Poetic License

And happy Native American Heritage Day (tomorrow). How are you celebrating this year?

Currently, I have 3 cats and a dog in my house, so I won’t be doing any decorating just yet. Not sure how much I’m actually going to do for Christmas decorations this year, but since it is such a mood lifter for me, I’ll do something. My son will be home from his dad’s house on Saturday morning and will take his cat home. Then I can do a thorough cleaning and think about putting up some lights and such. In 2020, I was healing up from my cancer surgery, so putting up some decorations was essential for me. It made me feel so hopeful. Here I am, two years later, feeling pretty well and moving on from cancer. I wish that all of my friends could do the same. Some are living with cancer and will always be fighting it. It isn’t fair, but each of them is an inspiration to me.

In some years past – and on my previous blog – I spent a great deal of time and screen real estate educating folks about what the first Thanksgiving was really all about, but this year, I’ll just invite you to read more if you want. And pick up a copy of Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower. It is more than worth your time to read that one. I might come back to this subject next year.

This year I want to talk about life in a new place. Although I haven’t made friendships here yet, I have great neighbors on either side of me. Last night I posted on Facebook that I was feeling that today would be very lonely, since my son is away and I have no other family here and haven’t built any friendships yet. One of my neighbors, the daughter of the man who does my lawn, came over this morning with some treats for me and for the pets. It was such a sweet gesture (and her chess bars are so yummy)! My heart skipped a beat. People here have been very nice to me. It’s very different from Maryland in that way, although I had some great neighbors across the street from me in Maryland. It takes me awhile to open up to people, so it is refreshing and very welcome when they are the ones to make the first move.

Sleep has been hard to come by this week. My son’s cat is a big, orange tom, and my little ladies are not impressed by him. He actually gets aggressive with my Annabel. Lola growls and hisses at him. Adele, my beautiful dog, just sits in her usual spot and takes it all in. She doesn’t know what to think of all the fuss, because she gets along with Chips (my son’s cat) just fine. Two more sleeps and Chips will go home – and then I can really catch up on my sleep, do some cleaning, and put up some decorations. Last night was particularly bad. Almost every hour, someone was fussing about something. I was frustrated, and now I’m just sleepy and a little grouchy.

Sometime in the next month, I’m going to head up to Biltmore Estate to see the Christmas lights, hopefully with my son. There will be a parade in town that I might try to catch, although with this triple-demic going on, it might be a little scary for me. On the 5th, I’ll be going up to Raleigh for a holiday meal with some co-workers I’ve never met – also scary for me, but good for my career, and then on the 10th, my son and I will be going to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra with Caleb Johnson (AI season 13 winner). If all of that doesn’t get me into a holiday mood, I don’t know what will!

For now, I’m going to go watch the dog show. My grocery delivery was missing things I needed for baking holiday bread, so that will have to wait until tomorrow when I can get to the store myself. This is two deliveries in a row that have been missing items. Not sure what’s happening there. Had I known the really important items would be unavailable or just not dropped off by the delivery person, I would have just waited. Urgh!

Anyway, it should be a decent enough day. I think I have enough ingredients to bake a pie, so I’m going to do that. I hope you’re all having a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you have a long weekend to enjoy and rest up from the busy workweeks we’ve all had lately – at least in the tech industry.

All the best, Jude