Starting right after Thanksgiving, my mother has gone full-boar into Christmas decorating.  This is probably to make up for the fact that she was so depressed that Prodigal Son was in Japan last year, she did no decorating, not even a tree.

I suppose I can’t complain: I do love Christmas decorating and some traditions.  I’m a “secular humanist”, and therefore, celebrate “Secular Christmas.”  Religious groups will try to get people back to the “true meaning” of Christmas: celebrating family, togetherness, and helping fellow men – all of which I fully support, but I will not adhere to the “religious overtones” of the season.  I’m just not that into religion.

I digress.

So, I have what my brother lovingly refers to as PS3 thumbs (aching, gnarled joints) from bending hundreds of wire loops to adhere ornaments to.  I have two fatty cats who really enjoy sitting in the base of the tree; and if I can’t save the boughs of the tree from the cats, I will save the glass ornaments from getting destroyed when they launch in or out of the tree.

I also have to decorate the main banister at the stairwell.  I think half the reason my parents bought the house they live in now is because of the Christmas-decorating-possibilities this banister has.  I’m planning on festooning it with pine boughs, lights, and stylized poinsettias.  It’s going to be epic.

In addition to home-decorating, I have a new berry-wreath for my office door, and lit pine-garland for around my door.  I’m very excited, even if my next-door-neighbor co-worker is a huge Grinch (I feel that I can say this safely, as my girlfriend, K, is his wife, so I know him outside of work, too.)

1. Do you cook all or part of the meal?
   I make the apple pie, and I help with everything else.
2. How much do you spend buying groceries for the meal?
   My portion cost me $8 this year: it was the apples that really cost me, what with off-season produce and whatnot.
3. Do you eat at home or go to someone else’s?
   It depends.  I don’t feel very particularly, one was or the other.
4. Describe your perfect bite?
   Turkey, stuffing, gravy, green bean casserole, and cranberry goo.
5. White meat or dark?
   They both have their appeal; I’m not picky.
6. Stuffing with giblets or without?
   Ew, no giblets, that’s just…ech.
7. Anything you won’t eat at the Thanksgiving meal?
   Hmmm…ham.  My MIL has ham and turkey sometimes, and I just don’t like ham.
8. Carve Mr. Gobble at the table or serve on a platter?
   On a platter.
9. Favorite pie?
   My own apple; but if Gram was still alive, hers would beat mine, hands down.
10. Formal table or Chinet?
    Formal.  If there is any holiday for formal tableware, it’s Thanksgiving.
11. Your menu:
    Turkey w/Gravy
    Mashed Potatoes
    Roasted Sweet Potatoes w/ Honey Butter
    Good Old Country Stuffing
    Green Bean Casserole
    Cranberry Jelly
    Rolls w/ Irish Butter
12. Favorite leftover?
    An entire reheated plate of everything from the night before.
13. Extended family, friends, both or just the immediate family for dinner?
    One year, I’m going to have just friends over: it seems like the least stressful way to do it.
14. After dinner, do you go to the latest movie or watch football on TV or just a turkey induced snooze?
    I usually get stuck cleaning the kitchen; but this year I get to clean and decorate the tree by myself.
15. Do you watch the Macy’s Parade?
    Nah, I’ll pass.
16. Christmas decorations up before or after?
    After Thanksgiving.  I’m really, really particular about Christmas decorating, and timing is everything.
17. Black Friday shopping or sleep in?
    Mostly shopping, but not at big boxes stores – that’s insanity.
18. Any special Thanksgiving tradition?
    Nope.  I’m not terribly sentimental.
19. Favorite thing about Thanksgiving?
    Using the formal dinnerware.
20. Favorite Thanksgiving memory?
    Dinner at my in-laws house for Thanksgiving, with The Boy, The Brothers (and dates), and the Uncle and Aunt.  It was so much fun: it was casual, no stress, everyone pitched in to clean, and everyone enjoyed everyone else’s company.  It was awesome.

