Happy Rape and Pillage Day in Everyday Musings of a Very Tired Mama

I hate the story/history of Thanksgiving because I don’t think it was the pleasant kumbaya kittens and rainbows that the history books purport it to be. So I’ve never been too into Thanksgiving. When we first bought our house in 2005, we started a Day After Thanksgiving tradition where we would have a big dinner. We would have sometimes almost 20 people. It was a huge undertaking and something that people looked forward to every year. We would bring different groups of people together who otherwise didn’t know each other, but they became friends, so it was super cool.
We did this consistently for almost 10 years. In 2015, Babe had just had weight loss surgery and I was on my pre-op diet for the same surgery, which I had on December 7th, so we skipped it. 2016 was the last year we had it. In 2017, our two best friends had passed away and I had just given birth to Booboo about 6 weeks earlier so we weren’t feeling it. We went to Lakeland to spend it with a couple friends. This year we are going to the God Parents’ house (once Booboo wakes up from her nap). GodFather’s parents are in from GA and there’s gonna be lots of yummy food. Godparents are vegetarian/vegan but his parents aren’t and neither are we, so we’re cooking a turkey breast and also mac and cheese so good that GF is going to fight through his lactose intolerance. LOL.

So just because I don’t buy into the Thanksgiving myth doesn’t mean I don’t use this as a day to count and focus on my many blessings. I try to remind myself every day how blessed I am despite the struggles.

Pickle has been off school this whole week. Monday Babe worked and so I had both kids. We all survived. Tuesday and Wednesday Pickle went to camp at a place that specializes in kids who have sensory issues, autism and other varying degrees of the spectrum. He loved it and we will be back for Christmas camp too. Tuesday Babe got the spend the whole day in an insurance class, so he was happy and now he’s off till Monday. Lots of good family time. We got some stuff done around the house yesterday too. Starting to clean up the downstairs to make more playspace and we will probably have the Christmas tree down there as well. Our house is laid out kinda weird. The main part of the house is on a crawlspace (bathroom, kitchen, livingroom and 2 bedrooms). But then on slab is what used to be a huge porch that someone enclosed in very haphazardly. We replaced all the drywall years ago and found they had used old newspaper for insulation. This is a big area that right now is home to a lot of crap we need to go through and organize, pitch or donate. We have half of it empty now and I just have to sweep, scrub and put some foam down for a play area.
Off of this big room is a 3rd bedroom that could use some attention. I laid tile down there 3 years ago and it’s not terribly overrun with stuff, but there are some window panes that need to be fixed/replaced. Finally our garage is attached to that. Much organizing needs to be down in there. We’re thinking of renting a dumpster as an incentive to get rid of a lot of stuff, as well as a lot of brush we need to take care of.

The kids are spending the night and all day Friday with the GPs. We look forward to getting more stuff done and having some peace and quiet. Sometimes I wonder what the heck we did with our lives before kids. We had more free time than we knew what to do with. It’s mind blowing, really.

Writing this entry reminded me that I have a turkey breast and mac and cheese to cook so I better get going on that.

Happy Thanksgiving y’all!