So, we went to my brother-in-law’s for Thanksgiving dinner, bringing along my mother and sister and huge quantities of food including an Un-Turkey. The Un-Turkey was for my sister. She felt we should bring the whole thing so she could share. Every year she’s sure someone else will want to try it. Every year, no one does.

Upon arrival we learned that a relative was hovering at death’s door. It was an aunt of my husbands - the families lived next door to one another until Florida sucked them in. We thought she’d come through a recent surgery just fine, but there were complications. It was a sad but classic case of “The operation was a success but the patient died.” They took her off life support the day after Thanksgiving. And it really was sad. Her husband, children and grandchildren are going to miss her very much. It was way too soon, too.

We spent Monday and Tuesday commuting between work and the wake and Wednesday was the funeral. Returning to normal life I found the following:

- In two days 72 message had appeared in my spam folder. That’s in the e-mail account that I use and check every day. I’m afraid to look at the others.

- Some as yet uncounted (and undeleted) spam comments have been posted to this blog. This is becoming a constant annoyance. I don’t have time to moderate in a timely manner and I certainly don’t have time to deal with this. It makes me think that maybe I should just do this whole thing on Blogger.

- I have a newsletter to take apart and post parts of to an organization’s site. Also still working on the band’s redesign. I think I’m onto something. Now I have to put it together in a less rough draft.

- Huge piles of laundry accumulated. Clothing multiplies in the hamper, but then makes itself scarce when you’re looking for something to wear. There is no way we could worn the number of items that were in the hamper. In fact, I don’t think we own that many.

- My holiday to-do lists have grown to frightening proportions. I have to attack them this weekend. They’ll probably attack right back.

I have to confess something. The thing I like best about the holiday season is when it’s over. I don’t have time enough in the day to live my normal life at the pace I would like. Providing holiday cheer is really too much to ask.

So, semi-hiatus has probably begun again.

Preparations are done. We’re almost on our way with sweet and mashed potatos and stuffing in tow. My sister-in-law and her family don’t do sweets. When they come here they bring a casserole of mashed potatos mixed with stuffing. It’s not Thanksgiving dinner for them without that. Unfortunately, our going there means bringing three dishes to make it Thanksgiving dinner for our family. Thanksgiving is such a food holiday that you kind of have to have your favorites.

That’s not the end of it. My sister-in-law is such a good baker that bringing desserts is usually a coals to New Castle kind of thing, but I’m bringing sugar-free chocolate pudding pie for my diabetic husband. That and the tofu turkey with the wheat gluten gravy for my vegetarian sister and we’re good to go. They’re never going to ask us to come again. I can see that coming.

My mother is getting dressed. She’s asked us where we’re going every half hour on the hour for about two weeks now. I think she’s got it now. Just takes a while. She’s focused on getting dressed now. Her outfit will be wasted on us, I’m afraid. We do our holildays in jeans, mostly. She just never noticed.

We’ve had a talk about avoiding too much political/religious discussion. Or at least not starting it. And not getting overly passionate if it does come up. No yelling. I made the rule. I think they suspect I don’t actually have that authority though. I think that’s everything. There’s nothing I can do about the fact that my sister will bring a book and fill conversational lulls by reading it. OK..over the river and through the traffic we go.

Blogging will probably be pretty spotty for the next few weeks. The season has begun. There are two trips into the city this week alone, houseguests next weekend and that doesn’t include work or Thanksgiving Day. Then there’ll be the rush to get ready for Christmas. My daughter is helping, though, because she has organizational skills. I don’t know where she got them. She’s like Marilyn Munster - the normal one. It really helps to have people with different skills and abilities in the family. She came downstairs this morning to discuss gifts and shopping.

We have a number of birthdays surrounding the holidays. In fact it’s kind of non-stop from this week through early February. Make that late mid to late February starting this time around. That’s when our grandson is supposed to make his appearance. In a half hour’s time she had plans for gift giving and shopping organized for most of those occasions, including for extended family. She made a chart. I know that sounds obnoxious, but we really need that kind of help.

In an effort to be as efficient as my daughter, I thought that my husband and I could get one thing out of the way. We’ve been invited to an extra event right in the middle of it all. Now, my husband greets root canal with a great deal more equanimity than he does even the most low key socializing. The holidays are pretty stressful for him. An extra thing - with a somewhat different group of people - I knew how he was going to feel about that. But it’s something that we sort of have to go to. Or at least it’s something that means a lot to someone we care about. So, I suggested that we have the fight now.

