I worked in the ESOL class today. I thought that would cheer me up. But it did not. I only felt more affection for immigrants, and thus missed my family even more. Usually on Tuesdays I feel quite happy, especially after class.

A positive side effect of my grandmothers death, is that it prompted me to have greater appreciation for my cousins, who I know and are still alive. That may sound preposterous. But my dad’s side of the family was exposed to radioactive fall-out. That did not assure a long life for him and many others of his generation.

On the other side of the family, I don’t really know people. It was my father’s family whom we lived near, and spent our time with. And pleasantly, these are the people who have all been appearing on Facebook. I know other families actually use the phone. But we have not. And for the most part, still do not. Though text messaging has become very popular among us.

I miss my cousins too. Argh.

I hate to be blue. I opened all the windows, put on cheerful music, lit a happy smelling candle, cleaned the house.

Still blue.

I felt better for a while after I spoke to a friend on the phone. Then I picked up DD and took her to the grocery. I have rarely taken her shopping with me since school started. But yesterday, we went looking for a gift for DH. And today we went to the grocery together. She was shockingly well behaved in the grocery. She is usually quite pesky about wanting to buy junk food.

Today, I told her she could could pick out a few things before we entered the store. And we agreed on a pastry, pears, spaghetti squash and cheese bread. (Yes, she picked those out.)

I now have an arsenal of ingredients with which to cook. And that should keep me busy all week.

I got a turkey for DH to mess with since they were 89 cents per pound. And now that I see how gargantuan it looks in my refrigerator, wonder if I will have to go out and buy a larger roasting pan or cut it into parts and cook them separately.

I tried to get inspired to sew. But the fabrics all looked boring to me. So I’ll need to ignore them for a while. Or buy something entirely new.

I may be encouraged enough now, by Liz and Marne to try knitting. It still looks incredibly complicated to me. But I think that a handful of cotton or cashmere yarn could be very soothing on an evening like this one, already dark at 5:30 PM. That may be temptation enough to get me past the imagined doom of knitting.

DSC_3690 by busbeytheelder

Hmmm.

I have eaten the fried turkey before and liked it well enough. But, for some reason it seemed better this year. I do not know why. Maybe I just had it in my head that with all the rave fried turkey reviews, even I would like it better. Or maybe BIL has perfected his turkey frying technique.

Whatever, my turkey enjoyment was atypical.

Typical was my need to pester SIL with 50 zillion questions about yarn. Because I like fabric and fibers. And yarn is a fiber about which I know next to nothing. And there it always is, all furry and interesting on the shelf. And of course she knitted the cute legwarmers for DD so I associate her with yarn. And I keep thinking that I can eventually convince myself that I have the attention span to learn how to knit.

But whenever I get extremely interested in the allure of the yarn and the idea of the needles clacking in a soothing way, I suddenly image loosing my place on a pattern and ending up with some really crooked, unusable piece of cloth. And that is too much doom and anxiety to contemplate. Better to admire the yarn at SILs house.

Also, I find it a paradox that when wool lands on me it itches. And SIL has about a dozen different types of wools and never, ever looks itchy. She keeps explaining which ones are actually hair, and not fur. But since DH is still telling me which weird animal is a mule and which one is a donkey, and I still don’t know. I suspect that unless something cataclysmic happens, I will not get this animal covering worked into my brain. Though I think that I understand that alpaca is from a goat not a sheep.

Right. Aunt D mentioned that there was much violence at Thanksgiving because my niece jumped on me and grabbed my neck. She’s three. Aunt D can make anything sound inflammatory for fun. Really, if the worst act of violence is a very affectionate three year old. And the worst verbal assault concerns too many questions about yarn, I think we’re in pretty good shape.

Happy Thanksgiving All.

Related posts:

• Acrylic Yarn is Yukky
• Knitting and Other Mishaps