Monday

Thanksgiving has passed and now I’ve been invaded by hordes of painters. I hate when my home, my refuge, my peace and quiet has become a beehive. Unfortunately, sometimes it is necessary. We are having the upstairs hallway, the entire stairwell and the downstairs hallway painted so I’m trapped in one room. As much as I hate the process, it’s very much needed and I know we’ll be so happy when it’s finished. I think finally, there will be some cohesion to this mishmash of a house.

When we moved here, each and every room needed a lot of improvement but at the time, we were only able to do a little at a time, leaving us with some really nice rooms/areas and some other truly ugly areas. This will finally bring all of it together. Of course, that will not be the end of the improvements since we still need one bathroom to be totally torn out and redone (oh, how I dread that one since it’s our master bath!) and also another room, which I have given to Terry as his very own and he has turned it into a junk room.
But he knows that time is limited for that room to continue that way. I have become a much tougher “encourager” in that area. I’m pretty close to being ‘the nag” by now and I don’t care.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. I unexpectedly found it to be better than I had thought it would be. For many days leading up to the holiday, I was not in a good mood, close to tears most of the time, dreading it in some ways. Thanksgiving will always be a reminder that 3 years ago my son died a few days later, after spending a wonderful day with him and the family. The last couple years I seemed to have handled it better than this year.

Fortunately, I awoke Wednesday morning, feeling really good and I decided to work hard at keeping that mood. It would have been easy to follow down that sad path but that’s not me. I have always enjoyed the preparation/cooking of the Thanksgiving meal and having people dear to me (and sometimes some strangers without family) on that day so I stepped into “Happy” and stayed there.
The day was wonderful, just family this time plus my son-in-law’s mom, whom we adore. It’s always been a time to celebrate my daughter’s birthday as it always falls around Thanksgiving and I loved that, surprising her with some gifts. I couldn’t have asked for a better time than we all had that day.

Sometimes it’s so easy to feel sorry for ourselves, to let missing one person take over everything and guide your mood and let others console us. But it’s always better to wrap yourself around the people you still have in your life, that you treasure and enjoy, laugh with them, love them. It’s definitely not easy to do and I can’t say that I always remember to do it because I don’t. But I’m hoping that in time, I’ll be better at it.