12/3/2003 06:22:26 PM|||Amy|||You know, I would write the Thanksgiving story but there really isn't all that much to write about. We left just before noon on Thanksgiving day for my aunt's place in Austin. I was very tense and was told that should I become a snarky, raving bitch for even an instant during the drive that the car would be turned around and we would return home. So, I got loaded. I had little choice. I tend to say the first thing that comes into my head especially when I am very tense and/ or very angry. The drive was far more fun than it would have been otherwise. We arrived in Austin. My aunt had everything ready. She even had appetizers. We ate. We cleaned our dishes and put food away. We ate pie. Dinner and pie were relaxing, just as I had hoped. The kids bounced from chair to wall and wall to chair to floor. I scanned the sale ads. My aunt went out with us to show us where the shops were located, the ones we might go to on Friday morning. She showed us where the hotel was in which we would be staying that night. We took my aunt home, picked up two of our three children and left the third with my parents who were staying not at the hotel, but at my aunt's place, and we drove for an hour looking for the hotel which is 5 minutes from my aunt's neighborhood and which she had directed us to just before we embarked out on our own. Austin is a lot bigger than I thought. I lived there for more than a year once, and it is far bigger now than I remember it being then.

We finally arrived at the hotel. I had reserved a handicapped room because I thought my parents would be staying there, not us. The room was cold and smelly. The bed was uncomfortable and small. I was coming down with a cold.

Husband, kids and I bunked down. I woke at 5:30 and reviewed the sales fliers again. I decided that a $10 air hockey table was not a good enough buy for me to drag myself out of the cold, smelly hotel room into the dark, cold windy morning. I took a shower. I watched ET on television. I went back to bed. Half an hour after I fell back asleep, the kids woke up. I dressed them. I begged and cajoled my husband to get up so that we wouldn't be late for check out. He finally rose. We went back to my aunt's house where we played with her dogs, ate more food and finally got on the road again. I was nervous. I wasn't driving and I wasn't loaded. I should have been loaded. I was sure that death was waiting for us at every on-ramp.

We arrived home to find that the house was exactly as we left it. No magical fairies or elves came and cleaned it up for us while we were away, and neither did robbers or thieves break in and steal our accumulations of paper or even have the decency to relieve us of a few of the children's toys.

Saturday turned into a wasted day, as did Sunday. The Christmas tree is still in the attic. I have begun to beg and cajole for help to ready the house for Christmas, to make this a special time for the kids. So far blind eyes and closed ears have been turned towards me on this subject. I will perservere.
|||107049826767113093|||Thanksgiving