Tomorrow, my brother will be home from a year-long trip in Japan.  He spent his time there studying (hopefully), getting absorbed in the culture, and having the experience of a lifetime.

He will be home for about four days before he has to go back to school for the fall semester.  He and I have never been super close, but he is my baby brother, and I am sad that I won’t see him for very long before he’s gone again for school across the state.  I have this hinky feeling that I’m not going to see him very much anymore, period.  I don’t think he’ll be in the States very long after he graduates, and I don’t know that I will get the opportunity to visit him as much as I would like in Japan.  I’m just going to have to make a point of visiting him more often this year in BG.

I can’t imagine that the adjustment to life back in the States is going to be very easy for him.  He’s coming home from his favorite place on earth back to an obligation he doesn’t want to fill.  I can’t say as I envy his predicament too much.

I’ve had my own health insurance since I was hired for my current position in June of 2007.  Before that, I had individual health insurance (which, dear God, even at 22 and relatively healthy, the premiums were a fucking nightmare – especially when you’re only making $7.50 an hour and only working 32 hours a week).  In college, I was covered under my father’s insurance.

Apparently, my father has been paying for my coverage under his health plan since the last day I was eligible (December 31 2006).  Mind you, if I tried to use an insurance ID card through his group coverage, not only would I be denied coverage, I could probably be penalized for fraud.  Several times, my father has been on the company website and tried to remove me as a covered individual, but to no avail.  I guess he finally went down to HR and made sure it was taken care of.

Today, in the mail, I received information on COBRA coverage because, hey, I’m no longer being “covered” by my father’s company’s group insurance.

The reason cited for the discontinuation of my health insurance coverage?

DIVORCED SPOUSE

…Wasn’t there some paper work that I was supposed to fill out for the disolution of my marraige?

The Boy came over, and as promised, I made three dozen pumpkin whoopee pies.  Two dozen went home with him for the long trek to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving with the Brothers, the remainder are going with us to my mother’s cousin’s house, where we will spend after-Thanksgiving.

Also, this will be the first holiday that my brother will be in Japan, and my mother is taking it kind of rough.  This time of year sucks for her because my grandmother’s birthday was on Christmas and my uncle died in early December.  So, since both sides have Skype, Binkles is going to get up at six in the morning and have “dinner” with us with the laptop set up in his seat.

We’re going to have a scaled-down dinner with just the intimate family and small portions of the classics.  Which to me, is the perfect low-key way of spending the holidays.

I may look more like my mother, but I am more like my father in my mannerisms. Though I did inherit his almond-shaped eyes, I also inherited his sensitivity, creativity, over-active brain, and his nerdiness. He and I can both take the grinding pain of surgery with stride and with grace, but neither us are able to shake the perhaps-unintended slight.

This is a man who spent the first five years of his life living in a post-war-torn Germany with his mother. This is a man who spent the next five years after that living in an orphanage in Pennsylvania while his mother worked at a nursing home in the hopes of a better life. This is a man who survived a difficult family situation and left home at 17 to work 40 jobs by the time he was 30. This is a man who was drafted to serve his adopted country in the Vietnam war.

This is a man who wanted better for his two children than he had for himself, and worked hard to be slow to anger but quick to teach. This is a man who loves to create with his hands. This is a man who loves nothing more than to walk out in the country with the sun on his face and the wind at his back.

This is a man I almost lost to cancer in 2006. This is a man who bravely went to chemotherapy for six weeks, and never openly complained, even as he lost weight and his hair. This is a man who will have been in remission for two years in October. This is a man for whom I will always walk for to raise awareness for the disease.

This is a man who took me to three years of father/daughter dances at Beaumont. This is a man who helped me work on grade-school science projects (usually at the zero-hour); helped me work on art projects in college; taught me how to use a table-saw, a bandsaw, a belt-sander, a drill, taught me how to plumb, how to do electrical wiring, how to lay laminate flooring, and hang tile. This is a man that I will dance with at my wedding.

