Constantchange

The first family Thanksgiving in 5 years

Fun things first:

The weekend after the holiday, The Husband and I drove up to Knoxville so that he could be introduced to the East Tennesseeans: Dust, Alestar, Devon & Aisling. We also saw Ford in Oak Ridge, which is consistantly rewarding.

We had dinner with Dust in Old City, which was so abandoned it might have had tumbleweeds blowing through it. This made me sad, because in the early nineties Old City was...well, what an urban center should be. Full of people and parties and clever things to buy. A decade after I first saw the Old City it is nearly abandoned by crowds.

Devon, Alestar, Ais and Ais' dad went with us to a big arcadein West Knoxville where I managed to pull a Darth Vader key ring out of a machine for The Husband. Ais' dad kicked my ass in air hockey hard enough to remind me that I'm only good at air hockey because I play people who aren't that great at air hockey. Alestar, per usual, said a few things I should pay attention to. Ais took home a light up spinning top, and I cashed in my tickets for wooden beads from China with chinese charaters stamped on them. I don't know what they say.

Knoxville was Knoxville; which is to say I like it there but it made both The Husband and I miss Atlanta terribly. And truly, whomever laid out the traffic plans there should be held accountable.

As in other years, the weekend after Thanksgiving was fun and relaxed.

The small handful of peeps that have been reading my blog for over four years now know that I like to spend Thanksgiving alone. Thanksgiving is a very personal holiday for me; I enjoy the lack of (too) rampant commercialism, and I like how the streets clear out. I usually enjoy a couple of days of quiet reflection around Thanksgiving, reading and playing with art projects.

All that personal time is gone. I'll never get Thanksgiving alone again. I'm married to an only child now, and it would hurt his parent's feelings not to be home. My parent's recent divorce requires extra effort from my sisters and myself to define ourselves as a unit. Holidays were something I could once easily ignore by working through them. Now I am obliged to work *at* them.

Thankgiving dinner with The Husband's family and mine blended together went very well. The party the Husband and I attended afterwards went even better. Tony and Andrew threw a Thanksgiving party and many friends were there; I saw Sue and Paula and a few other people I enjoy.

Later people from Andrew and Tony's party and I took food to the policemen on duty in Berry Hill. It was Andrew or Tony's idea, but I felt like I needed to help. The policemen in Nashville have had horrible behavior the past year, and I thought they could use some positive attention. Acting out is no way to get noticed.