A Very Quiet Thanksgiving

For the first time in my life I will be totally alone on Thanksgiving. Steve is in Chicago working, P&B are visiting family, and my high school friends have elected to have Thanksgiving with their families instead. Needless to say I am slightly bummed.

When I moved away from my family to become a nurse in Boston I knew that this would mean that I would miss many a family moment due to the distance. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, ect. But this is the first time that it really feels I'm missing out.

To top it off, I'm working 11am-11pm at work on the actual holiday. This is an undesirable shift on a normal day but a down right bummer on a holiday.

So help yourself to some extra mashed potatoes on Thursday for me. I'll be in Boston with the 4 cats I'm cat I'm taking care of, and working.

Why Can't We Be Friends?

A few weeks ago Steve and I got a new neighbor. Our landlord informed us about a month before that someone had rented out the top level of our house and would be moving in soon.

"She's a nurse practitioner, but I think she looks a little young to be in that profession." He told me. "She's about your age."

I was already excited to meet her. The day she moved in I felt something akin to the feelings I had moving-in day at the dorm. Her family helped her unload her U-haul and move everything up three flights of stairs. I sat in my apartment and observed the chaos of moving. I wanted to be her friend so badly by now.

The next day I ran upstairs with a fresh batch of cookies to welcome her to the house. She invited me into her still packed house and we talked for a bit. We made vague plans to hang out sometime and I left feeling excited by the fact that I was on the cusp of having a new (and super conveniently located) friend.

I started to think about how awesome it would be to have a friend who lived in the same house (but not same apartment) as me. It would be like living in the dorms in college! That was when the pessimistic side of me took over. I'm not in college, and this is not the dorms. She could be weird/creepy or just not fun. She would always be around weather I wanted to do something or not. I'm trying keep my dorm theroy working but as of today, the most I've seen her is in the morning when we have to move the car so she can get out of the driveway to go to work.

I want show her that I am friendly with out being overly excited for a friend (or becoming the creepy one). I think a pie should do it.

Goal!

So in planning my own wedding I've become fascinated by what didn't work at other weddings. Was there not enough booze? Was the balloon arch too big? How did it work out to provide child care? and so on so as to prevent any crazy mishaps during my own wedding. I recently was reading on a website named something along "if I could do my wedding over again" and found a couple of suggestions.

Suggestion one:Don't have lots of kids at your wedding and a chocolate fountain. Solid advise.

Suggestion two: Hire a wedding coordinator for the day of the wedding. No girl wants to be asked as she is walking down the aisle where to stash extra programs. Check.

Suggestion three: Lose weight...Duh!

What a novel idea, lose weight for my wedding? Thank god I found this website to instill this little known fact, that weight loss on the day you will probably have to most pictures taken of you in your entire life, is as good thing (sarcasm is heavy here folks).

I have now been working out regularly for one year and while I haven't made much change on the scale I did hit a mile stone this last week. That's right my friends, I lost an entire jean size!

I called my sister form the GAP dressing room to tell her the exciting news.

"Guess what I'm wearing right now" I sequel/whispered to her?

"There are so many ways I could go with that" she answered.

"I'm wearing size (one size less than I was) jean!" I said as I checked myself out in the triple mirror.

"Awesome! Wait though, do you really fit in the jeans or do you look like you are trying to wear a size smaller jeans which in the end dose no one a favor" she clarified.

I assured her it was the real deal and now, almost a week after buying, washing, and wearing the jeans are stretching out and could almost be a wee bit big.

So, I'm pretty proud of myself even though I don't have the pounds to prove it.

The Cat Came Back

Last night I had just settled back into bed after a 3 am bathroom run. Moose was snuggled on the back of my left leg and I was just about asleep when Moose let out a loud hiss and what is the cat equivalent of a scream. I sprang over and looked around to find out what made my cat freak out like that when I saw an outline in the doorway to my bedroom.

A small Maine-coon cat stood in the doorway staring in at Moose and myself as we slept, and was now frozen in mid wander. This particular cat had come into the house via the cat door one other time that we known of and had only made it into our kitchen before being discovered and scared out of the house. I was so scared that I was alone at home and there was a foreign thing in the house that I yelled “GET OUT OF HERE!” as loud as I could and jumped out of bed to make sure the cat got back out of the cat door. I went back to bed as Moose started to search the house for any sign that the cat may have marked the house as his.

Now that it’s daylight I feel guilty for chasing what could be a stray cat out of my warm dry house out into the rain. I’m not sure if I hope the cat comes back or not but if he dose I would prefer it is during the daylight hours and when Steve is around.

I Voted

I specifically requested today off of work so I could go vote. I didn't want to find out at the last minute that I had to work a twelve hour shift and miss out on voting in this election. People died for my right to vote, women were locked in jail and force fed food so I could vote. The least I could do is show up and participate in democracy.

When I got to my polling place the line to vote stretched out the door of the retirement home, down the street and curled around the block. I had some what anticipated a wait and had brought my ipod, book, and good standing around shoes. I lost my self in the music and the world of my book for about one hour. When I looked up I was at least on the same street as the polling place was being handed a free hot chocolate from Starbucks. The woman behind me with her two kids was trying to entertain them and control them at the same time looked a bit frazzled.

"Jimmy, do you want the hot chocolate the nice lady is giving to you?" She asked.

Jimmy did not want the hot chocolate. Jimmy didn't want to be in line and most of all, Jimmy did not want to be standing around a busy street with his sister and his mom. The 4 year old was done. He started to scream.

"I hate hot chocolate! I hate stupid girls! I hate stupid boys!" Up to this point everyone wrote Jimmy off as a frustrated kid standing in line on a beautiful day when he would rather be playing. We all simpathized until he shouted "I hate black people!"

Wow. His mom looked down at him with a disapproving look and asked him why he would say such a thing. She looked around embarrassed at the people around her in line that were now staring at her son with a disgust in their eyes.

Jimmy answered that he didn't know why he said it and she put him on time out staring at the brick building we were slowing filing into to cast our ballots.

His sister assured us that her mom was voting for Obama. Awkward!