November 2006 Begins

It’s November now. Just a few weeks from my daughter’s B-Day. She’ll be Eight on the 25th. I sure hope I can do enough between Thanksgiving and her birthday to make it very special for her. As it is, she does connect Thanksgiving with her birthday, an inescapable connection. She was born the evening before Thanksgiving, and her birthday is just before, on, or just after, relatively, Thanksgiving Day each year.

This year her birthday is on Saturday, two days after Turkey Day. Perhaps a good thing for me. I’m 7 weeks pregnant now, and that week I’ll be 10 weeks. I’m truly hoping all is well with the baby and me, and that all will continue along well. In any case, a day off in-between holiday affairs is a necessary thing, and I hope I will have the wherewithall to do something good enough for each day. I don’t doubt that I will, with DH around to help. I just mostly need to trust the Lord about the baby and that I won’t be worrying about losing the baby these next weeks mostly (historical attachment to pregnancy #4 two-plus years ago.)

If all goes well, I could be in the midst of icky morning sickness then though. I am struggling with it starting now, and it has generally gone for me from around 7 weeks to about 12 weeks then slides down intensity massively somewhere in that 12th week.

I do think I’ll get a cake from a bakery for her, a very pretty floral princessy one. That’ll excite her.

I have to think out Thanksgiving as well, in the past I have made the turkey the day before, or so, and didn’t have the rush to get everything in the oven and time it all to work out, etc. I had the turkey cooled, then sliced, made the gravy ahead, and stored turkey slices in gravy, then warmed that up on Turkey Day.

It’s never a big bird slicing event at our Thankgiving Table. I’m more the slicer than is my DH, though he can do it, but I’m better at thin slices going the right way … and it is frustrating to me to see DH messing up, and me scolding him, ugh. So do-ahead birdie is a good idea any year, in my book.

In our family it’s just us, our immediate family, so however we make the details work out is fine. Expectations on my part are for a beautiful meal layed out, nice table (not overly done, mininimalistically beautiful) and everyone dressed up nicely (pie in the sky when it comes to my DH and his expectations though, Mr. Super Casual.)

Our kitchen is still not finished, it’s just temporary set-up still. The washer deal this past week was a notch against the kitchen for sure. November is the last month on the timeline I’d given my DH, at his request sort of, to get a new window in where the sink will be going, and doors in the other end of the kitchen. We have a window, and are getting sliding doors (a good deal from someone he knows at a window/door company in the SE.) soon as we can pick them up, then need to install them, and also build a landing and stairs outside for the sliding door (we want to move the deck over, it’s pulling away from the house, front piers are sinking, it was built when the house was built, so not by us. They used concrete feet to set the deck on, those little feet things that sit on top of the earth. Worthless, in my estimation. We need to put true footings in, and don’t like the deck where it is, and don’t know if we should save it, or scrap it partially, or scrap it entirely. It’s behind the house where the patio doors used to be, where we are putting the new sink area window. Those doors were removed a long time ago now, boarded up and I want that area finished off very soon –before really cold weather hits. Another winter with that is not my preference.)

I have ideas that I just can’t do anything with right now, being in my first tri-mester. Paint, woodwork, etc. DH is working a lot, out of town a lot lately, so it’s just “let it all slide” time, and I really want to get things going, so it’ll be nicer for the holidays, and easier for us too (the new window in means the plumbing can be done, easy enough, and start to get cabinets to put in at the corner and up to the sink base and then a dishwasher, and get those in, I want a good one, know I can’t get one that I would prefer, but we’ll get something better than the sort we used to have, I hope.)

November begins, countdown for the Holidays, and my own expectations for the kitchen getting done, or at least on the way faster!