Thanksgiving

It's our Thanksgiving this weekend in Canada. The weather started out rainy and very windy this morning. In fact, I woke up a mere four hours after going to bed with the wind howling as loudly as what I can only imagine a hurricane would sound like.

I forced my eyes open to see my windows were rain splattered and the force of wind through the crack of my window was actually blowing the hair off my face. It was grey, cold and very bleak. I rolled over to look at the clock and was relieved that it was only 7:00am. I could still sleep a few more hours before forcing myself to get up.

The next time I looked at the time, it was 10:30am, the sun was filling my room and my daughter was standing at my bedside reminding me that I had asked her the night before not to let me sleep in.

What was it I wanted to do today? What day is it? Why is she waking me up? Do I have to go to work?

Then I remembered. It is Saturday, the day before Thanksgiving and I have to go grocery shopping to buy a Turkey and everything else we want to pig out on as well as take my daughter downtown to a mall that contained a unique store that sold the only jeans that fit her.

She had asked if I would take her shopping last night. She knows that I hate shopping. I really hate clothes shopping and I really, really detest malls. I wanted to say no, but I understand that she has had difficulty finding a pair of jeans that fits properly and I also understand it would take her forever to get there by transit. She only gets one day a week off where I am not working so I said yes. It would give us a little mother/daughter time alone.

The plan last night when she said goodnight was that I would get up early, go do the grocery shopping with my mother, then take her out when I returned.

That was before I stayed up until 3:00am reading blogs and goofing around on the computer. I wondered if it would be received well if I tried to back out of the clothes shopping trip now. Then I remembered how our plans for some time together was interrupted last weekend and I didn't have the heart to try and back out of it.

I was slightly behind my original schedule but I managed to fit it all in anyway. The shopping trip wasn't as bad as I originally thought it would be. When my daughter sensed that I was in pain standing in the store while she looked each article over thoroughly, she suggested that I wait for her outside the store. That suited me perfectly. I found a nice spot to sit, right outside the store where I could do one of my favourite things; watch people.

There are so many interesting things that you can assume about people by the way they walk, talk and dress. I often amuse myself by making up little stories about who they are, what they are doing etc. For instance, one couple that walked past were a couple of crack heads that had just rolled out of bed and were searching for their next score of dope. They've been on a neverending party for the past week and have just now run out. She had not seen a shower in days, but in spite of that, walked like she was the Queen of Sheba. He was an unemployed, older than he looked has been. Cool, confident, con artist. They met a week ago at a party and have not parted since. The carefree week was coming to an end as desparation to get some more dope was beginning to take over.

My reverie was broken with my daughter signalling for me to join her in the store again. I pretended not to notice her at first but she was persistent. I then decided that perhaps the shopping trip would end quicker if I went into the store to see what she wanted. I was right. She wanted my opinion on another article of clothing and as soon as I gave it, she was ready to leave.

The sun remained out for the entire day and it was fairly warm, reaching a temperature of 21 degrees celcius.

I stayed in tonight and we all enjoyed a raucous game of monopoly. My mother, daughter, her boyfriend and myself. At the end of three hours when we were all tired, we declared her boyfriend the victor as he clearly held the most property with the most houses, yielding the highest rents.

I did notice an interesting thing about the game that can probably be compared with real life and that is when I was really short on money, it never failed but I would fall on the spots that held the highest rents causing me great stress, yet when I was rolling in the dough, I usually landed on chance cards that ended up being gifts of more money. The more money I had, the more successful I was at the game; the less money I had, the stupid moves escalated resulting in loss of more money. Interesting.

Now to bed and tomorrow we have our Rockwellian Thanksgiving Dinner!