NaBloPoMo Wordle

Sniff, Sniff (Congestion, not Crying)

I got Nathan's cough/cold, and haven't remembered to replenish my cold medicine supply since the debacle two weeks ago when I couldn't buy cold medicine in the city on a Sunday. So I rummaged through my medicine cabinet and found some children's Dimetapp that expired in August. Took it anyway, and boy was it delicious! Why can't adult cold medicine be so yummy and grape-y?

Life has settled down a bit since the rush of Thanksgiving meal-prep and holiday decorating have ended. And as stressed out as I claim to be about the holidays, the truth is that no-gift pacts and name-draws have led to me only having to purchase 5 gifts this year. Just to give you a reference frame, my all-time worst Christmas (gift-wise) saw a list with 40 people to buy for.

So the truth is, I'm kind of bored right now. We have a whole list of holiday activities in the coming weeks: a singer at the library Wednesday, the local tree-lighting Friday, the other local tree-lighting Saturday, and this super awesome cookie fest/living nativity put on by a nearby church Sunday. But Thanksgiving weekend, everything kind of gets canceled. A lot of people are out of town or traveling, so those of us who stay put have nothing to do.

Therefore, I have been reading a lot. Just moments ago I finished Such a Pretty Fat. As I said in a previous post, it's a memoir of this woman's attempts at weight loss. The author/subject of the story is kind of a bitch, but it was still a funny story. I could totally relate to her frustration with the idiots at Weight Watchers meetings.

I still have Superfreakonomics on deck, but I just can't read it right now. Maybe the stuffiness in my head is getting in the way of my concentration, but a book about statistics, even interesting ones, is just not doing it for me. And reading that light-hearted, humorous memoir was fun, but now I need a good story, something I can get totally lost in. Because the weather sucks and it's time to start reading more.

Last Christmas

My mind is buzzing with thoughts of Christmas cards and holiday travel and shopping, and I just don't want to write about any of it today. So instead I'm posting this video of Nathan playing with his Christmas train window decals. Look how much snow we had!

Thanksgiving ---> Christmas

My first solo attempt at hosting Thanksgiving got off to a rocky start. Nathan woke up at 1:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning coughing really hard. I let him sleep in my bed, which ended up being a mistake because he coughed so hard he threw up. Oh well, it got me to finally change my sheets.

After going back to sleep for 6 hours, I awoke to find that my maple/brown sugar/ginger/soy sauce turkey brine had partially leaked out of the bringing bag and all over the refrigerator. Do you know how sticky that stuff is? Oh, and child threw up again, this time in several places on my carpet, because he was practicing the walk-and-vomit method. At that point I was slightly freaking out, but the crisis was averted when I Shop Vac-ed the brine out of the bottom of the refrigerator and used up all my Resolve on the carpet. And at least this incident got me to clean out my refrigerator.

By 2:00 I was back on track, and with the bird in the oven in a self-basting bag and the stuffing in the Crock Pot, I was able to take a brief holiday nap. I awoke at 3:30, straightened my hair, put on my purple eye shadow, and resumed meal prep. Our guests arrived at 4:30, and the dinner was on the table by 5:30. Everything tasted like it should and got compliments. My personal favorite was the sweet potato casserole, which I always say I would eat constantly if I found out I had 3 months to live (alongside jello/pretzel salad). The two toddlers ate one combined bite of turkey between them and then went back to playing.

We all saved room for our 3 pies. I thought the apple one came out too sour, but the pumpkin was awesome. Our friends have a special whipped cream gun that I asked them to bring, so that contributed to the fun. I didn't try the pecan one, but it's Bill's favorite and he was pleased with it. Nathan ate some festive holiday Dora fruit snacks for dessert, while his friend had a bowl of ice cream.

Needless to say, I was not on Weight Watchers yesterday. Or today with all the leftovers. Tomorrow, though, I am resuming my gym workouts and dieting, which means I better eat the rest of the pie and sweet potatoes tonight!

This morning we hauled out the red and green bins from the garage to began Christmas decorating. Much as I hate all the Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving, there's just something in my brain that clicks over to Christmas mode the day after Thanksgiving. So we all had a cozy morning listening to Christmas CDs and decorating the house. Well, except for Leia, for whom Christmas means breaking out this annual torture:

The Thankful Post

I couldn't let Thanksgiving pass without doing a post about the things I'm thankful for, right? I'm gonna start with the big things, the things that are cliches but cliches for a reason, and then list a bunch of smaller silly stuff.

The Big Things
I'm thankful for my family. Sometimes I get down on my husband or worry that we don't have a perfect marriage, but the reality is that nobody does, and if at the end of the day you can say you're still happy being married to that person, that's pretty good. And I definitely can say that. I appreciate that my husband is willing to adapt and change and laugh at his own faults. I appreciate that he is a good father and a genuinely hard-working, honest, ethical person. He is very smart and has a lot of wacky interests, too.

I'm thankful to have a happy, smart, healthy child. Nathan is the light of my life, and he continues to delight and amaze Bill and me every single day.

Plus I'm thankful for my friendly, lovable kitty.

