It seems I heard it rumored somewhere, sometime that this day was a ‘holiday?’ I was up at dawn and didn’t even BEGIN to slow down till about an hour ago. And have to be back on the job in the am...happy happy, joy joy. But thankful I am -- thankful everything that HAD to get done, got done, the food was FANTASTIC, and though still far from ideal, family circumstances were an improvement over what they were this time last year. The house got a good cleaning too...something that likely wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the festivities demanding it.

Now, all the critters are fed and walked, Nanna’s already asleep, Kendall is engrossed in his Gameboy, the cats have come out of hiding (they don’t like company and excessive ‘activity’), and I can veg out in front of the TV like the overstuffed pig that I was today, and enjoy a cold beer or 2 in my clean house (God only knows when it will be this clean AGAIN...maybe Christmas day...before the kids get into the presents under the tree, that is).

The moon has been brilliantly full the past 2 nights -- it’s almost as bright as a cloudy day out there. What a wonderful night for a moonlight ride on the horses -- were I not so stuffed and exhausted. As it is, I suppose their Thanksgiving will close with their lazy, contented munching of hay.

I’ve browsed a few blogs and read about what Thanksgiving means (or doesn’t mean, or SHOULDN’T mean) to various ‘fellow travelers.’ I prefer not to dwell upon how our country was more or less stolen from its native dwellers -- as jamesn noted, this was not an atrocity in which I was involved, and I’m assuming my ancestors did not participate widely in the raping of the American Indian, since my own ancestry consists of some significantly noble Cherokee heritage.

Alas, for me, Thanksgiving is a blessed day off from work, an excuse to overindulge far too much in far too unhealthy but scrumptious cuisine, an excuse to work too hard in the preparation of, presentation of, and cleaning up afterwards of a feast starring a poor fat, ill-treated domestic turkey, an excuse to get the family together and make them all feel obligated by the ceremony of the celebration to be at least, outwardly civil to one another for a few hours, and an excuse to plop down at the end of the day with a couple of beers and watch some utterly mindless television for what is left of this so-called ‘holiday.’

Tomorrow will be a slow day at work, though we are all expected to be there anyway. Our supervisor has planned for us to have a feast catered in at lunch (to make us all feel somewhat better about the fact that we are THERE and everyone else is OFF), and I work with a great group of people, so no doubt, we will have our own ‘celebration’ of sorts while we wait for the slow trickle of ads to subside enough for our supervisor to feel justified in calling it a day and letting us leave early.

Christmas has now officially begun, and it will ‘be’ Christmas from now till December 25. I can already see Christmas light displays in some neighboring yards through the now bare trees. (I TOLD you these country folk love their Christmas lights, as admittedly, so do I.) I’m now partaking of my second, and likely, final beer for the evening. When it is gone, I will either go back to the fridge for a bedtime snack of sinful leftovers, or will have slipped into a post-Thanksgiving Day comatose state -- either one will suit me just fine. I hope all of you out there in Mindsay land and beyond have had as exhausting and as satisfying a celebration as we have had here today. That said, I hereby bid a good night to all, and to all, a good night.