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It's no secret that I am a Christmas idiot. When Halloween ends, I'm all about Christmas. I start planning to put up my tree, start my shopping, and plan my Thanksgiving Dinner so I can get it out of the way and concentrate on Christmas. This year it has been a nightmare! Thanksgiving was at my house, so I assembled my tree, left it in the porch house until the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I had about twenty folks for Thanksgiving Dinner, and out of the five women over twenty there, my thirty year old daughter and I were the only two fully mobile. My sister-in-law had to undergo colon surgery two weeks before Thanksgiving, and my sister had just got out of rehabilitation because of a knee replacement. That's two down, and a seventy-five year old Aunt that can hardly breathe, let alone putter around in the kitchen to help me. I refused to let my daughter stay inside and help me because her fiancé was there with her. So, that left, me and me. Needless to say by the time the first ones arrived by 10 a.m. that morning, and the last ones left after 9 p.m. that night, I felt like someone had wound a key up in my back, and it didn't unwind. After cleaning up, I crawled in bed, and got up at 5 a.m. the next morning to go to work. My hubby had taken off to be with the grandson. My boss informed me that I'd be working with my hubby the first week of December so my "stand in" could get a refresher course for when I was going to be off a few days around Christmas. Not only do the two of us work at the same place, we travel back and forth together unless there is something going on that we both need to take our vehicles. The first morning I am with him in his office, I spill a diet coke on his desk, all over Purchase Orders, Invoices, etc. You would've thought I'd burned down his office and the maintenance shop that it is built above. I'm sure all of his guys that worked for him heard us screaming at each other. After we got his desk cleaned, he left. I buzzed our boss on the intercom and told him what had happened. He knew I just wanted to get out of there. His response was, "Don't spill anything else." "Well hell," I thought. So for the next five days, if I didn't have to leave the plant to go do things for the hubby, we were constantly bickering. We got in on Wednesday, I got my Christmas tree into the house and asked him to get my decorations down out of the porch house. (I'm not allowed to dig around in there. He says I make a mess of how he has things arranged.) He told me he didn't have time that he'd do it the next day. So, the next evening, after another, "Go to hell", "I hate you", "You're a bastard", day at work, I asked him to get them out again. He forgot. He came in later, ate dinner, showered, and went to bed to watch television. I walked to the bedroom door and snidely said, "Thanks for getting the decorations out for me." "If you don't hush about it, I won't get them at all. I'm tired." He didn't even look at me, but at the television as he spoke. "Good enough," I thought. I went back into the living room, quietly took the tree apart, and took it out in front of the fence in the front yard by the trash cans and left it there. "garbage truck ran the next day." I quietly slipped back into the house. An hour or so later, he came out of the bedroom, walked into the living room and asked, "What did you do with the tree?" "Threw it away." I didn't look at him as I spoke. "Why did you throw it away? Somebody could've used it." He looked furious. I was even angrier. "Whadda you mean someone else could've used it? Why don't I just use it to stick it up your a--?" He went and got it from beside the road out of more concern of what people would think, and I refused to let him put it back in the house. Watching him go in the porch house to put it up, I closed the door of the porch house and padlocked it from the outside, and went in the house. He started banging on the door. I knew he wouldn't kick the door down because he would never destroy something he worked for. He just doesn't believe in it. After about an hour, and knowing it was getting colder, I went and unlocked the door. He was calmly sitting there drinking a beer, (we keep two refrigerators out there and our freezers) while looking at an old Playboy magazine he'd found in a box. Well, that went over like a ton of bricks. I stomped back into the house, got a shower and went to sleep in the guest room. I heard him come in later, fix the coffee pot, and lock the doors. The next morning I got up earlier than normal with full intentions of leaving him to go to work alone in a separate vehicle. He'd beat me to it. He was up and gone. So, I took my time, and barely made it to his office by seven a.m. He didn't even look up when I came in, but said, "I'll buy you a real tree and help you put it up this weekend." "I've decided not to do a tree. I'm going to decorate the hearth, and put all the gifts around it. That way, we'll have more room when everyone comes the weekend before Christmas. Anyway, we won't be here for Christmas Eve and Christmas DAy. We'll be at the kids. They can take all the presents back with them the weekend before." "Are you sure? I'll take you to the tree farm and let you get a real one. I know you'd rather have one." He was very contrite and genuine. "It will be less for me to do. I'll do a little more to the hearth, add lights to my garland, and it should be fine." So, after a week of "holy hell", I decided not to do a tree, and so glad I did. My hearth is not finished, but must look great because when Kyle saw it, he says, "Nana, that's awesome!" Then after a minute he said, "Where's the tree?" I then explained how after everyone left the weekend before Christmas that he would be taking all the gifts back to his house to put under his tree. "fist pump" "Yeah," he said excitedly. So, after all the bickering, fighting, cursing, and finally coming to an understanding, Kyle opened my eyes once more to the real meaning of Christmas. The smile on a child's face.

