Pre-holiday

It’s Saturday morning, and Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. This means that it is time for my annual pre-holiday panic, and I feel it lurking, just below the surface, but it hasn’t fully emerged yet. My little anxiety cicada is going to stay underground for a few more days at least. 

I did start my Christmas shopping earlier this week. So that’s something. I’ll work on my Thanksgiving grocery shopping today or tomorrow or maybe a little of both. I don’t feel like cooking or decorating or baking or shopping or wrapping or any of it but I’m going to do it anyway because that’s what you do. You get up and you keep going. 

Still, I wish I had a plan for today. I can’t decide what to do first and so I’m afraid that I’ll dither and daydream, mired in indecision, until the day is half over. And then I’ll stress out about having wasted time when I have so much to do. 

Well, that last part at least I cannot blame on current events because that’s just how I am. 

OK, time to get going. 

*****

Saturday turned out to be a pretty darn good day all around - I got things done and I hung out with friends and family and I spent some time outside touching the grass (metaphorically of course because my hand never actually made contact with any grass). Today is Sunday, and it’s peak golden November. We have a dogwood tree in our backyard and I can see part of this tree framed by one of the family room windows. Its leaves are wine red, and the trees behind it in the  no-man’s land between our yard and our neighbor’s on the next block are in varying stages of autumn from golden to almost bare. Our redbud tree, framed by another family room window, is almost bare against a backdrop of a huge old evergreen tree, also in the no-man’s land. That tree should probably come down but it looks pretty in the pale golden November sun. It’s pretty out there, is what I’m saying. 

*****

It’s Wednesday now, just a week before Thanksgiving. There’s a large turkey sitting in the bottom of my freezer, and I set a reminder on my phone so that I remember to take that turkey out to defrost on Saturday. The turkey weighs just over 20 pounds and is frozen solid, so it will take at least five days to thaw completely once I move it to the refrigerator. If you have never cooked Thanksgiving dinner before, now you know - you can’t take the turkey out of the freezer the day of or even the night before unless you’re planning to eat frozen turkey. Don’t say that I'm not out here offering helpful hints. Follow me for more life hacks. 

I bought the turkey on Sunday, my first holiday grocery shopping trip. First of how many? I’m glad you asked. It’s usually three, but never fewer than two. I buy the turkey, frozen, on the first trip, along with some non-perishables and easy-to-store things like canned jellied cranberry sauce (do not @me) and tomato juice and butter and sugar. Then I go back on Monday or Tuesday of Thanksgiving week to buy vegetables and fruit and other perishables. And then I go back for anything I forget. 

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It always has been, and now even more so now that I’m a college student parent. It’s fun to go grocery shopping just before Thanksgiving, running into all of the other Rockville alumni moms who can’t wait for our kids to come home for a few days. That Safeway is going to be lit this week, I tell you what. 

*****

“Windows is getting ready to update. Don’t turn off your computer.” 

It’s Thursday morning and I should be working but I’m waiting for updates to install. For once in my life I decided to just install the updates as soon as I got the prompt, rather than snoozing it multiple times until the last and final “you must update NOW” prompt appears just as I’m trying to join a call or finish a project. So now I’m just waiting for the little progress wheel to count its way up from 11% to 37% to 100%. It’s on its third round now. No hurry, Windows. Take yer time. Let me tell you that I can “get ready” a lot faster than Windows. 

*****

My computer finished its update almost as soon as I typed that last sentence. It’s Friday morning now. I took the morning off and I’m on my way to George Mason University for the Patriot Invitational, Day 2. The only thing I love more than a college swim meet is a college swim meet that lasts three days. We’ll be back tonight for finals and tomorrow for prelims and possibly finals as well.  

The Patriot is a D1 meet, and Marymount is way out of its depth but no one cares - it’s fun to watch competition at this level, and everyone is in a holiday mood, despite the unceasing round of one damn thing after another that constitutes civic life in the United States right now. 

Meanwhile, golden November appears to be stepping aside unseasonably early and making way for leaden gray December. The weather is wintry today. We’re even supposed to get some snow. We’ll see. 

*****

65 degrees on Monday and snow on Friday. Welcome to November in Maryland. And Virginia, of course. It was snowing when we arrived at George Mason yesterday morning. A group of parents from Florida Atlantic University gathered in the parking lot, catching snowflakes and shooting video of the falling snow. It was like they’d never seen snow before. Maybe they hadn’t. 

We went from the chill of the parking lot to the indoor warmth of the aquatic center lobby to the intense sauna-like heat of the natatorium, removing layers as we went, and settling into our bleacher seats with all of the other parents in our college swim t-shirts and our psych sheets. The noise was deafening, and it got louder in the first heat of men’s 100 breaststroke, with me screaming “GOOOOOOOOOO!” all the way through my son’s best-ever swim that put him in third place in the university record book. 

*****

The brief winter preview ended and Saturday was a beautiful glowing November day. We drove back to George Mason in the morning, and Fairfax looked its best with November sunlight filtering through the almost-bare trees. We had plans to see a movie on Saturday night or to maybe get last minute-tickets to the Capitals game (glad we didn’t do that because we can’t beat the Devils) but then my son made finals again so we got to go back for the last session. 

We arrived early - 5:20 for a 6 PM start, and our son’s race wasn’t going to start until 7:20 or so. The section where we’d been sitting for the previous sessions had lots of unoccupied seats, but University of Richmond parents had “reserved” them with “U of Rich” signs handwritten on little scraps of paper. 

Contrary to popular online opinion, most sports parents are decent and reasonably cool people. But there are always exceptions, and the exceptions are usually rude and entitled enough to be memorable. I wanted to go and ostentatiously tear up their stupid little signs and then sit down in their reserved seats. My husband, however, wanted us to be nice. So we sat in the next session over, and when newcomers arrived and stood scanning the section for seats, I would rather loudly comment about how there appeared to be plenty of open seats over there but that someone seemed to have “reserved” them and I wondered who authorized this. My husband nudged me, but I felt like stirring things up a little. I don’t do this very often, but sometimes it’s necessary. 

I posted all of this on social media and lots of people weighed in. Two themes dominated: Swim parents are usually cool but some of them are the worst. And this behavior is very much on track for the University of Richmond. I didn’t know anything about U of R before this weekend but apparently the place is well known for a culture of spoiled and entitled behavior. People are still commenting. I struck a nerve. 

*****

It’s Sunday evening now, well over a week after I started writing this so it’s time to wrap it up. Thanksgiving is in five days, and the turkey has moved from the freezer to the refrigerator.