Well here it is the day before Thanksgiving and while I truly do have a lot to be grateful for, honestly I’m just in too much of a fog to think of them all. Let me explain.

The last post in October was about the crafty things I had been working on. We also went to our final concert of the year, Scorpions. They always put on a great show and did not disappoint this year either, kind of. There are so many songs of theirs that we like but they just had a new album out and played some of the new stuff that we didn’t know. Good, but not spectacular. Lots of lights and special effects which was fun to see.

Immediately after the show we had to fly back up to Oregon to check on my husband’s mom. She, herself, was fine but she wanted us to look into progress of the house she had for sale. That was fine too, thankfully, and we managed to get some things done for her in her new apartment and take her out to lunch one day, dinner the next and to the grocery store for her to get some things she wanted. We stayed in a really nice hotel and will probably stay there again any time we go to see her in the future.

Once we got home I had another pop-up craft fair and that turned out well.

November started out fun. I was able to get away for a much needed scrapbook retreat with my BFF and worked on my concert album for two days straight.

Our health plan offers some free benefits to seniors and one of them is a gym membership so our youngest daughter and I started going to the gym at 5:30 in the morning. She wanted to go before she goes to work and since I have no set time schedule, it worked for me too. I was actually enjoying getting up early and then starting my day. We were getting into a pretty good rhythm.

And.then.Covid. Last Thursday I started feeling a tickle in my throat and coincidentally my daughter sent me a text from work saying that she had a scratch in her throat. I took a home test and it was immediately positive. Our son had been coughing for a few days and he took one as well, positive too. My daughter and husband at first were negative but by Saturday we all had it. Fortunately we have all been immunized and boosted so while we were all feeling pretty lousy, I think that we could have been worse.

As I do, I’m trying to find the silver linings in all this. One is that we all got it at once so it will sweep through the house and we should be done with it rather than having it drag on and on. I did take two or three days where I didn’t do much besides stay in bed and read, something I rarely give myself permission to do. Now that I am feeling a little stronger, I can still work since I do it from home anyway and my clients have been very understanding that things are taking just a bit longer.

I am most bummed because I did have to miss the local library book sale where you fill up a grocery bag of books for $10 and the first of my holiday boutiques. Fortunately I am getting the space fee back for that and truthfully I don’t need any more books at the moment.

Turns out Safeway makes completely cooked turkey dinners so I’m going today to pick up ours that way I don’t have to cook. We will miss our older daughter because obviously we don’t want her to get it too but we will survive one holiday apart. It was going to be a strange one anyway since my mom is gone and she usually spends Thanksgiving and Christmas with us.

I do have a big show on Saturday and one more on December 11th. Of course I’m not as prepared as I’d like to be but having this down time has also given me a chance to think and plan for next year so I can get a little ahead for these unexpected changes in life. Also, very happy to report that I did make my 1000 followers on TikTok and my shop link is now live there! And, we are going to see “Ain’t Too Proud,” the play about the Temptations next week so I have something to look forward to so while my head may still be a bit cloudy now, I think I can see the sun breaking through.

Wishing everyone who celebrates it a very Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your family and friends. I am grateful for you all!