Fuzzy is sleeping late, and I’m about to take the dogs out for a brisk walk (very brisk – it’s 40 degrees in this part of Texas just now), and then bake pies while watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Watching the parade is an important ritual for me, and this holiday isn’t complete without it. I remember getting up at six when I was little, to watch them setting up the balloons. Now, I set the DVR to catch the beginning, because I’m not generally near a television at nine in the morning. (Or at least, not one that’s turned on.)

Updates:
NaNo: I stopped counting, because I wasn’t really NaNoing this year. I write for a living. I don’t need NaNo to help me finish my book, I need to just stop editing til it feels like the story is finished. I’m almost there.

Ant Stings: Itchy, but not horribly so. Antihistamine helped, and then Fuzzy helped me slather them with Neosporin and wrap gauze around my ankle to prevent socks from rubbing, and me from scratching. In retrospect, I think I was a little shocky the other night when I was chatting online, but I’m fine, now. .

Turkey: We just bought a turkey breast – no fuss this year. It’s all about the mincemeat pie, anyway.

Coffee: I need some. Desperately. Today I’m brewing Starbucks’ Christmas Blend. Yum!

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you celebrating it, and good wishes for the weekend to those who are not.

I often joke that I must have delicious feet because whenever I have my shoes off, one of my dogs aims for my toes. Today I learned that six-legged creatures also think I have tasty feet – or at least tasty ankles. While I was stringing the last of the Christmas lights on the hedges, I thought I felt pain in my foot, but it didn’t seem severe. A few minutes later, I dropped the last cluster of lights, looked down while retrieving it, and noticed that my white sneakers were covered in little moving insects. Yes, I was being swarmed by fire ants – I’d stepped in their nest.

(There was no mound. I repeat: there was no visible mound.)

I confess that I shrieked, but it was of the startled and in-pain type, not one of fear or loathing (though I felt both.) I kicked my infested shoes off on the front walk, went inside the foyer, and stripped, freaking out my dogs, who thought I was insane.

My next step was the shower, featuring cool water and lovely coconut and shea butter soap, and then I sprayed my ankle, where I saw a couple of bumps swelling, with topical benadryl, swallowed one of the non-topical sort, and put on fresh clothes, including soft white cotton socks and other sneakers.

Then I retrieved all my hastily removed garb, tossed it in the washer (added the rest of the blacks) and washed it. Twice. By this time I was willing to go back out and look at my shoes, which were now ant free. Mostly. They went into the washer too (did you know you CAN wash and dry leather Reeboks? Now you do), and everything went round a third time. Then, into the dryer. Where they remain for the moment (except the shoes).

It wasn’t until around eleven PM that the itching and burning really started bothering me, and I made Fuzzy look at my ankle, which is completely encircled by red bite marks with white pussy centers. I send Fuzzy for Neosporin (we were out) and cortisone cream, swapped the bites with rubbing alcohol, slathered them with the cream, and covered the whole mess in band-aids ™, so that I can sleep without rubbing my ankle against anything.

I was in bed for an hour and the itching wouldn’t stop so I just took another benadryl, which, hopefully, will knock me out so I can sleep.

I feel all pathetic and whiny and stupid, and it doesn’t help that I already had cramps and a backache before a bunch of insects decided my right foot would be lunch.

But there’s only one more work day this week, which helps.
And I think I’m drugged and zoned enough to sleep now.

Plus the lights (which won’t actually be turned on til Thursday)? Look damn good.

I have new lights for my shrubs as of last night, and the net lights I found at Target were actually cheaper than the similar sets from Home Depot, but then there were all these other things that somehow managed to get in the cart and come home with me.

*blinks innocently*

Included among the unplanned acquisitions:
– a set of those snowflake lights, to hang in the front tree.
– a pair of silver ornaments that I can’t describe because my mother reads my blog, and one is for her
– six stockings with a gold glitter pen for decoration
– butter cookies, the ones in the blue tins, because they’re good to have around “just in case” and because I like the tins
– a wreath hanger for the door – we HAD one, but it hasn’t been seen since 2003. I suspect we left it in California.
– a couple of unmentionable kitchen things, also for my mother, with dupes for me
– a nonfat peppermint mocha

Okay, the last item wasn’t from Target, but it was the perfect end-cap to the shopping portion of the evening. Then we came home and had grilled salmon and a Caesar salad and watched Heroes.

