Thank God.

I'm thankful it's nearly the weekend for me. And barring one little bit of research work I want to clear up, I have nothing I HAVE to do.

And thank God - and I mean that sincerely - that Monday night I will be on a northbound train going to visit my family for Thanksgiving. A couple of days around sane people who love me and understand that too much noise and too many people get to me after a while.

(I called my mom about the punk mom at the PO yesterday and she just told me to forget her, that someone who gets so defensive over someone giving her kids the stink-eye is too used to apologizing for their bad behavior. She's probably right. But thank God I don't have to go back to the post office for a while).

And it's nearly holiday time. I plan to decorate my house this year. I know a lot of "efficiency experts" who claim that if you're traveling for Christmas, you "shouldn't" decorate your own house but screw that. I need some happy, I need some shiny. I need an excuse to pull out my teddy bears and line them up on the sofa. I need fairy lights. And I'm going to pull out my Christmas CDs and listen to them.

And I will pick up some canned tuna and peanut butter and beans and stuff on my Saturday shopping trip, to donate to the big drive they're having for the food banks here. They mentioned at the Monday CWF meeting just how down giving to the food banks have been. And yeah, times are tough all over, and I get that some people who used to donate may actually be relying on the food banks now. Thank God, I'm still in a position to have enough money to buy some extra staples to pass on to them, so I'm going to do it.

And I'm going to pick up a toy for Toys for Tots. This is a little tradition I've started: to find some toy, something that would have been something that either my brother or I would have really enjoyed when we were kids, and buy it, and drop it off for Toys for Tots. Because, I don't care whatever bad decisions someone's parents made: it's nice to think of a kid getting a toy on Christmas when he or she might not otherwise.

(And yeah, I'm still kind of mad at the outside world after yesterday, but like Linus Van Pelt, I tend to love humanity but hate people)

And again: to me it's a very tangible way of showing my gratitude that I both have enough now, and that I was one of those kids who was blessed with good parents who cared about me and made good choices and that every Christmas there was always at least one thing I really wanted under the tree. And it allows me to remember, a little bit, what it was like to be a kid waiting for Christmas. How huge that was, how fun that was. How it really was in a lot of ways the best time of the year.

I'm ready to say "screw you, I'm goin' home" to most of the outside world,. and to turn inward and put up lights and a creche and bake cookies. Because I need to stop and remember that there's more to live than grading and cranky people.