The pattern we follow is that he agrees to go to things like this when I tell him about them. Sometimes he makes a face, sometimes there’s a deep sigh, sometime he says it sounds like fun. That varies but the day of the event is always the same. He’ll get pensive. He’ll try not to be grumpy, but some grouchiness will show through. I always bite and ask him what the matter is, even though I know perfectly well what it is. Then he says he doesn’t feel well. I ask about that. He says he doesn’t think he can go to whatever it is. Then it’s on. We go around for a while. We’re both upset and in the end, we go. We often have a pretty good time.

He agreed to have the fight today instead of in a couple of weeks. He tried to get into it and showed self-knowlege I didn’t know he had. He said all the same stupid stuff he says when it’s spontaneous. I ran through my roster of reactions. We kind of rushed through the script a little but we other things to do today. This is one of the great advantages to a long marriage. You know your conversations and fights by heart can get them out of the way quickly. You can even do them by yourself if your partner isn’t available. I have a lot of arguments with him that he doesn’t ever even know about. The sad thing is that I don’t always win, even when I’m having the fight by myself. My husband is stubborn, even in absentia.

Back from her blogless travels, I just know that what Jude wants to see is a lot of cat blogging. Welcome back, Jude!

Simone, on the left, and Rose on the right, moved in with us along with my daughter and the rest of her family, over two years ago. Last year when everyone else moved into the apartment upstairs, Simone opted to stay with us. She prefers the quieter lifestyle and lack of bulldogs that we offer. I can only assume that, affectionate as she is, she’d leave us in a New York minute if a better deal came along, based on her past behavior. Rose, on the other hand, is loyal as a hound. She’s a pack animal and where her pack goes, she goes, bulldogs or not.

My daughter is having a baby. It’s her second, but her first is almost 12. Even in that time things have changed. The whole thing is a completely different experience than it was when I had my kids.

I went to Babies backward R Us with her and the equipment is mostly totally different. Strollers have become “travel systems” and they are. I just know I’m not going to be able to figure theirs out when they get it. Even the little infant seats for around the house are constructed completely differently. We didn’t get as far as the car seats, although I believe that the infant-size seat comes as part of the travel system. When she was a baby car seats were those little chair-like things that have since been found to be more dangerous than nothing at all. We only used them from the time the baby could sit up until about age two anyway. After that, they learned to wriggle out of them and they simply roamed free around the car. Seat belts? Most of the cars didn’t have them. We mostly felt if we arrived at our destination with the kids inside the car, we were doing our job.

There were no playpens to be seen. Instead they have “play yards” which can also serve as portable cribs or bassinets. They look very useful. They’re not as roomy as playpens, but I never knew any babies who didn’t immediately begin howling once they were placed in a playpen, at least once they were old enough to move around on their own.

They started changing recommendations about introducing foods between the births of my two kids, who were also far apart. When my daughter was born, you gave them a tiny amount of rice cereal as soon as they seemed dissatified with their all liquid diet. With my daughter, that was almost immediately. By the time my son was born it was three months or something like that and when my granddaughter came along it was more like six. Now I assume that they expect the kid to nurse until puberty. You have to ignore some things.

Even the ailments accompanying pregnancy are different. As of today she’s come down with a sudden and very painful case of carpal tunnel syndrome. That’s not good, because she’s working as a freelance grahic designer and carpal tunnel could really cramp her style, so to speak. She looked it up and it turns out it’s a common condition of pregnancy now. She’s in her sixth month and that’s when it most commonly starts. When I was pregnant no one had heard of carpal tunnel. We had to make do with swollen ankles.

They know so much more about what’s going on with the baby than they used to. We know exactly how much the baby weighs, that he’s a boy and expect to get his projected SAT scores from next month’s tests. I hope they’re good. Otherwise he’ll have to attend remedial Mommy and Me classes.

This is one of those moments when I’m deeply glad that my daughter and family moved in here with us. Sure, the apartment upstairs is going to be too small once Joey arrives in February, but with the tax proposals that have been put in front of the president, I’m very happy they didn’t buy a house when they might have been able to. The proposals, among other changes, change deductions for mortage interest into tax credits, with much lower caps. Furthermore they elimate tax deductions for state and local taxes.

The “kids” were pretty broke when they moved in with us, and as I’ve blogged before, they really moved in with us at the time. They were a family of three, plus pets, occupying two bedrooms in our seven room home. In addition to our seven rooms, the house also contains a two bedroom apartment upstairs, but it wasn’t empty when they came to stay. My mother and sister were in it. When circumstances change and we moved people around my daughter and her husband could have chosen to buy a house. They weren’t broke anymore. They both had good jobs, were out of debt and saving money. Mortgages were being given out like candy and with creative financing, they’d have been able to make payments on a modest house, even with the inflated prices that prevail here. And they’d have lost money already. The market is softening a little even now.

