THANKSGIVING

I love this commercial.

So many times commercials kinda annoy me.

Like the one with the kid blowing bubbles with his straw into his chocolate milk and his little brother is laughing

and the mom happily chuckles and pulls out the paper towels and merrily wipes up the mess.

Come on!

I can almost hear the average mom yelling to stop making a mess! and throwing the roll of paper towels at the kid.

Yep. Makes me NOT want to buy whatever brand it was.

But THIS commercial I like.

The table is set in an apparent attempt to be pretty and simple.

But then they run out of plates and have to use vacation plates

and odd assortment of mugs.

I love it.

I, like probably most people in the blog world, lust after a beautifully set table.

The perfect decorations arranged around the house with a fire crackling in the fireplace in the background.

Music softly playing as fashionably dressed guests arrive through the snow in a sleigh.

But what I love about this commercial is the fact that all THAT doesn't REALLY matter.

It's just having family and friends gathered together and being thankful

and not having a bunch of hard to clean dirty dishes.

 

I'm going to my sisters home today for Thanksgiving dinner.

It will be her family plus a couple of my nieces boyfriends and

my step-mom and her husband.

A Modern family.

It's started to snow and I know that they will have a fire going.

Her home is usually eclectically decorated.

Picture frames will have been changed out and photos of past Thanksgiving in them instead.

Her umbrella stand usually holds an umbrella or two but also some random weird stick that she's found on a walk,

that she found to be "cool" and next to that will be a rug for shoes.

Well, I assume there's a rug but it's always piled high with everyone's shoes.

My brother-in-law will be frantically running around fixing the dinner

and my sister will slowly, calmly find whatever he needs in the utensil drawer or pantry.

Kind of a Ying and Yang, those two.

So I expect dinner to be nice

as long as no one brings up politics.

If someone does, there will be a war.

But it should be nice day

and in the evening, my sister will get ready to go to work at the hospital

and my brother in law will spread out the Black Friday ads on the dining room table

and ask her if there's something he needs to go out and get.

She will say "not really", but then point out a few things anyway

and then he will probably go out, much later because there's a department store that every year, late at night

for just a couple of hours, sells big huge thick dog beds

and their dog needs to have a new bed on Xmas.

Finally I will say I must leave because I need to let my dogs out

and they will say to come back after

but I'll remind them I have to be up early because the kennel is full at work.

So they will fix me a plate for dinner the next night and add a slice of pie.

I'll drive home through the snow covered streets

and faintly smile because everyone has now switched on their Christmas lights

and even though there are things going on in my life that I'm not happy about,

I will pull into my drive

and then open the front door to the chorus of my dogs.

I will let them outside and watched them through the window as they leap through the snow

and eat my slice of pie

and I will give Thanks and be Grateful.

A Moral to My Three Stories.

So I have been sick.

It totally wiped me out.

I still have a cough but feeling much better

I did miss a couple of days work and slept in until 7

I have a really hard time staying in bed, even when I feel horrible.

So I'd get up and stumble downstairs and let the dogs out and back in and then

collapsed in my big chair where I just dozed in and out all day.

I had no energy to do anything and I couldn't really get my thoughts together enough to form a sentence.

Finally the haze has lifted and I find myself really reflecting back on a couple of things that happened prior to my illness.

Halloween morning I was running a few minutes late on my way to work.

I hadn't planned on wearing a costume but the day before my co-workers had talked me into it. 

So because it was last minute I dressed as what most girls do when in a pinch.

I went as a black cat.

I wore ears and a tail and painted my eyes like a cat and drew whiskers on my face.

Doing this different make-up threw me off my normal routine of getting ready so I was hurrying to get out the door.

I jumped in my car and drove down my street, there wasn't hardly any traffic

but of course the light was red at the intersection.

I pulled up to the stoplight and waited for it to change.

There was a car to my left in the turn lane that was pulled up a few feet further than I was

and there was a car to my right also waiting on the signal.

At this particular stop there's a sign that reads "Obey your own signal" so no one turns on red there.

It was still very early, the sun was not completely up but it wasn't dark any longer either.

Just kinda of grey.

I sat at the light and reached over for my purse and double checked that I had my phone.

I did, so I set it back in the passenger seat .

Then the light turned green.

I stepped on the gas and out of the corner of my eye I saw something kinda flitter up to the left.

The car to the left had not turned although it was ahead of me and because of that flitter I stomped on my brake.

Suddenly there was a young girl, probably only about 12 or so, frozen in front of my car.

She must have realized my car was going forward and then for some reason just suddenly stopped in front of me. 

Her face was painted like a cat and the hood on her coat was down and I saw her black pointy ears.

She actually looked like I might have at her age. Her hair messy and her cheeks red from running.

She looked frightened and had that deer in the headlight look.

She stopped for that split second and then ran across the rest of the intersection.

There's a Middle School a few blocks further down, maybe she was late

although I thought it was too early for school to be starting.

I just Thank God that none of us in our cars had been in a huge hurry.

I drove to work so AWARE.

It was like someone had thrown ice water in my face.

In the matter of seconds and I could have killed her.

Her life could have been GONE.

Her family destroyed.

I don't know how I would have ever survived something like that.

Mere seconds and everything could have been so different. 

