We had a real Thanksgiving, with family, a turkey, and pumpkin pie! The Thanksgiving curse has been broken! For a year, anyway…
Now I have to turn my attentions to the rapidly approaching Christmas and (gulp) New Years party, which will be greatly scaled down this year.
Nope, not going to do it. I did not just pack up the car, and I did not just purchase a hostess gift. Nope, didn’t do it. I am also not setting my alarm for 5am tomorrow, and I am TOTALLY not driving through the grand state of Connecticut, as I am SURE there will be lots of traffic there, and I NEVER travel when there might be traffic.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving y’all, may your turkeys roast in a timely manner, and may your vegetarian dishes make even the meat lovers at your table drool.
And I definitely will NOT be back with a knitting project on the needles, as you know how my cast-on phobia is right now.
😉
Our pediatrician was very insistent that she wanted to see A yesterday (or, rather, as she was out on maternity leave, her partner was). I had planned on hunkering down and just wanted to double check what I was looking for in terms of “dangerous symptoms.” But, in we went. Right about the time she started vomiting. Thankfully, she hit the dining room rug, not the new(ish) couch or, the car. By the time we got there, her fever was 103ish, and she was promptly put on Tamiflu.
I generally am very wary of medicine, I have what M calls “side-effect phobia.” I live in fear of the bizarre, 1 in 100,000 side effect. So I hemmed and hawed a bit about the Tamiflu. The doctor gently told me I was crazy, and to take the prescription already. Let me tell you, based on A today vs. A yesterday? Tamiflu is a wonderful drug. She is still clearly sick, but she is at least somewhat alert and capable of complaining when she doesn’t like the show on TV. She has even consumed two pieces of toast and two juice boxes, some serious progress.
Now I am just hoping that the rest of us somehow avoid this. Doubtful, I know, but a mommy can hope…
the number of kids in the classroom next to C’s today. I would say that swine flu has finally hit our area. I spent the day picking up books on CD and videos at the library, plus some reading material for myself (in case they get sick and I don’t). I picked up ginger ale, Gatorade, frozen kids dinners (in case I get sick and they don’t), Motrin, Tylenol, tissues, and cat food (can’t let the poor cats starve). I forgot soy milk, laundry detergent, Lysol, and thermometer batteries. I am hoping that if I prep enough, I will be prepared enough that the flu will pass us by. Wishful thinking, I know.
I am tempted to head back to the library tomorrow, as I figure three books on CD will only get us through a day or two. But I felt guilty taking out the entire collection of Ramona books just in case there was another family out there who was in similar need of listening material. I wonder how the Harry Potter books are on CD…anyone know?
and smells like a pig, it probably is a pig, not a hunk of tofu. Or so Rebecca tells me.
In the last 24 hours, my kids have apparently been exposed to at least three cases of swine flu. I figure by this time next week we should be nice and sick. On the upside, I have some time to plan so a large part of my day tomorrow will consist of a nice big shopping spree at Target to stock up on additional Tylenol, tissues, and some pretty shiny things to keep us all occupied. Or, perhaps, a new garbage can or three to puke in as all our contacts seem to have the pukes with the flu. Lovely. I so pink puffy heart the pukes.
This should pretty much solidify our track record for Thanksgiving, making us 0-8 in Thanksgiving plans since C first came on the scene. As of next year? The holiday no longer exists in my world. Although as a friend pointed out this afternoon, I might break the Turkey Day curse only to end up with the Christmas curse. She had a point I suppose. While my favorite holiday may be Thanksgiving, it is not a particular favorite of the kids as they have no real interest in either turkey or football. Or, quite honestly, mashed potatoes, stuffing, or green bean casserole. About the only thing that makes Thanksgiving tolerable, according to C’s 2nd Thanksgiving report, is the pumpkin pie.
So a question for y’all, if you had 36 hours or so to prepare for the onslaught of the flu, what types of supplies would you lay in (operating under the assumption that there is already enough food in the house to wholeheartedly embrace a pandemic)?
