It's not over yet...

We've just arrived at my sister's home to spend a whirlwind three nights and two days celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with plenty of good cheer (yes - I know that's a Christmas saying, but we're starting early - and yes, by "cheer" I do mean wine), and though the evening is still young, I am freeing myself up to simply relax and enjoy the rest of it away from the computer, as I've managed to do almost all day today.  :o)

Today was the first day of my brief Thanksgiving break, and it began quite early at my Kiwanis meeting (6:45 a.m., to be exact).  The meeting itself was unfortunately NOT fabulous today since the program had a political agenda - the kind of closed-minded, conservative, "we don't need to take care of our earth because environmental concerns are crap" and "the left is who really has an agenda" agenda that makes me squirm and fume and seethe - or in this case just simply tune out while I texted friends, including the former-student-now-grown-up who was sitting across the table from me, the former high school friend who had ditched the meeting just prior to the program, and my soul-mate-minister-counselor friend who had also bailed.  The high school friend had no sympathy for me - - he's also a conservative - - but the s-m-m-c was laughing (I could just tell) as he glibly apologized for not having dragged me out with him as he knew what was coming when he escaped.  (Damn him!)  Sassy Pants just happened to start texting me during this time also, and thus I managed to survive the onslaught of narrow minded fallacy via juggling texts to four people all at once.

I also managed to survive babysitting my friend Super Woman's three older daughters while she took her tiny little doll of a newborn back to the hospital for blood work again.  (The darling is gaining weight and length and her jaundice is improving - thank you, God!) 

Then I had just enough time to run to my parents to make my sweet potato casserole for tomorrow's feast (the one with the marshmallows over which I CRIED the first time I ate a holiday dinner with my ex-husband's family because it wasn't PLAIN sweet potatoes, simply baked and served with plenty of butter - and yes, now I make it every year and can never stop because my daughter LOVES it, so I'm a total hypocrite) and then run back home to put together The Queen's gift (including a picture of us that turned out with a blue background and blue highlights in our hair thanks to my empty black print cartridge - but, bless her heart, she said the pic looked cool and artsy that way). Then I took my beautiful friend out to lunch, where our daughters chatted like teenagers, my son charmed the strangers at the next table by playing peekaboo around his sister, and The Queen and I discussed how great life is when we don't have to worry about dealing with men in romantic relationships.  :o)

After lunch, I actually managed to put away all of the dishes and leftover crackers and gifts and cards from my birthday party, which is a HUGE accomplishment considering I haven't even unpacked my freaking suitcase from my trip TWO WEEKS AGO, and it still sits right there in the archway between the living and dining rooms.  (It's a wide archway, so there's plenty of room, and Little Man likes to stand on it and shake the baby gate, so really there is NO hurry to get it taken care of - I swear.)

And then - finally - I dove head first into the Christmas spirit.  I dragged two garlands and a miniature tree out of the garage, where they had been stored since last winter when I pledged to restring the lights on all of them before I put them away (because they all crapped out on me within two days of having hung them last year, I think), and of course never touched them, so they just sat there gathering dust until today.  (The dust was my payback - - the sneezing started as soon as I even looked  at that tree this evening.)  I am seriously excited to begin decorating as soon as I get back home on Saturday, so the ONE thing I committed to accomplishing today (before I volunteered to help Super Woman and take The Queen out to lunch, of course) was getting these darned outdoor decorations restrung.  But the rat bastards at the fake tree company had conspired to thwart my efforts, unbeknownst to me. 

At first I was simply baffled - - why the heck could I not get the darned lights loose from the very first branch?!?  Weird - -  there was some plastic doo-hickie (kind of like a miniature version of the tag that holds bread closed) clasping the light to the branch, and the cord was actually knotted around the branch, and there was a freaking ZIP TIE holding it on!  WHAT THE....?!?!? 

I assumed that Dad had done something to the lights for some odd reason.

But the next light was clipped and knotted and twisted, too.  And then the next, and the next, and the next (luckily there were only a few zip ties scattered throughout).  But about the fifth light, I noticed a couple extra cords actually spliced to the light and shooting off in another direction for a kind of Christmas tree light T-intersection.

Ok, I thought.  What the heck is going on????

Luckily, it was soon after this that I realized I must have acquired a pre-lit tree somehow.  Funny, but I don't remember acquiring this tree at all.  But now here I was - determined to get those darned lights off the darned tree so that the rat bastards did not get MORE of my money, though obviously that was their plan all along - to make sure I could not remove the now broken and blown out lights from the tree so that I would be forced to buy a whole new tree.  Well, I showed them!  It took me a full hour, but I managed to disentangle every tributary of that spider webbed light strand.  And I'm pretty sure I didn't curse (out loud, anyway) the entire time I worked on it. HA! 

By that time, though, it was time to hit the road, so I had to leave two garlands, a light-less tree, and about ten pounds of fake needles and plastic doo-hickies and broken, spliced green light strand littering my kitchen floor.  Oh, well.

Only twenty minutes after I had hoped to get away, the kids and I were snug in the car and heading west in the rain. We had Christmas songs playing on the radio and two colors of Gatorade to ward off the hunger, and my daughter even sang a few songs with me until we arrived here at Sis's to enjoy her white bean chicken chili and a lovely Sonoma red and Disney's Enchanted (which they have started withOUT me, so I am now getting off the computer!) 

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow.  I know we will. :o)