I couldn't help thinking there was something even bigger about all this that I needed to figure out.

That is was some sort of a sign, a lesson or maybe a moral. Something more than just  a reminder to drive very safely.

Then I started thinking about something else that I never shared here.

A couple of months ago I went in one of our exam rooms at work to say goodbye one of my boarders.

I had boarded this couple's two dogs, an old greyhound and a very old Whippet, for many many years.

Then the couple had adopted a younger whippet a year or two ago to kinda buffer the pain of the losses that they knew would soon come.

But last spring, their younger dog, the newest one, was diagnosed with some things that I won't go into here but eventually she was wasting away and they had to let her go.

They told me through tears that she was supposed to be their safety net. Their dog to help them through their grief

but instead they lost her first.

Now the greyhound who had been on almost a dozen different medications suddenly just couldn't go on.

He couldn't walk and he wouldn't eat and they had to let him go too.

They brought their ancient whippet along with so that he could realize what was going on.

They wanted him to realize that his friend had died so that he wouldn't be looking for him and wondering where he was.

We all sat on the floor and cried.

I said goodbye to the old greyhound and turned to pet the little whippet.

He had survived them all.

He looked at me hard. His gaze was intent and

I swear he was telling me with his eyes, "I'm still here!"

I suddenly thought of my grandfather.

He passed a few years back but I remember some 25 years ago rushing to the hospital when he had a heart attack.

Everyone was gathered around his hospital bed, so worried about him.

My grandmother didn't even know how to drive and was terrified of the possibility of a life without him.

My Dad talked about how my Grandfather needed to eat healthier from now on and

my Aunt was so shaken and shocked by the fact that she almost lost her Dad

and then...

One after the other, those three people have passed on and my grandfather lived many many more years.

He was retired but then got a part-time job, he dated several ladies and he even adopted himself a cat.

Yes, he's gone now too but who would have thought he'd be the last of them to go.

I'm boarding that little ancient whippet dog right now.

The couple has gone out and rescued two more whippets, both 9 years old.

So I actually boarding all three.

They all have fleecy winter coats that they wear outside in this bad weather

and today as I velcroed the old dog's belt around him, I looked at him at had that thought again.

He's 16...and I swear he has more spring in his step than ever. 

So what do these three tales have in common you might say?

Well. maybe it's just that you can't really plan anything.

That things will happen and not happen,

Life goes on.

Just because we are a certain age that may sometimes seem old to us,

it doesn't mean we might not have more years left than someone much younger.

Maybe the moral is that no matter what, what's going to happen it's going to happen.

Or not happen.

Maybe it's about fate, some cosmic plan or maybe it's God

Maybe it's just to say enjoy TODAY.

The other morning I was running a few minutes behind again and as I got to the bridge, the drawspan was open.

I had to turn around and drive to the other bridge, but I didn't hurry.

I just drove to work and didn't feel stressed

When I got to work, I was only a few minutes past the time I'm usually there, still earlier than almost everyone else.

I later told a co-worker that I think there was a reason for me being late by just a few minutes.

That maybe I missed something that I was suppose to miss.

NINE

NO POST TODAY

I'm SICK 

source

and feeling -

futile

adjective

1.

incapable of producing any result; ineffective; useless; not successful:

Attempting to write anything worthwhile by the sick blogger was futile.

2.

trifling; frivolous; unimportant.

HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN?!

I was so looking forward to this extra hour.

Daylight Savings Time, Wahoo!

How could I have forgotten that last year it took the dogs a few WEEKS to get into the time change groove.

At 4:30 AM this morning I could hear Blue pacing.

His nails clicking on the wood floor.

I felt, rather than saw him come to the side of the bed and stare at my face.

I couldn't open my eyes, if I did that, game over.

If he knew I was awake he'd gallop for the door and wake them all up.

So kept my eyes closed and tried to will both myself and him back to sleep 

but then he hit the door a couple of times with his paw.

Maybe he's got an upset tummy, I thought. 

Last night he vomited up his dinner but he seemed fine later..but maybe he was sick again.

Great Dane vomit. or worse yet, Great Dane poop would not be something I'd want to be cleaning up.

Especially at 4:30 in the morning.

So I sat up and everyone started barking in excitement.

Downstairs they ran and I knew I wouldn't be able to go back to bed.

Once I'm up, I'm up and besides it was actually 5:30 if not for the time change.

After everyone had pottied, they ran around the living room knocking down pillows and being rowdy.

I made some coffee and sat down to the computer.

A little bit later I look over and there they were....

Lazy bones!

I made some breakfast and answered early morning texts from other people who know I'd be up

and I cruised around on some new blogs.

The sun is coming in now and Charlie wants out on the porch that is crammed full of all the garden things that I dragged in from the yard.

That's my project for today.

To clear out the porch and to rearrange my furniture again.

I have so many plants that I've brought in from the cold and I need a place to put them until Spring.

When this chore is done I'm usually happy because my tiny space looks like a greenhouse

but placement is crucial so that the cats don't feast on them

or the dogs try to dig in the dirt.

Yep, that's how I'm spending this day.

And I have some wicked satisfaction of sweet revenge because Charlie keeps hitting the doorknob

in his effort to get out to the porch.

The sound of it is like someone trying to get inside

and it wakes the dogs!

Ha!