Everyone has their own problems, so I'm not going to give the astoundingly awful fix Eliot is in and in which  he has invited his parents along for the ride out of sight. 

It.

is.

the.

worst.

of.

times.

'nuff said.  Now for the  best of times.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and Stella and Rick will be coming home from the places they live now--oh, okay their faraway homes--and we will give thanks like we should for all of the amazing gifts in our lives that are in them and for which we are thankful and which, astoundingly enough, include Eliot.

I'm going to cook and we will have excellent food to eat.  We will clean up afterwards.

Oops. Excuse the holiday delirium there.  I will clean up afterwards and we will have scads and oodles of time to find out what really is going on in each others' lives.  Rick will go to his girlfriend's mother's house and taste their pumpkin pie.  My bet is that it's excellent and far superior to the homey type of pie which I like to make and to eat.    He's going to love theirs and he loves mine too, so it's all very much the way I like it to be.

Thursday Stella and I will have our annual dedicated Mother-Daughter day out together.  We used to Christmas shop and still will, if we feel like it.  Otherwise we buy ourselves a present or two and then go out for dinner together, even if we decide to have dinner at 2 PM.  This day is an excellent tradition, begun while Stella was still a middle school student.  She's all grown up now and we've been talking about the day since roughly August.  When she thought she couldn't get away from work to come home for a couple of days, I planned to go to her place, not for Thanksgiving, but for the day after so we could keep our tradition.

As for the day before Thanksgiving--today--I just got this purty thing.  Nice isn't it?

50,330 words, despite a difficult month.

Booyah!

Thank you.