This Week I Will Be Mostly...

...wearing my rain jacket
...reading *Don't Swallow Your Gum! And Other Medical Myths*
...watching old movies on Netflix Instant
...listening to Christmas music on Pandora
...eating leftovers
...shopping for my husband's "big" gift

Thanksgiving...Go!

Typically, I wake up on Thanksgiving Day in a Very Bad Mood. Thus was not always such, mind you; as a child I loved Thanksgiving. But our family has had a very rough transition in transferring the actual activity from one generation to the next. My mother now hosts dinner at her house, and my grandparents aren't able to travel anymore. The first few years that my mother hosted, my grandparents and degenerate uncle (we all have one of those, right?) were invited, and a purely stressful time was had by all.
All that has changed. I'm no longer pressed by the stresses of timing and travel; I'll get to spend all day with my sister and her family, along with my darling husband and my parents. It's going to be a Great Day. And what better way to start it by putting the parade on mute in the family room and singing "Bust Your Windows" at the top of your voice while cooking in the kitchen?

Richard picks up the knife and becomes Carrot Man! Every one I know cringes when they watch me do anything with a knife. Sorry if I am a let down to the left-handed community, there. I make up for it with nice handwriting, right?

The eggs in their "angel" phase. (They are about to be Deviled - heh, heh.)

Smoky retreats to the bed. Mmmm....coziness.

Small Graces

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
I'm so grateful to live in a place where I can watch the mountains change. I hope I always have that privilege.

This Week I Will Be Mostly...

...wearing scarves
...reading *Howards End*
...watching warm fuzzy movies with my family
...listening to Slacker.com - just discovered it
...eating Thanksgiving foods and too much of them!
...shopping for the odd stocking stuffer (but no Black Friday for me, thanks!)

The Ladybug Stalker

I don't know if it's only in Northern Alabama, but in the past month or so, we had experienced an influx of ladybugs. The first afternoon that I noticed them, my sister and I counted 12 of them on my front porch. But that was just outside. Inside, they were all over the house. But, being polite little insects, they limited their imposition of our home to mainly the angles of the house where the walls meet the ceilings (Hello, there, ceilings!). There were six of them in our bedroom, but this little group of four was most curious to me. For days they were huddled up like this, not moving a bit. I became convinced, in my little emo head, that they had scrunched up like that to die. And I was waxing over how sweet that was, and how long should we leave their little remains up there, etc., and I took this picture:

Well, a couple of days after I immortalized their poignant group death on my iphone, they proved me wrong: one of the beetles had moved about two inches to the right from the group! He's alive!! But why did he move like that? My guess is that he had gas, and the others asked him to step out of the vicinity if he was going to keep that up. That's the way it goes in our house. Sure enough, the next day he had rejoined the group, only he was just under the three remainders. Next day, he was on top of the three. A few days later, I saw a black dot tearing across the wall. I panicked at first, because I didn't have my glasses on, and I was afraid my little visitors were about to be attacked by a raging spider, or something else that is vicious to ladybugs, I don't know. But when I put my glasses on, I saw that it was just old Hypey Hyperson the Ladybug, acting like he had just taken a hit of Ladybug Ecstacy. He was crawling, or I should say running, all over the place, going up on the ceiling, making little circles around the rest of his family. I think he was the first documented case of Ladybug ADHD. Anyway, the day after that little spectacle, they were gone. What they were doing, I have no idea. But they were the sweetest pest invasion I have ever experienced.