We finally got to have our Thanksgiving dinner, and the food turned out great! It was also really nice to have my dad and brother here for a couple of days (even though my brother knows how to get on my last nerve like nobody else in this world can). I felt really happy and grateful to be in a position to invite them to stay with us, and to cook for them, and to have the time to spend together.

I was really proud of my pies, I have to say. I’m sure I should act all cool and like it’s no big deal ’cause I, like, so totally bake this kind of stuff all the time so whatever, but no. Damned proud of my pies. They both got mostly eaten (though a couple of slices remain, hooray!) and the crust was complimented several times by my brother. Quite happy!

Dinner was fantastic, too. CW basically worked his butt off all day in the kitchen because he was in charge of the turkey, the mashed potatoes, and the green bean casserole. I jumped in there for the last thirty minutes and threw my Celebration Roast, sweet potatoes, & parsnips in the oven to roast and I outsourced the cranberry sauce to my brother, who I knew could make a good one. So I basically sat around all day drinking Bloody Marys, occasionally asking CW if I could help with anything, and reminding everyone that I’d spent the entire previous day in the kitchen making pies, so it wasn’t like I was being lazy or something. Poor CW burned the hell out of his arm on the top of the oven (he’s OK), but otherwise he pulled everything off without a hitch and the food was delicious.

The only drawback to the weekend was that our big dinner was yesterday, which was Saturday, and today is Sunday, and tomorrow — as one might predict! — is Monday. I desperately wished all day today that I could somehow turn back the clock and make it Friday instead of Sunday. I’m not one to get the typical “Sunday Night Blues,” where you dread going back to work. I really like my job and I don’t mind going back to it. The problem today was that my normal Sunday tasks, which usually involve prepping for Monday in the form of class activities, lectures, reading, emailing, doing laundry, grocery shopping, and generally organizing my life, were far, far less appealing than usual.

If I could have planned the ideal day for today, the day immediately following my big Thanksgiving meal, it would have consisted of the following: eating pie for breakfast, lounging on the couch in PJs with coffee and the dog and either a new book or an old favorite Christmas movie, having Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch, taking an afternoon nap, going for a run through the fall leaves right before dusk, taking a hot shower, drinking a cold glass of wine, and then setting about preparing some more Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner, followed by some more lounging on the couch with my husband and perhaps staying up late watching too many movies and eating another slice of pie.

Fine, fine. I got to do a lot of those things. I did lounge on the couch with coffee and a book for an hour or so; I did have Thanksgiving leftovers for lunch; I did go for a run through the fall leaves right before dusk, take a hot shower, and pour myself a glass of wine before I sat down to write this post. I also, in the midst of all that, found the time to do laundry, plan class activities, catch up on email, create a Prezi for my lecture class, and plan and organize my next week of work and other tasks. Okay, fair enough. I suppose the day has been equal parts productivity and relaxation.

I should also mention that, as today is November 30th, I have officially completed my NaBloPoMo effort, successfully posting once a day, every day, for the entire month (uh, except November 1st, because I started a day late). It has been really nice — and also, at times, really challenging — to post here once a day. There were certainly days when I found myself without anything I really wanted to say, but I still made myself open a WordPress window or app and write some words down, even if I didn’t feel like it was that good or interesting or important. I still did it. And I’d like to say thanks to all of you for reading along, commenting here or via Twitter, and giving me little nods of encouragement. It really helped!

I’d like to continue regular posting, but I’m not sure how exactly I’ll do it or what that might look like. One thing I enjoyed about daily posting this month was that it somewhat diminished my need to feel like every post was something significant. I knew a lot of the things I wrote here were nothing of the sort — and I kinda liked that. The pressure to think of something significant to write is often what holds me back from actually writing. I like feeling freer to write insignificant things. I don’t really think daily posting is right for me long term, but I’d like to post maybe 3 times a week, at least. It will prove difficult to do this in December, for sure — I’ll have final exams and grading, which is always a hectic time, then traveling for at least ten days at Christmas time. But I’d like to try. For one thing, I still have a couple of questions submitted by friends and I plan to get to them — so I’ll see you back here soon.