And though it hasn’t always been easy to live with him, and have had some pretty terrible fights, I will always be proud of him, and I will always know how lucky I am to have him.

This man is my father.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.

I was talking to my co-worker about various and sundry things, and the topic moved to weddings (she’s getting married this year). Most of the time, I keep pretty mum on the topic of the relationship with my mother/parents: I try to keep it very simple, very unreadable – it’s just been…safer that way. For whatever reason, given the strife that I’ve had, specifically within the last week (this week has been eye-opening in the suck), I said something that I’ve been stewing in for years: since I’ve started dating at 16.

Me: I gotta be honest with you; my mother would be thrilled to find out that I broke up with [The Boy], canceled the wedding, and just stayed single until I was thirty.

[Co-Worker]: Are you serious? Does she not like [The Boy], or…?

Me: I don’t know. I think she’d be happy if I were marrying a lawyer, or a doctor, or a financial planner later in life. But she just doesn’t want me to get married. Like I said, she’d be thrilled if I broke up with [The Boy].

[Co-Worker]: That’s kind of sick….

Yeah, it is. But it’s true. She’d admit that she’d be thrilled, too, if I ever had the stones to confront her on it.

Somehow, my mother and I got into a heated something, in which I became frustrated because I have two people trying to talk to me at once, which I can’t handle. At one point, I rolled my eyes; and my mother gets the narrow eyes, finger in my face, and says in a threatening hiss:

I deserve respect, I’m the adult here!

I’m going to turn 24 in March. I have been engaged for over a year. I have a full-time job with benefits.

Thank God, Medina in August.

When I first told my parents that I was getting married, they were dubious, to put it nicely. Then they gave both The Boy and I a sheet to read of “all the things that married couples should talk about before getting married”. Any time my mother brings up our impending marriage (or impending doom, if you ask her opinion), she keeps pressing me to talk with The Boy about “The List.”

Okay, I promised that I would post a real entry, so here goes, in order of the things I think of.

My parents went to West Virginia for three days (visiting with my aunt and uncle who drove up to WV from North Carolina).� This means that I have the house to myself for three days.� I never thought that I would be so lonely.� Which sounds lame, at 23, I want my parent’s company, but this house is way too big for one person with a part-time job and no life.� Even though I spend most of my time by myself when I’m at home (with my parents), it’s still weird to go upstairs and no one’s there.

I’m still filling out job applications with vigor.� I’m hoping, hoping, hoping that I end up going somewhere with all of this shit.� But, I’m trying to make a better effort into looking harder and doing everything I can.� I’ve been at [Retail Job] for six months at the end of this month; so when they give me my name tag of gold and maroon plastic, I’m going to cry.� And not with joy.

I didn’t get into graduate school.� I was bummed out at first, but only in the way that it was like a bad relationship: I didn’t want to be in it, but I wanted to do the dumping, dammit!� Rejection sucks.

I’m going out to Bowling Green to visit my brother.� I’m hoping that the weather isn’t horrible for my two-hour drive, but I do have books on tape: The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan, Hannibal by Thomas Harris, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which I may not even get to, but whatevs.� My brother promises that he’ll let me fool around in the ceramics lab, which promises to be fun, but after that, I have no idea what we’ll do.� Chinese and a movie, mayhap?

Wednesday night, The Boy and I are leaving for Mammoth Caves, Kentucky.� I’m looking forward to not having to work for three days in a row, sleeping next to my fiance for the second time since we were engaged, and seeing new sites (and a new shot glass for my collection — yay!) but the seven-hour drive?� Not so much.� I plan on making a packing list, soon, but again, I have the same motivation as I have attitude for a seven-hour drive: not so much.

Hopefully, I’ll have pictures from both Bowling Green and Mammoth Caves.