In addition to the family drama, I didn't know if J and/or R would end up having to work.
Being a 25 year veteran fire wife, the work schedule rarely slows me down. Typically we'd carry on without J, or R even - as long as I knew there wasn't any chance of them being present, period.
But with R having started his new job with a non-emergency transport ambulance service, he's still doing training rides, whenever they schedule him in. Which he hadn't been finding out what days those would be until about the day before.
Even if he had to work Thanksgiving, no big deal, we're used to missing someone or another for work, but it's the no-set-schedule that stressed me.
Which is kind of a weird thing because their patients are dialysis patients, with appointments.
He goes to work at 911, I know he's going to be there 12 hours.
He goes to work on the ambulance, he may be back in 4 hours, or 7, or who knows. Depends on how many patients had appointments that day, or how many cancelled, or whatever.
So he could have been gone all day, or he could have been home by lunchtime, and end up spending Thanksgiving at home alone if we'd gone out of town to my Aunt's.
I don't mind them having to work on a Holiday, but it freaks me out if I think they would end up spending a Holiday at home alone. (They probably would be fine, though.)
On top of that, my oldest said he and his fiancee weren't going to my Aunt's house. (Can't blame him, my Aunt treated him pretty harsh last year, calling him out and humiliating him in front of the family about his long-term lack of employment. There's a time and place, and that wasn't it.)
And then with the family drama, I said, That's it, stick a fork in me, I am done.
Stamp big, red CX'd over Thanksgiving, I'm skipping it.
Somehow, I'm still not entirely sure how happened, I may or may not have asked my oldest son if they had other plans, or if I were to decide to cook something, would they want to come up.
So, it may have only been me, them, and K, but I fixed Thanksgiving dinner.
Roasted a turkey, and made green bean casserole, sweet potato souffle, potato salad, deviled eggs, macaroni & cheese, cranberry sauce, biscuits, and I made a from-scratch pecan pie, using our own pecans. Yum!
(No, no dressing (stuffing), I don't know how to make it...which I could have looked up a recipe online like I did the pecan pie, but I didn't particularly care if we had it or not, and apparently no one else noticed it was missing. Their plates were full as it was.)
Turned out neither J or R had to work, so the whole (immediate) family was together, and we all sat at the new (not new) bigger kitchen table in the new (not new) kitchen.
Then there was the issue of Christmas Tree day. The day the six of us get together, generally approximately 12 days before Christmas give or take, and go to the Christmas tree farm to cut down our tree, then eat out, or come home and I cook something while they set up and decorate the tree, and snack on their favorite Christmas-time treats like white-chocolate-dipped-oreos, chocolate-covered-pretzels, chocolate-oatmeal-peanut-butter-no-bake-cookies, rice krispy treats, etc.
When I sat down with my calendar 3, 4 months ago and entered J and R's work schedules so I could plan days for us to go on outings and such, December 6th was the ONLY day they had off together that R wouldn't be sleeping from having worked the night before, until Dec 20th. Which would be way too late to bother with putting up a tree.
J texted me about two weeks ago to ask what was on the calendar for Dec. 6th and I said, Christmas tree day, so whatever it is, NO. (Someone wanted to swap a shift.)
Now R comes in and tells me the next days he's scheduled to work on the ambulance are Dec. 2nd and maybe the 6th.
I said, Did you tell them that's Christmas Tree Day?!?!?!?!".
Ummmm....noooo, Moooom.
Of course not. It's only his second week on the job. They're being very good to let him work his training around his days when he has to work nights at 911 (he's putting in his 2-weeks at 911 when he gets released from training), I wouldn't really have expected him to tell them he had something better to do.
I just had to adapt, and figure out something else.
The something else was, I had picked up a fake tree from Freecycle earlier in the year, Spring or Summer, can't recall exactly.
I had planned to fix it up (the people said the lights didn't work and they didn't want to mess with them) and pass it along to someone else.
But I hadn't messed with it, and it was sitting in it's container out on the front porch, so I had the boys drag it in, set it up, and see how awful it was.
Turned out, it wasn't awful at all.
Some of it's lights didn't work, but we just left those unplugged and added our own lights.
I had no plans to put up a Christmas tree on Thanksgiving, so I hadn't gotten any of the Christmas ornaments or decor down from the attic. I went up and grabbed one tub of stuff, so it still needs some added to it....And the top isn't stout enough to hold my lighted Star, which made me sad, but I remembered I had this Angel I had made in Vacation Bible School about (ticking on fingers) 19, 20 years ago maybe.
So, we had Thanksgiving and Christmas tree day all in one, and it was good!
Good food, laughter, getting along. I don't know why everyone can't be like that.
It's way better to just enjoy yourself than to always be looking for offense, or getting butthurt over stupid shit.
(I started my Christmas shopping a little while ago, and have had gifts piling up in the corner of my room. Then the huge box with J's snake boots came today and I didn't have room to stash those, so I just wrapped them and all the other gifts I already had and stuck them under the tree.
This is so crazy! I've never had a tree up before about the second week of December, much less before December 1st, much less Thanksgiving, not to mention gifts wrapped and put under it!
I feel like I've accelerated time, it's way later than it is, and I'm way behind on cleaning away the Fall decor and putting out the Christmas decor!)
I think the moral of the story is: Relax. Everything will be ohh-kay.
No comments:
Post a Comment