's trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law."

I think he may find the vote on Tueday is a milestone in the American people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.

Sometimes during a Presidential election a single vote doesn't seem like much. But there are a lot of local races happening this year. Districts for State Senate and State Representative aren't very big, and these are people who are helping make laws too.

Vote, or don't complain about the state of the country.

thwop thwop thwop…thwop thwop thwop

That’s the sound that caused me not to be able to fall asleep, and freaked me out a little. It was just Kitty Cat, who decided it was time to attack the lint ball on the bathroom rug. Thanks for that shot adrenaline. Speaking of Kitty, I got a trick-or-treater who was all of four, whom after I gave her her candy she just stood there and looked at my door (I was sitting outside handing out candy but the door was open with the glass door shut so Kitty could look out) and I looked at her and she asked “Where’s your kitty cat?” I told her he was hiding because all the people scare him a little. She nodded her head and went to the next house. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before, but she’s seen Kitty Cat.

Props for costumes to the middle school aged boy dressed as Raggedy Ann. Also to the 3 year-old dressed as a train engineer and especially to his dad who was coordinately dressed as a train conductor, that combo was very cute. One ‘where are the parents’ moment about a drunk teenager, at first I thought he was just doing a good impression (he was dressed as a hobo) until the neighbors said that they could actually smell the alcohol on his breath. They knew which house he lived in and unfortunately didn’t sound surprised.

Two certain little girls I know were dressed as Nemo and a Kitty, they were a cute combo. They’re each only 2½, but had among the loudest “trick-or-treats” of the night. You don’t get candy unless you say trick-or-treat.