My immediate family (my dad) doesn’t place a high priority on seeing each other for the big holidays… when another day would do just as well? And travelling on Thanksgiving is a bitch. So we go to the extended family if they think ahead and bug us about it, otherwise we stay where we respectively are. I’m house and pet-sitting for a friend this weekend, actually, and I’m glad I agreed to do it. Months ago, we didn’t know that her oldest dog would rapidly decline and need special care by now. If she had made plans to have a paid petsitter drop in during the day, she would’ve cancelled them and stayed home with the dog instead. She trusts me to take care of him, though, and I’m happy to help make him comfortable for the time he has left. He deserves it.
There are a lot of other dogs here, too, and an adorable litter of puppies to play with. Half brothers and sisters of my dog, who is here and happy to play with her poppa and big brother. So at least the dogs are having a family Thanksgiving.
It’s just me and two cats (my cat, and the stray who hates humans, but is more than happy to eat the food I leave out for him and curl up on the deck furniture), but that’s kind of how I wanted it. My father and step-mother are out of town, and that means if I go any where, my car will suffer a catastrophic failure, so I’m staying in the house until Monday.
I was going to get up early and clean house, but the cat insisted that I sleep late (cat owners know what I’m talking about), so I got up and fixed myself a frozen turkey dinner (which wasn’t very good), I shared some of the turkey with the cats, decided to get an early start on celebrating my birthday and poured myself a stiff drink.
I’m alone about 95% of the time. For the most part I like it that way. I’m not antisocial, but I guess I’m picky about making friends. I usually do a turkey, but I didn’t get one this year. I’ll probably get one for Xmas. ( I love cold turkey sandwiches). My brother’s always trying to get me to come down to Ca., but I get along w/ family better from a distance, my fault, not theirs.
I’m alone this Thanksgiving. I just got a divorce. No kids. My family’s out of town. Most of my friends either had plans elsewhere, or they were *our * friends, and don’t know how to deal with us as single units - which I totally understand.
My dog and I went for a long, beautiful, tiring day hike, and then came home and I ate a dinner of cold ham, clementines, kalamata olives, and oatmeal cookies. All my favorites, in fact. The dog had some of the ham. And then I watched **Rounders ** on the DVD, because Matt Damon is such a cutie.
It was a very enjoyable day, actually. I’m still in that early-post-breakup phase where being alone is really nice, at least comparatively. Next year it’ll be different; this year was not so bad.
I am. I’m getting divorced; my wife is taking the kids to her parents for Thanksgiving; my best friend/neighbor/not-lover-anymore is out of town; my brother called to invite me, but I turned him down – I just took possession of our dog, and am spending the weekend getting him used to the apartment, and frankly, I’m happier with no human contact today.