Ahhh, yes. Thanksgiving has passed, and so has the day after Thanksgiving - commonly known as “Black Friday”, the title of which apparently referred to the huge crowds of people out shopping - and the resultant chaos (undoubtedly with the more determined fighting over sale items) but more recently seems to be commonly associated with keeping retailers “in the black” as opposed to the dreaded red columns of their accounting sheets.

I didn’t go anywhere - except to feed my DD3’s khats, DD3 being in Connecticut spending Thanksgiving with the in-laws. They grow up, they get married, and THEN you have to share them with the in-laws, and you’re left with their khats to feed (and litter boxes to empty). I know I sound like I’m kvetching, but I’m really (sorta) not. OUR big holiday is Christmas - with son home, everybody gathered here (my house) and a cast of thousands. Okay. Well not the cast of thousands that my daughter had at her house last year. She decided she wanted to “do” Christmas (I ususally “do” it here) and wanted to have all the relatives on her father’s side - cousins & such whom my kiddos grew up with (I was very close to my sister-in-law. We raised our kiddos together - vacations, holidays, just plain regular days - it was always her & me and our combined gangs of kids. She died fifteen years ago of uterine cancer.) The cousins - all of whom are a tad older than my kids - are now in their late thirties, early forties, and while most of them are pretty stable people with their own children and families, etc., there are a few who are a tad “out there”. AND my kids decided that they were going to invite their father and his wife (my EX) if I didn’t mind. Of course, the only way I could mind would be to look bitter and unforgiving - something I took great pains to teach my children NOT to be. “Oh, what tangled webs we weave, when we something-something (practice?) to deceive.” An old saying my mother used to quote whenever she caught me in a lie. Well, in this case, the lie is that I have forgiven their father (for his constant infidelity - which he now carrys out against his present wife - his lies, his abuse, and his hoarding of his money; money earned as a school principal in Boston where school principals are paid in excess of $100,000 a year, which he became only because I wrote all his papers for him both for his undergrad and grad. degrees.) Hah! So, there! But yes - even though I had to fight him in court for child support when we divorced, I never, ever spoke critically about him to our children, because he is their father, and they don’t deserve to feel unloved or unsupported by their father. Whew. This is what happens when you spend ten years of your life as a social worker, and another 15 years as a social services administrator. You actually take your children’s poor little psyches into consideration, and the result is that you find yourself, many years later, eating Christmas dinner with the one person on the face of the earth whom you absolutely detest and despise. (Merry Christmas, one & all). I actually don’t know which was worse - having to smile and wish HIM a Merry Christmas (and then take great pains to sit as far away from him as possible) or battle my way through all the cousins and cousin’s spouses, children, best friends and in some cases, even their in-laws! There were at least 50 people there, and my daughter’s house is the traditional seven room-two bath ranch with an unheated sunroom off the back. Halfway through the evening, people were milling out into the (unheated) sunroom, which became HOT even though it was below zero outside! All that body heat kept it pretty toasty out there. In addition, many of the cousins apparently equate holidays with drinking themselves silly. Now, we, typically, will put out a few good bottles of wine for a “holiday toast”, but rarely does anyone drink much more than a glass - maybe two if they have a huge capacity for alcohol - but by then, the bottles are empty, and they have no choice but to switch to something non-alcoholic. Conversely, not all, but a goodly number of cousins, et al, came with bottles under their arms, and worse - cases of beer, which they made gargantuan efforts to empty before the day was out (evidently not wanting to leave any for their hosts, who didn’t want it, anyway). Not all by any means, but several, feeling the effects of their steady imbibing, became shall we say, a tad “testy” with each other, and had to be guided gently to the door (accompanied by a non-drinking partner or volunteer) and sent home amidst shouts of “Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!” and more quietly, “Cross THEM off next year’s list for GAWD SAKES!”

So, at any rate, this Christmas will revert back to the matriarchal home (mine) and be downsized to immediate children, grandchildren and the errant in-law, but NO COUSINS on the EX-family side, and DEFINTELY no EX-SPOUSES. Oh yes, I imagine I sound downright Scrooge-ish, what with my exclusionary ways, but I figure my kids have plenty of time after I’m gone to expand their holidays into unrestrained carnival if they so choose. I’m guessing they’ll keep it small. Last year’s leftovers were sparse; somebody apparently helped themselves to the remains of one entire turkey (bones & all) that DD3 had been keeping in reserve (we had put out on the buffet tables no less than three turkeys, three hams, and two roast beefs.) So, there was a great deal of disgruntlement the next day when the menu had been built around turkey sandwiches and had to be adjusted to non-turkey sandwiches. Yes. It was TOO MUCH, and too many people. I like a sit-down dinner (like RubyJean’s lovely pictures) and can do that here by extending my dining room table, which, with the leaves, seats 12, out into the living room with a fold-up conference table and folding chairs. Just perfect. Twenty people, which is neither too unwieldy nor too intimate.

Okay, so that’s my little diatribe here regarding Christmas last year, and the anticipated one THIS year. And, I will naturally exist in a state of high anticipation for the next month…or three weeks…my son is flying in on the 20th…..and then invariably, things won’t be QUITE so “homey” and quaint as I had hoped, and I will spend most of January in a slump.

Bad, bad, bad eating day on Thanksgiving, though. NO calorie or point or anything-counting, and everything was so good that I ate WAY more than I had planned, and then spent yesterday feeling super-hungry and miserable. Back to point-counting today, and feeling a lot better, and a little less bloated. AND only one more day before I have to go back to work, which I HATE and shall discuss in all its morbid detail at some later time. Suffice it to say that I even DREAMED about it last night, and it wasn’t a pleasant dream. Not by a long shot.

Ahhhh. I’ve been doing some genealogical research lately - and have discovered that practically everybody in the United States can trace their family back to English royalty. I have to assume that we are all descended, however, from the ancestral black sheep; otherwise, wouldn’t they have stayed in England and lived in luxury in the family manse? Nope - I’m convinced that the only reason all those first families came over here to a veritable wilderness where they had to fight the natives - and usurp their land to survive, had to be because they weren’t doing so well back in the homelands - as in horsethieves and highwaymen? It is fun, though, and according to the Church of Latter Day Saints Genealogical website, I am descended from a guy named Godwulf Asgard who was born in the year 80. Me and about 750,000 other folks, including some famous ones, including Alfred the Great. Howzabout that? It does get a little all-consuming, though - I spent one night until about 1:00 AM saying, “Okay, back just one more generation, and then I’m going to bed!”

Which reminds me that this post is becoming a bit too long and it’s time for me to graciously remove myself.

With love,

Z