holidays. oh boy.

It's been a rough couple of weeks. The death of Glen's Uncle Nando hit me and Kevin much harder than either of us would have predicted. I think for a number of reasons. Of course the obvious.. We buried Glen like 3 1/2 months ago. We've lost 5 people in a year, and Glen's dad just a year before that. Since there was no funeral for Glen's parents, the pictures of them mixed in with the pictures of Uncle Nando and Auntie Nancy gave us a chance to grieve them but also added another layer. Too much sadness.. all too soon.

Then there's the whole holiday thing. Of course, holidays around here have been weird for a while anyway. But now, much of the weirdness is actually gone. I'll say one thing for weirdness.. it's distracting. You don't really have time to miss normal all that much.. ok, you miss normal, but you don't have time to dwell on the lack of "special". I really struggle with all the commercials showing happy couples buying each other fabulous gifts. I HATE the ads with happy couples going dreadfully romantic places. Not even crazy fond of the "big happy family" ads.

Thursday is Thanksgiving. Kevin and I have ordered a pre-made Thanksgiving dinner from Safeway.. even green been casserole! Yeah, we'll be eating leftovers for a long time and still have stuff to freeze, but that's ok. He's going to go play football. I'm gonna curl up in my sweats and watch the Macy's Parade. Then it's dinner and football, and hopefully the turkey induced good nights sleep.

Soon it's going to be time to put up the Christmas decorations. Which we WILL do. I love Christmas. I love the music and the lights and the old movies and all the silly stuff that goes with it, and the ugliness of the past couple of years is NOT going to take all of that away from me. I'm hoping my family will still gather here on Christmas eve... even have a place for everyone to sit if we can be outside! There will be sadness.. but hopefully there will happy memories to enjoy and new ones to make.

And hopefully if we put the tree on the floor in the family room corner... Baron won't feel the need to pee on it.