If any form of these tax proposals goes through, legions of couples like them won’t be able to afford the payments on the homes that they’ve recently bought. With the mere possibility of it, the market is going to soften right into mush around here in the land of high property taxes and overpriced McMansions. I”m really glad they didn’t pay $400,000 for a cape on an eighth of an acre, which was what they were going for.

There are a lot more implications, which will affect everyone, including us. But at least they’re not on the hook for a huge mortgage on a house that now will have negative equity within weeks if this idea isn’t quashed immediately.

Halloween came and went without much of a blip around here. My daughter did some decorating outside. That’s good, because I never do. I’m terrible about decorating for holidays. Halloween decor has gotten way out of hand, though. Halloween lights? There are Halloween lights now, just like Christmas lights. I didn’t see so many of those this year. The surcharge we all just got in our electric bills might have put the damper on that. Anyway, we just have a nice little graveyard, edged with faux crime scene tape and some cobwebby stuff. It looks very nice and midly spooky. I’m glad my daughter is here to do those things. She makes us look normal.

Rachel, my granddaughter is at that age where she’s almost outgrown Halloween kid stuff or thinks she should have outrgrown it. So, she didn’t dress up, she just wore a tinsel halo around the house, unconnected to any actual costume. She went to do her trick or treating at her father’s anyway. She has a step-brother her age there. Almost no kids came to the door here. It’s been like that for number of years. No little kids and I don’t see many big ones around either. So, we have candy left over. It’s calling, but I’m trying not to listen.

I’ve lost some weight without trying since the whole medical thing started early this year. All my clothes fit better. I think it was mostly from not going to work for six weeks or so. Offices are worse for diets than a dessert cart. In fact, offices like mine sort of are dessert carts in their own way. Everyone brings in any cakes, cookies or candy they have leftover from parties or holidays. They want those calories out of the house. Then everyone consumes everyone else’s leftover calories. I don’t think the system is really efficient.

Last year at this time, as we were moving the upstairs downstairs and vice versa, my daughter said she was afraid of what this September would bring. It’s become a convention in our house that September is something to dread. It’s only since the big one - 9/11 - that it’s seemed that way, but starting that year, Septembers have been a time to get through. Whether it’s global or personal, it just seems like that’s a prime time for things to hit the fan. This time, of course, the upheaval came to the residents of the Gulf Coast, and not us. That was so tragic it was hard to watch, but we did watch every day for a couple of weeks.

Since we haven’t lost everything, and we haven’t been afflicted by anything like Katrina, we really don’t have a thing to complain about. So, I’m not complaining, just mentioning that I still don’t much like September. Between global catastrphes that bring intense human suffering and just our own personal aggravation, I could really do without this month.

This year only one person in our family has moved, and that’s my son, as explained in the post below. Rudy the bassett hound finally returned from the hospital today, after surgery to remove a piece of dog toy that no one can account for. His family will be paying off that bill for quite a while. Rudy is still very much a convalesecent and isn’t the best patient in the world. He’s refusing to touch his prescription dog food, but has to be restrained from munching on rocks and sticks. This isn’t going to go smoothly.

There’s a vibe in the air, too. We’re sniping at each other. Not much, but more than is usual. We’re all too easily offended or something.

I’ve been pretty quiet because I’ve been in a funk since Katrina hit. Mostly because of all the personal devastation, but also because it exposed just how far our nation has sunk in the Bush years. It’s depressing, is what it is.

Finally, I’ve been sick for the last week, and trying to just work through it and make it go away through force of will. Now I’m trying the antibiotic approach and that seems to be working better. All in all, I’ve had little to say here or in person.

Things will improve, or at least my attitude will. But lately, I just don’t care for September.

My son (that’s him, with the guitar) moved out today. People tend to come and go here. This is the third time he’s moved somewhere, but this is the first time he’s moved off Long Island. No stopping by for a quick visit when he’s got a little time to kill. No dropping in to see what’s in the fridge or to do his laundry or to catch a quarter or two of a football game with his Dad. It’s the right thing to do. It makes perfect sense. I’d do exactly what he’s doing if I were in his place. He’s more than old enough. It’s time. I’m going to miss him so much.

Today we’re all just worried sick about Rudy. That’s him on the right. On the left is Roxy, his older, but not wiser, companion. That picture was taken a few months ago. He’s only about a year old now, so he’s bigger than that now. Mostly longer, actually. Roxie and Rudy are my grand-dogs. It works just like grandchildren. You get to enjoy them and you don’t have to clean up after them or do any of the hard work. Rudy is the sweetest dog you’d ever want to meet. He loves everyone and is reasonably well behaved for such a youngster. He got sick on the weekend. He went to the vet and got sent home much improved but now he’s relapsed and he seems very sick indeed. He’ll be going back to the vet, of course, but the thing is that no one, including the vet, seems to be exactly sure what’s wrong. We’re worried.