November 28, 2004
This Thanksgiving, already come and gone, was memorable in many ways. It was the first Thanksgiving in living memory that nobody cooked. We had the whole deal, but Publix cooked the turkey and cornmeal dressing and the other casseroles. I never did find out if we got any giblets, which nobody eats anymore except the dog. The mystery giblets never turned up. The cranberries came in a deli bin and the enormous pumpkin pie was a Costco special. The piece de resistance for me was the Starbucks Gingerbread cake. We never even got to the Harry & David rum cake. Nobody had time to prepare anything from scratch. Next year everybody won't be so rushed and we won't skip the green bean casserole, which everybody missed.
Since we were all to be gathered in Florida for a few days, we decided to have a family portrait made at a local photography studio. Every other family in North Florida had decided to do exactly the same thing on the day after Thanksgiving and the place was packed. Somebody undoubtedly had a spoiled photograph because my two-year old granddaughter pushed another little girl off a chair and conked her head. Those parents weren't watching and missed the whole thing and could not imagine why their daughter was suddenly wailing in her beautiful party dress and sitting on the possibly nasty floor. My four-year-old granddaughter disappeared briefly when she decided to hide in the ladies' room, where I was supposed to be watching her. I was watching her and she still disappeared. I nearly had a heart attack before we found her. Five adults had a rough time keeping up with these two little whirlwinds.
The photos were extremely exhausting to create. I believe the photographer needed to go lie down when she finally finished with us. We bribed the two-year-old with a lollypop and then had to keep removing it from her mouth so the photographer could snap the picture. My granddaughters nearly brought down the backdrop, which probably would have cost us to get the thing repaired if they'd decked it. Then we noticed there was something yucky down the front of my husband's blazer. We hope whatever it is won't show in the pictures. We are having another baby in the family so we will all get to do this again next year if we can find a photographer who will do it. I don't think we can go back to this place.
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One of the amusing things that happens whenever my two adult sons get together is the stories they tell about things they did while still living in the family home, things my husband and I often are hearing for the first time. We always thought we were good parents; we know we did our level best to keep up with things. Well, it seems our sons led parallel lives, seen and unseen. They assure us all kids do this. Well, all I can say is, "Now it is your turn." Grandparenthood is indeed a wonderful state of grace.
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I came home to find a ton of Spam messages on my computer. This makes no sense because I have several so-called Spam filters, none of which appear to be worth a darn. The prevalence of this crapola on the Internet is sure a sorry state of affairs. It makes me delete with abandon and I am sure legitimate messages are zapped as well. If I do not recognize the sender, the message is in the bin. My virus-busters delete a lot of messages that come with noxious payloads, but the spammers have figured out how to randomly blast us so those messages keep on getting through. The luster has gone way off my computer because of this. Who wants 400 spams? Not I.
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I also came home to a family of deer in the backyard. They always know when we are away and they move right in. They like the honeysuckle and the ivy that is abundant back there. My Labrador retriever is in charge now.
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Hope all is well. Thanks for reading. Be glad I did not go on the alligator farm field trip.
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