Once, a reader commented here (and yes, I AM too lazy to go looking for it right now!) that everyone needed a Lion in their lives. Not only is he amazing with anything to do with computers, he's a top-notch shadetree mechanic, and quite the handyman to boot (not to mention being a great husband and an excellent dad!). The reason I'm singing his praises this week? As of Saturday at 1 am, the majority of my new bathroom was actually IN the bathroom! Hooray! It looks great. There's new flooring, vanity, sink, faucet, mirrored medicine cabinet and toilet. Now mind you...that doesn't mean it's done, by any stretch of the imagination. I still have to paint, and wallpaper, and we still have to install the shower. The amount of work that Lion crammed into one day, and the fantastic job he did on everything was simply amazing!

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With so much going right in the home improvement department, it was only to be expected that aggravation would strike our belated Thanksgiving celebration on Saturday with friends and family. Having picked a time that we thought would benefit everyone involved, and still give us plenty of time to get everything ready, we began our preparations Saturday morning. By the appointed time, the turkeys remained obstinately below temperature, despite several hours in the smoker, something that had never happened before. As luck would have it.....I was woefully unprepared for such an occurrence, and ended up feeding my poor guests cracker and processed cheese, and carrots with ranch to dip them in. By the time we finally managed to raise the temp of just one turkey to an acceptable level, it was past dark, past at least one younger guest's bedtime, and way past my threshold for stress. On the plus side, everyone did say it was delicious, a comfort, since my tastebuds had succumbed to worry about an hour before. Also on the plus side, I got to rock our youngest guest to sleep, which was unexpected, and probably just as soothing to me as it was to him.

Then there was the plumbing lesson, in which I learned several things:
1. Most plumbing, besides having drain pipes that go down, has vent pipes that go up to the roof, for gases, and well, other reasons that make plumbing work right.
2. No matter how plugged, you really shouldn't plunge a kitchen sink with a full size toilet plunger.
3. The water that spews out of the roof vent when you do plunge your big, plugged kitchen sink will run right back down along the pipe to the floor of your (thankfully) unfinished basement.
4. A sponge mop only picks up water off the basement floor about a quarter cup at a time.

Still, I guess you live, and you learn. We know other things we can do now, should the turkey smoking go awry in that fashion again, and as long as we don't mightily plunge the sink, the plumbing issues are non-issues.

All things considered, when you can wash your hands in a bathroom sink that comes with it's own acre of countertop, and all your stuff, is neatly tucked away out of sight in it's own little nooks and crannies of the bathroom furniture, it's still a pretty good weekend.

Kid: Mom, Thanksgiving is short for Turkey Day, isn't it? Or maybe Turkey Day is short for Thanksgiving.

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At daycare this week, Cub made a turkey, with each glorious tailfeather emblazoned with something for which she was thankful. In no particular order, our sweet, 3-year old daughter is thankful for Mommy (awwwwww), Daddy (of course!), butterflies (what a sweet little girl!), Princess (our cat...awww, she's thankful for the cat.), pizza (well, what little kid isn't thankful for pizza?), and snakes (really?) Of course, she was quick to add, when asked about her turkey of thankfulness, that she is also thankful for her brother. Which is good, because if she's thinking about trading him to the zoo for a python, I just might have something to say about that.

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It disturbs me, sometimes, how Thanksgiving seems to be no more than a "gateway holiday" for so many people, officially ushering in sale prices, giving full rein to the blatant commercialism that has been lining the shelves since (seriously!) two weeks before Halloween. I have to admit that I've fallen prey to that mindset more than once, chafing at the bit until Thanksgiving was over so that I could get on with Christmas. Today's small family gathering, and the trip to and from, really served to remind me that Thanksgiving is its own holiday, with its own reason for being (besides to eat pumpkin pie.)

It was my favorite hour an autumn day when we hit the road to head home. The sun was settling low on its way to the horizon, and the light had that soft golden quality that only comes with autumn. The children and I had a great talk about all the things they were thankful for, and why, and as they dozed in the back seat, all I could think about was how lucky, and how thankful I am for everything in my life. Truly, I lack for nothing.

Tomorrow, people will be shopping. People will be out spending money before sane people should even be awake. This weekend, husbands will be festooning houses with Christmas lights, while inside, wives and children deck the halls, everyone urging Christmas to get a move on, already! Not us. Not this year.