I am starting to think that November might be my favorite month of the year. All these folks who I love, even though I have never met most of them in person, start to write again after long hiatuses. It has been a long time since I have woken up and checked my bloglines before the coffee had finished brewing, but I have a good solid chunk of catching up on people’s lives to do.
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why most of my bloggy cohort doesn’t post much anymore. Hey, I am a total blogging slacker. It seems somewhat wrong to blog about the lives of a five year old and a seven year old the way I blogged about a six month old and an two year old. And, honestly, my life has gotten filled with other things that eat up the majority of my navel-gazing time.
But still, I love November, and hearing from all my favorite peeps.
PS: Did you hear that Gina had her baby???
I have to send you off to read two posts, one by Kate of One Tired Ema and one by Jody from Raising WEG. They both relate to my post today. And yes, it is a rather self-indulgent post, and yes, I know I am lucky to have such problems.
We are spending the weekend in New York, C LOVES the symphony, and so I finally got my act together last year and bought some tickets to the Young Person’s Concerts. I had meant to do it the year before, but had forgotten the cardinal rule of ticket buying in New York, if it involved bettering your child you had better buy the very first second tickets go on sale. The concert itself was a bit disappointing from a grownup perspective, there was a LOT of talking and explaining and very little actual music playing. C would have preferred more music as well, but he was still thrilled beyond belief to actually see the inside of Avery Fisher Hall after listening to broadcasts from there weekly for the last few years.
Coming into the city since we moved to the burbs has always made me sad, as every time I come back I get desperate to stay. I miss the ability to walk out my door and have my choice of places to eat, things to see, people to watch. I miss having exercise automatically built into my day thanks to all the walking city life demands. I miss being able to run to the fruit stand on the corner for more bananas. As a result of my disinterest in opening old wounds, I generally don’t suggest we venture in for any reason.
But? Almost seven years after the fact? I think I have finally adjusted to suburban life. I came in, was happy to see the symphony, am looking forward to showing the kids Central Park, and will be just as happy to return home to my house and my real life. I think part of it is that seven years later, pretty much everything familiar has changed. The restaurants I used to eat at are all closed. The last of my friends have left the city, and now that the kids are old enough that we would actually have to deal with the whole schooling issue, I find myself rather uninterested in shelling out $30,000 for a kindergarten education.
So, come Sunday afternoon I will happily head back to my suburban life, with very little interest in spending the next several weeks trolling NYC real estate listings. I will not, however, happily head back to the every day grind of making the lunches, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, or trying to keep the chaos in control. I was sure, absolutely sure that once both kids were in school for more than two hours a day, all of the drudgery would miraculous get easier. “I will have time to cook, clean, work out AND read!” I would think to myself all summer as I shlepped the kids to and from the pool, the park, the playdates.
Well, it is fall now, and I have made it to the gym exactly once. In two months. The house is still constantly in need of a good scrub, my cooking generally consists of dumping something in the crockpot or re-heating a not-so-yummy something from Trader Joe’s, and I haven’t read a book cover to cover since this summer. I find myself saying things like “Well, NEXT year, when they are both at the same school….” but really? That will buy me another hour, tops. Of course it doesn’t help that I filled my schedule with various and sundry volunteer activities. As my sister pointed out, I really have no one to blame but myself on that front.
So yes, while I am not at all interested in returning to my city life, my suburban life is not exactly anything to write home about. One of these days I will figure this all out, maybe?
I seem to have developed a phobia to casting-on. I spend hours drooling over patterns on Ravelry, printing them out and filing them neatly in my pattern binder. I have a closet full of yarn and needles, yet I can’t remember the last time I actually cast on. I’m not quite sure how the phobia developed, perhaps it was when I had to cast on 400 stitches THREE TIMES when I couldn’t quite figure out the first few rows of a pattern? Perhaps it was when I realized I hadn’t finished a project since August sometime? Regardless, there is no knitting happening right now, only drooling. And yet, the majority of my holiday gifts (only 48 days left, OMG) involve knitting. Clearly I need to get my tush in gear. Or, head to the mall.
Any ideas how to overcome my phobia? Perhaps a simple garter stitch something?
A Day in the Life