My calendar keeps telling me that the holidays are right around the corner. My brain, however, can not seem to engage with the energy to plan for the upcoming events. What’s up with that?

I have to dig out scrapbooks and documents from years ago to remember the Type A Super Mommy I used to be. I was the one who did most of my Christmas shopping in August, had the entire Thanksgiving meal planned out by September, and was in full decoration mode by early November.

So, here it is November 13 and I can’t even wrap my head around what we’re doing for Thanksgiving, let alone figure out the first Christmas gift to buy! This is the woman who has been known to make cornbread from scratch for our dressing instead of buying the inexpensive mixes. Six years ago I discovered that our local grocery had an inexpensive, already cooked, Thanksgiving dinner that we used the year my father died and a couple times since then when cooking seemed a bit overwhelming. But even that doesn’t seem to fit this year.

The weird thing is that I feel no sense of panic. What I do feel is an overwhelming desire to make this year’s “holidays” the most different ever.

Here are the parameters:

1. We have no money. There is nothing extra in the budget for fancy dinners, gifts or elaborate decorations.
2. We have no idea where LuLu will be.
3. Because we sensed that this Thanksgiving would be bizarre, we scheduled Kay to have her wisdom teeth removed next Tuesday – so pureed foods will be on the menu.
4. Super Dad has decided to run a 5K run at the crack of dawn Thanksgiving morning (so I won’t assign him to cook the turkey – not that I would have assigned him that duty anyway.)
5. The older children will have plans with their mother, and likely a full turkey dinner to consume.
6. Kay has already told me repeatedly that she doesn’t like turkey, so she’d be happy to skip all traditional menu items.
7. We have no money. Did I mention that already? Well, that coupled with soaring gas prices, will keep us from traveling to family this holiday season (not that any of us had the energy for that if we did have the funds.)

Ok – so what to do with this bizarre Thanksgiving? I’m thinking that we will be having a rather unusual menu, and perhaps a rather unusual meal time. And we will be doing some rather non-Thanksgiving activities…but more on that later (when I figure it out!)


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