Sometime in the last month, Fuzzy took the trash out before coming to bed and inadvertently left the garage door open. Now, our neighborhood is normally fairly save, and we do live on an interior street, but an open garage door is still in open invitation. The next morning, he noticed that one of the boxes was removed from the stack of Christmas stuff, but we didn’t notice anything missing.

Until today.

What happened today? Well, I was killing time waiting for Christine the pet sitter to show up for an interview, and I started putting the Christmas lights on the hedges. I don’t normally decorate this early (and they’re not turned ON, and won’t be before Thursday, except to test the timers), but we’re going away this year, and I want to enjoy my house all lit up. Besides, our neighborhood is very gung-ho about such things, and it’s fun to be part of it.

I’d purchased three new net lights to replace those I knew were damaged, but had planned to use last year’s one more time, along with the several strings of white lights and trunk wraps for the trees. The new stuff was all in place of course, having just been purchased on Friday.

The box with the old lights was gone. Missing. No sign of it.

Now, I’m grateful that nothing else was taken, because whoever took the lights (half of which didn’t work – we were keeping them for spare bulbs) didn’t take the $400 Santa collection or the three huge boxes of heirloom ornaments, but still, I hadn’t planned on replacing ALL the lights this year.

And so, when Fuzzy gets home we’ll be running to deposit a check, and then to Target to get more lights, and then we’ll come home and have grilled salmon and a nice salad and watch Heroes.

But that’s not really how I’d planned to spend the evening.

Well, not the Target part.

I don’t know what other people do on Sunday evenings, but we spend ours at PetsMart and the grocery store, where we spent more than ever on groceries, although, admittedly, some of them were things we don’t buy often, like hand soap for the kitchen sink, and bottles of lotion and bubble bath. Also, I was trying to stock the fridge so we could curl up on Wednesday night with movies, and not leave again til Monday, unless we choose to (we might go see August Rush, and we’ll probably drive through Prairie Lights.)

We came home, and I immediately put a load of underwear into the washer, which got me thinking. I like pretty underwear. I’m not so much into fine lingerie, though I have some pieces that are nicer than others, but while much of my collection is cotton, it’s pretty cotton.

It’s also color coordinating cotton. Yes, now you know – all of my underwear matches my outfits. Oh, I have old stuff with the elastic all scrungy that I wear during certain times of the month, but generally speaking, I wear bright colors that go with whatever else I’m wearing. Partly, this is a holdover from my grandmother, who always admonished us to make the bed “in case the house is robbed” and wear clean underwear “in case you’re in an accident.” Because, you know, thieves only attack messy houses, and EMTs leave you stranded if your underwear isn’t fresh.

My favorite red and black and grey striped bra recently died, and I’ve yet to replace it, so I’ve added that to my list of things I need. I also need two pairs of tights (red and black) to go with a jumper I bought. And bathing caps. And and and…

And I think the dryer just beeped, so I need to go rescue the underwear.

Weather.com saddened me yesterday by taking hoped-for rain out of the immediate forecast (as if they control the weather instead of merely reporting it), and made me laugh this morning by posting an alert, because a cold front is moving in and on Thursday the temperature will “struggle to reach the low fifties” and we might have wind chills into the 20s.

I realize that our lows are highs for other people, but it’s almost December, so cold weather is beyond due, and the only negative aspect of it is that wind makes my eyes tear, and Zorro doesn’t like going for walkies when it’s below 50. We need some serious indoor fitness equipment around here to make up for that. I’m actually already researching treadmills and ellipticals because I like the idea of being able to catch up on the latest episode of ER while getting in a brisk walk, and not having to wear a jacket. I don’t like coats.

