thanksgiving my youth away

Friday afternoon and out of work early. What could this mean but the library, Cambodiana for a late lunch and then the studio? The sun fairly shone over the garbage in the streets.

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In fact the weather, all weekend, was startling -- like summer, only better. Not until late afternoon would a chill creep in, and even then it was only of the double-layer kind.

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Saturday morning, grocery shopping. The store is pretty much empty. This is the optimum time to go, really, with only one drawback: there is a certain kind of mental defective who gets up early to go to Loblaws and buy two large bottles of pop with his gold Visa card, and he is not to be confused with the guy who likes to talk to himself about all the shopping baskets at the check out ("Baskets baskets baskets baskets BASKETS BASKETS ..."). Of course, I was in line with them both.

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Later we (me, C and Oona -- not the deviants from the grocery store) walked down to the outdoor market. Foolishly, like some slow performing bear, I carried Oona on my shoulders. She thought it was funny to make hand prints on my glasses. After C spent almost as much money on market ginch as I did earlier on the week's groceries, we went out for lunch. Oona, as she always is in restaurants, was delightful. Meaning: ate nothing, threw all sorts of stuff on the floor, and proceeded to have a meltdown on the way out the door. I carried her home in my arms. I don't know if you've carried thirty pounds for a couple of kilometres lately, but it gives you the odd cramp. Luckily, we all got a nap that afternoon. Then we went to Winnie's birthday party. Winnie is three, and also delightful, but in a truer yet still Krusty-the-Clown/Machiavellian sense of that word. The lovely party was in her back yard, and the warm sun continued to beam around.

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Talking about Alberta politics on his Sunday morning radio show, Michael Enright asked if that province was becoming more progressive. I almost spit up my coffee. Alberta is many things, but mostly divided along these lines: red-tory yuppies who live in the big cities and spend all their time talking about housing prices and what kind of private school to send their three year-old to, versus Jesus-lovin' rural conservatives who think Trudeau was the reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin, pray for Ottawa to spontaneously combust and who spend their weekends shooting foxes at close range and burying money in honey jars along the fence line.

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So I turned the radio off, and spent the rest of the morning doing ink drawings to put in my Etsy shop. Christmas is bearing down on us all.

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Because we are not from Sudbury, and our holidays are not marked by greenish liquors made in the basement, mysterious pregnancies and "them hot dogs with the cheese in 'em", we had a sit-down turkey dinner on Sunday (a day ahead of our 'official' Thanksgiving). C's friend Cara joined us. I did my best: stuffed turkey breast, mashed potatoes, gravy, baked butternut squash in brown sugar, peas, dinner rolls. Pumpkin pie with whipped cream for dessert. About an hour after dinner I realized that I forgot to warm up the peas. C said they tasted warm anyway, but that was just the wine talking.

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Later on we watched Me and You and Everyone We Know. It's a movie with several intersecting story lines, but C's friend Cara especially enjoyed the one about "pooping back and forth, forever", which might explain why she's not married yet.

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On Monday, because the weather was still gorgeous, we drove to Watertown so Oona could have a complete mental eclipse around the Perpetuball Motion Machine in the Salmon Run Mall and so C could drop the value of a small mortgage at Target. I bought some cheap shoes, because apparently there's more Americans walking around in the 14W's and 15's that I crave. God bless 'em.