When life gives you meth, have fun do crimes? Hmm...

This made me smile.

My brother and brother-in-law and their fancy house got featured in a magazine.

Sooo fancy. It's beautiful.

Laura, you should sleep for a week after all that.

I'm used to being on my own for Thanksgiving since normally I'd have Christmas Carol tech the day before and after so I haven't even considered traveling for that. I have been trying to think about Christmas though. I made the drive in July without pee stops (I stopped for gas but no one was wearing masks so I didn't go in) so I know I can do that. I can plan for isolating two weeks before the trip and I'll stock up on non-perishables for when I return. I'm wondering if my 93 yr-old grandmother will be there and if my brother, SIL, and 20-yr old nephew can manage to keep exposure limited to necessary grocery shopping. I also need to figure out how long I can stand to stay.

We'd have to keep ltc out of school for 2 weeks if we leave the state. So, we can't go to mom's and having them here seems too stressful. The house is a disaster, and I've never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner before.

I'm trying to get stuff done today. So far I've done 1 loss of laundry, cleaned out the fridge because it's trash day, made a meal plan for the week, took down near from the freezer, and charged my Fitbit for the first time in months. Now, I'm going to nap because I was up most of the night last night, and TCG has a meeting after dinner. So, I'm solo parenting at bedtime.

I had to shut down and restart my laptop to try to fix an issue (which it didn't fix, but I tried) so I took that opportunity to go to Starbucks and while I was there I remembered they have donuts so I had a donut. Yay!

I've always loved cooking the huge family holiday dinners. That doesn't stress me at all. This year. Yeah, not happening.

Intellectually I've acknowledged that the family Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings aren't happening this year, but I'm repressing that knowledge on the emotional side, because I run the ragged edge of crying a couple days a week already, and I don't need to add to that.

I think even if my out-of-state parents and brother don't make the trip, I can host my 2 sisters (who live in NYC) so we won't be totally alone, but it won't be the same.

I am still doing all the cooking. I will be on zooms or FB lives or something.

The past several years we have done a 5K in the morning and heated up Whole Foods precooked stuff for the meal and that has been nice, but I imagine this year will be different. The race promoters are making noises like they will be doing non-virtual runs soonish, but the Thanksgiving races are enormous numbers of people, I don't see that happening. Or if they do happen, I probably shouldn't go. Not to mention I am ridiculously out of shape. I should really do something about that.