I'm thankful to have good relationships with my extended family, including all four of my parents and step-parents, and my siblings and in-laws. So many people have strained relationships with their families, so I consider myself lucky to have a mostly drama-free family.

I'm thankful that we are financially stable at a time when others are not. I'm thankful for my wonderful house, which I love, and for my larger home of Chicagoland.

I'm thankful for my health, which includes physical as well as mental health. Last year at this time I was not enjoying good mental health, and I am thankful that this year I have made a tremendous improvement in that area.

I'm thankful for my wonderful friends, both near and far, who are the kindest, most helpful, supportive people in the world.

The Smaller Stuff
I'm thankful that I have lost 30 pounds on Weight Watchers.

I'm thankful that in this day and age you can buy lots of low-fat foods or 100-calorie packs, which makes dieting easier than in the days when you had to mostly eat liver and cabbage.

I'm thankful for the gym, which has challenging classes and a good daycare.

I'm thankful for the many classes, programs, and activities available to my toddler.

I'm thankful there are so many parks in the town where I live.

I'm thankful for the library and for books in general.

I'm thankful for the Internet, online shopping, and blogs.

I'm thankful for television.

I'm thankful for flowers.

I'm thankful for my organizational skills.

I'm thankful for antidepressants.

I'm thankful for really cute shoes, jewelry, pedicures, and other material ways I can reward myself without food.

I'm thankful for my super-comfortable bed.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

It's the time of year when I'm supposed to be counting my blessings, but instead I find myself stressed out over petty stuff.

My parents left yesterday, and I feel oddly sad and lonely. Usually when houseguests leave, I'm able to say goodbye to them and then just step right back into my regular life. But my mom and stepdad were so helpful and fun to have around, and now I'm back to being alone and doing everything around the house myself. And also, I think it's a hard week to bounce back because we can't get back into our regular routine due to the holiday. All our activities are cancelled, and also I have this one day to turn around and prepare to cook my first Thanksgiving dinner.

I only have one other family coming over for Thanksgiving, so in total there are four adults, two extremely picky toddlers, and a non-eating infant. The baby is only 2 weeks old, so the whole thing is going to be extremely low-key and casual. Still, I'm freaking out! It seems like it's about the same amount of work whether you're having 4 guests or 20, and plus I have worked myself into a frenzy wherein I believe that a failed Thanksgiving dinner is a fate worse than death.

Last night I sat down and, in true Shannon fashion, began by writing the name of each Thanksgiving dish on an index card. Then for each item, I researched online and elsewhere, and made a list of all the ingredients needed, going through my pantry to see which items I already had. Except what if I check off "brown sugar" for the yam casserole but then also need a bunch of it for the pumpkin pies, and I run out? Having to go back to the store on Thanksgiving day, that is a fate worse than death.

Anyway, I got worn out halfway through making the index cards, and abandoned them and went to bed. That's right, I got tired just making the grocery list. So today I have to finish the list, shop for all this stuff, make the brine for the turkey, get it marinating, and make the pies. And clean the house, pick up dry cleaning, and do my Weight Watchers weigh-in. Luckily I am taking Nathan to daycare today.

And what happens after Thanksgiving? Christmas. Friday we're getting out the decorations. Oh, and I don't have tickets to go to California yet. I can't get husband pinned down on the dates for the trip.

And there's the shopping. The wrapping. The stupid hot stores with eight million people you want to kill. (And yes, I will do some online shopping, but sometimes you just need to go to a store for inspiration.)

These are all the stupidest problems ever. I am so lucky to even be in a position where I can complain about these things. And tomorrow, on Thanksgiving day, I promise to do a post where I write about all the things I am truly thankful for.

But I'll tell you one thing today, I'm thankful for coffee.

Is November over yet?

It seemed like writing a blog post every day in November would be easy. I mean, it's not like I'm doing National Novel Writing Month. NaBloPoMo was supposed to be the easier, jokey option.

But you know what? Having to write a post every single day is becoming a real drag. It's not like enough interesting things happen to me in a given day to actually warrant daily updates.

I know, I'll talk about pies. For Thanksgiving I am serving 3 pies, even though I only have 4 adults and 2 children coming (plus a teeny-tiny baby, but I don't serve what he likes). But everybody likes a different kind of pie, and plus the pie overkill fits in with my general "cook so we'll have leftovers" theme. So, the pies we are having are going to be pumpkin, apple, and pecan. I'm making the crust from scratch. The pumpkin one will be made with a real pumpkin. The apple one will be from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook, which states that you must pre-cook the apple filling because filling a pie with raw apples will lead to the horror known as Air Pockets in Your Pie Crust. So, with pre-cooking the filling, the apple one is very labor-intensive.

I'm buying the pecan one from our local bakery. I don't do any kind of cooking that requires sticky, sugary, candy-type stuff. This is because one time I attempted to make caramel apples while Seabiscuit was on HBO, and I got distracted by the movie and burnt the caramel inside my beautiful new saucepan. Then I remade the recipe and the caramel was still hard as a rock. So I don't dabble in anything that gets all sticky. Plus I don't like pecan pie, so why make it?

Somebody, please, leave me an inspirational comment so I know people are reading!