It’s 5:30 and we still haven’t made it to a grocery store. And we need dog food. And I’m irritated with Fuzzy for not being able to lecture one of his employees LATER instead of now.

I love flowers. One of my favorite adventures with my mother, when we lived in San Jose, was to go downtown to the warehouse of one of her friends who sold wholesale flowers, and just look at all the different combinations of green leaves and brightly-colored petals. I wanted to take home all of them.

I come by this love honestly. My earliest memories include my mother making sure there were flowers on the table, and my grandfather coming home with stalks of gladiolas stuck in a champagne cooler or plain metal watering can full of water, to keep them fresh.

He sent my grandmother roses for every birthday and anniversary.

She, too, loved flowers, and grew brilliant houseplants that were petted and cooed and fussed over. My grandmother was the living proof that talking to your plants really does help them. Her favorites were African violets, and she always called them her babies. It was sweet.

Fuzzy didn’t grow up with flowers as a big thing in his family, but he’s learning to appreciate them, and he’s also learned to make me smile by coming home with something pretty and festive whenever I send him to grocery shop without me. He’s also learned my rule for flower purchases: if you don’t know what someone likes, get something seasonal, or a little bit whimsical.

My parents very generously gifted us with tickets to visit them in Mexico for Christmas. We’d been scrimping and saving but wouldn’t have been able to make reservations til the last second, and while that would have allowed us to fly from DFW to San Jose del Cabo (SJD) in relative ease, even so, SJD is a good 90-minute drive from their town, La Paz, which is on the gulf side of the Baja peninsula. It’s also the capital of Baja California Sur.

But they wanted to be able to plan, and they wanted us to fly into La Paz, and so instead of a nonstop flight from DFW, we’re leaving at the crack of dawn on 12/19, flying to LAX, and then from LAX to La Paz (LAP) all on Delta-coded partner flights. It doubles the flight time, but at least it’s not requiring us to do the ‘tour of Mexico’ version of the trip, which makes you stop in Hermosillo and Guadalajara.

I mention this because, Christmas or not, whenever we (or anyone) visits them, they ask for things they can’t get in La Paz. My step-father asked for lotion. “Lotion?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “Lotion.”

I lost the email with the name of it, and called my mother last night, asking her to just go read the bottle. I was expecting it to be one of those uber-fancy skinceuticals that (I’ll admit) I have in cute bottles and jars in my own bathroom. But no. It turns out that what he’s been using as skin lotion is BioSilk hair conditioner.

The translation of hair conditioner into French or Spanish on the bottle is “conditioning lotion.”

But, I assured my mother, “tell him it’s okay. I use Aveda’s rosemary mint conditioner to shave my legs. It’s better than any shave cream.”

And so, as well as Christmas shopping, I need to track down BioSilk conditioner so my step-father can pat it on his face.

I made a phone payment on one of our accounts the other day because I’d lost the statement so didn’t have an address to set it up for online banking, and was surprised because I needed my actual checkbook to complete the transaction.

Please understand. I know my entire checking account number by heart. I know the routing number too. I write one paper check a month, and that’s to pay my lawn guy. I’m so used to companies not needing check numbers, or being able to make up check numbers, when doing electronic funds transfers of this sort, that I literally was struck dumb for a few seconds when I was asked to provide one.

I realized after the call just how spoiled I am. While I like to have cash on hand for emergencies, with the exception of sticking a dollar in the tip jar at Starbucks every so often, I almost never need it. Even our pizza, which I ordered online this afternoon because it was cold and gray, we were both in the middle of work, and we had nothing but peanut butter in the house because we haven’t been to a grocery store in forever (too busy), was paid for electronically, though they did ask to see the credit card (debit card) I used for the transaction, when they delivered it.

So, here’s the question of the day:
Do you still write paper checks on a regular basis? If so, is it a choice, or a necessity?

My interview with Keith R. A. DeCandido is posted at Bibliotica.com. even if you’ve never read his stuff, I think you’ll find his thoughts interesting, so go check it out!