How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was really nice. I dropped off a basket of goodies at my parents’ house the day before, and then on Thursday morning, my husband’s siblings did a birthday driveby for him. In a way, it was lucky that his birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year because we had something different to celebrate and it didn’t feel as strange as celebrating alone.
Truthfully, I am not a big boisterous gathering type of person. I never have been! I always hated our big “cousins’ Christmas” gathering, which was somehow both overwhelming and very boring. All this to say that the idea of scaled-down holidays is mostly fine with me. My husband made a mini-Thanksgiving dinner and I made his birthday cake, which took about four hours but was a great success. (Genoise sponge! Hazelnut buttercream! Chocolate mirror glaze!)
We boarded the dogs for two nights. Originally we did this because we thought we’d either have a few people over or be visiting the siblings across town, but I kept the reservations so we could put up Christmas decorations in peace. I also took the opportunity to remove the temporary baby gates (uh, dog gates) in the kitchen and replace one of them with a retractable version; while it is not a thing of beauty I am extremely pleased to no longer be tripping over the bottom bar of the old gate.
On Friday I finished piecing together a quilt top, which, should everything go to plan (haha), will be my younger niece’s second birthday present in a few weeks. Back before the stupid mouth wart, I had envisioned completing four quilts, one for each niece and nephew (youngest nephew due to arrive early next year). But Mouth Wart is the destroyer of dreams and these kids will have to wait (they do not care about my blankets, I am sure). While I sewed I watched 537 Votes, which is timely in that a lot of it should look very familiar (mainly the Republican election stealing efforts). Also, remember Elian Gonzales? I swear I had forgotten him.
On Saturday my husband went to an exotic car dealership with his brother to look at Lamborghinis. (This was a birthday expedition, not a buying expedition.) It felt louche and strange to have the house to myself. I treated myself to all the garbage murder television I could cram into a few hours, which included Team Foxcatcher and Casting JonBenet, neither of which, admittedly, added very much to my life.
As I’m writing this, it’s Sunday and the last day of Thanksgiving “break.” I am awaiting some items to finish up my niece’s quilt and I think once that is accomplished (I am manifesting this into reality) I will start cleaning the basement. It’s just a regular unfinished suburban horror basement but at the very least I can put away all the hoardables we chuck down there on the reg and maybe even give some old stuff away.
Before we bought this house, we lived in a duplex, and in addition to catching on fire once it also flooded (just the basement, after heavy rain). I had to throw away a lot of accumulated detritus, mostly high school and college photos and mementos, but I still feel like I have so much of that stuff. The basement has become the main repository for this type of clutter and I think it may be time to get rid of a lot of it.
I am a person who saves receipts and matchbook covers and cocktail napkins and travel brochures and ticket stubs, so you can imagine how much garbage I have sitting around, and my life has not even been that interesting! Sometimes I still mourn stuff that has somehow disappeared, like the casino coin buckets I collected on a trip to Las Vegas circa 1996.
Anyway, there are storage shelves and more storage bins on the way from Amazon. Probably I should have just ordered a box of contractor’s trash bags instead.