tim shared his Apricot-Almond baked oatmeal recipe, and I thought ... "Yeah, there are eggs, cream and butter in it, but ... the oats and nuts will help with the cholesterol. It should be okay if I don't go crazy and eat half the pan. Okay, let's go to the store for ingredients!" Off I go. I spend forty minutes in total driving there, walking around with my barely acceptable "I don't care" hair, selecting stuff, then driving back home. Once back here, I begin the process of prepping the dried fruit and nuts. Then I put the dry ingredients together in a big bowl, while the wet ones and sugar are in the other. I'm very slow in the kitchen. I'm not afraid of it, I'm just plodding and methodical. One thing at a time is how I work. Music is playing, and I'm drinking a latte so, it's not exactly a bad time - I rather enjoyed myself, actually. Anyway ... another forty minutes go by before I'm done. I pour the dry ingredients into a 9x9 baking dish (as instructed) then pour the wet ingredients on top. By this point, I'm pretty proud of myself. I can tell, this is gonna be great. I turn to the oven, my dish of soon to be baking oaty deliciousness in hand. "Oh, shit. SHIT!" Our oven is broken. And I had literally spent almost an hour and a half gathering and preparing ingredients, only to remember the oven was busted right when I needed it. So ... now, two loaf pans of oaty unknown are probably not even close to the right temperature in an old, cantankerous toaster oven. Some days ... you just gotta laugh.

May your turkey be juicy, Your taters have nary a lump, May your side dishes make no one woozy, while your desserts make everyone jump, and may your Thanksgiving dinner not go to your thighs forcing you into a new pants size. Happy Thanksgiving one and all.

A friend sent this joke to me on Facebook years ago and I came across it when I was cleaning out the files on my computer. Anyone else got any silly jokes they've either been told or sent???? Cake or Bed? A husband is at home watching a football match when his wife interrupts, 'Honey, could you fix the light in the hallway? It’s been flickering for week’s now.' He looks at her and says angrily, 'Fix the lights now? Does it look like I have ‘Powergen’ written on my forehead? I don't think so!' 'Fine!' Then the wife asks, 'Well then, could you fix the fridge door? It won't close right' To which he replied, 'Fix the fridge door? Does it look like I have 'Frigidaire' written on my forehead? I don't think so!' 'Fine!' she says, 'Then you could at least fix the steps to the front door? They are about to break' 'I’m not a carpenter and I don't want to fix steps', he says, 'Does it look like I have 'Taylor Woodrow' written on my forehead? I don't think so! I've had enough of this, I'm going to the pub!!!!' So he goes to the pub and drinks for a couple of hours................ He starts to feel guilty about how he treated his wife, and decides to go home, As he walks up to the house he notices that the steps are already fixed. As he enters the house, he sees the hall light is working. As he goes to get a beer, he notices the fridge door is fixed. ‘Honey,’ he asks, 'How'd all this get fixed?' She said, 'Well, when you left I sat outside and cried. Just then a nice young man asked me what was wrong, and I told him. He offered to do all the repairs, and all I had to do was either go to bed with him or bake a cake.' He said, 'So what kind of cake did you bake?' She replied, 'Hellooooo.., do you see 'Mr Kipling' written on my forehead? I don't think so!' *NB for US people Mr. Kipling is the same as Betty Crocker. (Thanks Cia for that tidbit)