Thanksgiving weekend. It was good. It was bad. I was ugly.

Well, Thanksgiving's over again.
Put a fork in that sucker and keep movin' along.

It kind of surprises me when a major holiday comes and goes so uneventfully.  I feel like I should have enjoyed it more, made it more of a fanfare, but the truth is I don't like Thanksgiving very much.  I kind of think of it as a non-holiday.  Sure, I get the whole 'giving thanks' and 'gathering of the families' thing, but (without sounding too obnoxious) because I try to find the things in every day to be thankful for, and because other than my mama we don't have any family living within 1,200 miles, Thanksgiving kinda just turns into another Thursday around here. Plus, I'm always itching to get my Christmas decorations up but feel kind of guilty doing that to poor Thanksgiving who just wants one day, dammit, to be appreciated and it it too much to ask, America, to wait until Friday to put up your damn decorations and acknowledge me? Don't you like me? 
Yeah, not so much.

Anyway, it's over (again) and now, now we can move on without guilt to the favorite child and lavish her with all sorts of time and attention.  Yippee!!

But before I go entangle myself in the stringing of the 1600 lights on my tree and dig into all the tubs, I wanted to link up with Kati and Katie for their brilliant and original GBU game (the one and only!).

Thanksgiving weekend 2012 ~ the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The GOOD:

• This year we decided to forgo the traditional Thanksgiving dinner because there's only 3 of us who eat it after spending $150 on groceries, 7 hours in the kitchen cooking, another 2 hours cleaning every single bowl, skillet, utensil and pyrex dish we own and another hour the next week tossing out all the uneaten leftovers and washing all the plastic containers. And to be honest, Thanksgiving dinner just isn't my favorite. This year we made a dinner of appetizers.  I made my famous shrimp puffs, which are my favorite (and everyone else's who eats them).  I'll post the recipe later in the week. And, oh yes, there's Crescent rolls involved. You will thank me.

• Thanksgiving afternoon we got our first snowfall.  With all the twinkly lights, it was magical and lovely.

• Friday we went to the Happy Place for the first time since Labor Day.
Way. Too. Long. To be away.
We ate our favorite pizza and drank our favorite beer and visited our favorite candy shoppe and slept and read and watched movies and had a fabulous bonfire by the rapidly freezing lake....and it was so, so good.

And then it snowed...and I wanted to stay forever.

The BAD:

• Driving 150 miles on icy roads.

• Driving 150 miles on any road trapped in a car with 3 unhappy cats.

• The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade ~ or, 3 long hours of C-List celebrities making small talk with an emaciated Al Roker (seriously, is he sick?) and random singers who never passed lip-synching 101 (shouldn't that be a requirement before you are allowed to perform?) and stupid-ass jumbo balloons (the Wimpy Kid? Are you kidding me?) and way too many bands and way too many freakish clowns that will give me nightmares for weeks.

Although, admittedly, not as many nightmares as the children who had to witness an actual clown having a heart attack and dying while making them balloon animals along the parade route.  Man, talk about causing a lifelong fear of clowns.  I'll bet that's totally at the top of their 'Bad' list for the weekend.


The UGLY:

• That'd be me....all weekend long.  No makeup, greasy hair, same pjs.  No picture.



And now, finally, off to single handedly string 1600 lights on my tree so we can decorate it this weekend.  Believe me, there's wine involved.