Confused Woman!

Yes, tomorrow is the day.  Friends and family gather from near and far; football, championship dogs, and parade floats are viewed; three thousand ads for Black Friday sales are overflowing from the newspaper.

However, the best part of Thanksgiving is not all that extra fluff.  It is the food!  Yes, family can be fun, but let’s face reality.  Great Aunt Millie can be a pain in the ass. Little Bobby runs around with sticky fingers and snot-covered sleeves.  Uncle John is fun until about the fifth cocktail, when he becomes ornery and starts picking fights with everyone.

It doesn’t matter, though, because there is the Thanksgiving feast.  It’s the tryptophan coma, and it’s awesome.  There’s nothing better than covering turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing in a sea of gravy.  Green bean casserole?  I can even stomach slimy green vegetables when they’re drowning in creamy soup and onions.  The golden buttered rolls mop up the last traces of goodness on your plate.

As if you’re not swollen enough and the seams are splitting on your pants, the pies, whipped cream, and ice cream are brought out.  Pumpkin?  Yep.  Pecan?  Of course. The treats taste so delicious but you literally cannot put another bite in your mouth because you’re not sure if it will stay down.

At that point, you roll yourself away from the table and collapse on the couch.  It doesn’t matter what’s on TV because you’re in such a tryptophan haze you can barely remember who you are and where you are.  The last cocktail for the evening?  Alka Seltzer on the rocks.  Yum!

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!

It is that time of year…the holidays are fast approaching.  Family and friends are going to be gathering to give thanks.  New relationships will dip their toes into the “first holiday with their significant’s family” waters.

I was supposed to be doing that next week for Thanksgiving.  My daughter and I were so excited to be spending the day with CF and his three kids.  We’ve made so much progress, the kids spending time together and having so much fun.  Parents relieved that everyone is getting along so well.

Plans were made, menus thought out.  All was good, until the ex-wife and all of her jealous, insecure goodness, interfered.  As a result, my daughter and I have been uninvited to Thanksgiving, and it hurts.

All of a sudden, things are going “too fast” and the kids might be uncomfortable with my daughter and I being there.  How can that be, when they enjoyed our company on all of our other visits?  I don’t understand how this one particular day is different?

Enter their Mom, who doesn’t want my daughter and I to be around “her” children. We spend too much time over there, which is totally untrue.  The “threatened” parent is trying to manipulate the children and use them as pawns in the battle of the wills with CF.  It’s sad and disgusting.

So, for now, my daughter and I have no plans for Thanksgiving.  In many ways, I am very sad and angry.  On the other hand, it will be an opportunity for my daughter and I to have a nice, quiet holiday together.

We can make our own special turkey dinner, watch our favorite movie, and start decorating for Christmas.  Am I disappointed about what has happened?  Yes.  Am I going to let it ruin Thanksgiving for me and my girl?  Absolutely not!

I thought I had the cough beat.  The over the counter cough medicine and cough drops were doing their thing…until the fever it.  It came on all of a sudden after lunch last Thursday.  The wave of heat hit and the thermometer confirmed I had a 103 temperature.

The drive to urgent care was a complete fog.  I had tunnel vision and didn’t even notice the jerk trying to swerve into me to get me to slow down so he could move over.  Hey idiot, it’s kind of hard to notice a turn signal when YOU’RE DRIVING PARALLEL TO ME AND YOUR CAR IS SMALLER THAN MINE!

Sorry, I digress.  The chest x-ray confirms I have pneumonia.  Wonderful.  In my forty plus years on this planet, I’ve never had strep throat or bronchitis, but here I get pneumonia.  Isn’t this something old people get?  Why am I coming down with this?

It has sucked, literally.  I have zero energy, even though the fever is gone and the cough is much better.  I can only spend so much time on the couch or in bed before I get crazy bored.  It’s sad when you’re excited to take the trash out and it’s 20 and snowing.  I need to get better soon!

Do you ever have times where it seems like a string of bad things will happen?  You then wonder, is it just a coincidence?  Is it a case of bad luck?  Perhaps it’s a case of I’m getting paranoid and need to see a medical professional?

Case in point.  In the last week, I had three job opportunities that didn’t pan out.  Granted, the interviews and “processes” went over a few weeks, but still.  I understand that they weren’t meant to be, but did they all have to wallop me at once?

Then there’s a crazy neighbor issue.  My “fabulous” neighbor let her daughter and boyfriend stay at her place while she was out-of-town working.  Let’s just say, I live in a good neighborhood and these people clearly stand out as not belonging.

Over the weekend, they were causing multiple problems in the neighborhood, enough that people were getting fearful of what they would do next.  It’s not exactly relaxing to come home from work at night and wonder if someone is going to scream out their window at me or come knocking on my door.

Thankfully, they have been banned from the property and hopefully we’ll never see their charming little faces again.

During this time, my allergies also decided to kick in.  So not only am I stressed, but I’m coughing, and coughing hard enough that my bladder can’t hold it back.  I’m a grandma in my forties.  Great. Really sexy to be sporting Depends (not that I’m wearing them-but I should be!).

Let’s hope next week is a fresh start and a new chapter:  Job opportunities appear?  Check!; Psycho neighbor is gone forever?  Check!; I can cough and not fear the bladder floodgates will open? Priceless.