I won't be shopping tomorrow. I have to work. We won't be putting up lights, or hanging ornaments on the tree, or even making Christmas goodies this weekend, because we'll be too busy renovating (or recovering from it!) when we're not hosting our own Thanksgiving celebration on Saturday. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay to let the Christmas season come to me this year. After all, it's not like I exactly have the time right now to go chasing it down!

Again, it's okay. I lack for nothing! Happy (American) Thanksgiving, everybody!

I'm on my way back from the restroom, when I hear the internet bouncing pebbles off my window. I try to ignore it. After all, I've got things to do, important stuff! But then, Internet is standing there, looking sad while it holds a giant boombox over its head, trying to persuade me to come back.

Oh, all right. I haven't checked my email for a day or two, I should see if anything important has transpired, or if I just have a whole new batch of forwards worthy only of the reply line, "for the last time...check out Snopes before you pass this stuff along."

Email: Forwards & other stuff I've already dealt with. Maybe I could just catch up on a couple of blogs....

"Hey," pipes up a voice in my head.

It's me again.

"Yeah?" I answer.

"You know..." says I, "you really should go get some stuff done."

"Like what?"

"Like putting that load of sweaters in the wash, perhaps?" Okay, okay. I've got a point there. We're expecting our first big cold snap of the season tomorrow, complete with rain and snow for our holiday travel enjoyment, so a clean, warm, fluffy sweater or six wouldn't go amiss.

On my way to the basement, I say to myself, "Oh, and you might want to finish cleaning up after supper."

"No problem, just let me get these sweaters in the wash."

"Good. Then you can unload and reload the dishwasher."

"Wait...what?" I ask.

"The dishwasher," I tell myself, slowly and loudly. "Take the clean dishes out. Put them away. Put more dirty dishes in."

"Fine," I say, miffed at my own bossiness.

"Then when you're done with that, why don't you hand wash everything that doesn't fit in the dishwasher, take out the garbage before it develops it's own sitcoms, refill the dog's food container, and get the children ready for bed."

"And then I can sit down and read a while, right?" I ask myself.

"Sure!" I say. "After you empty the medicine cabinet and the cheap shelving unit above the toilet upstairs so we can remove them later."

*sigh*

This whole remodeling and extreme house cleaning the week we have guests for Thanksgiving weekend thing must be getting to me a little.

In the movie, the Princess Bride (and if you haven't seen that movie, stop reading RIGHT NOW, and go rent, buy or borrow the movie! Watch it! Believe me, it's worth it, and I will still be here when you come back.) there is the scene where Count Rugen, the six-fingered man, has Westly hooked up to his torture device. He sets it low, since they're "just getting started," and it sucks away an hour of his life.

I am pretty sure that thing was merely an early prototype of the home-improvement store. Sometimes? Retail isn't therapy.

This is not to say that the experience was entirely negative. It certainly wasn't, because we were gathering together everything we needed to redo our bathroom. The problem is, I'm very good with picking out all the "make it pretty" stuff, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of the "make it work" side of things, I'm kind of useless.

However, I didn't let that stop me, (mostly because I had people who DID know what they were doing along with me), and as of Saturday afternoon, I had a new bathroom. Sitting in my family room. (I do have to confess that now it is not all sitting in the family room. Some is in the family room....and the dining room...and the basement...)

This is going to be fun. And a lot of work.

Send a few good renovation vibes our way, would you?

There they sat. Four lovely, perfect pumpkins, souvenirs of a trip to the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago. Procrastination having combined with a busy week and an minor automobile accident, we were finally getting around to carving jack-o-lanterns the night before Halloween.

Now the reason those pumpkins were sitting in the corner of the dining room has everything to do with my belief that I am right more often than not. Lion insisted they should go outside, and I insisted that they must remain inside to avoid the depredations of the squirrels.

Well, those pumpkins stayed inside, but the victory was no one's but Murphy's. Lion went to pick up his pumpkin, only to have the entire bottom drop out of it, splattering rotted pumpkin guts everywhere.

So, four pumpkins, three jack-o-lanterns, and one mess.

(But you know what, I was a little bit right. Just a little bit. Once we put the finished jack-o-lanterns outside, the squirrels acted like we'd just set out a buffet just for them. Still, not planning on keeping large squash in the house again anytime soon.)