They call today “Black Friday” in the commercial world. It is the day that stores allegedly begin their push to sell you stuff for Christmas. So today stores all over the country will have ridiculous sales on certain items like televisions and other electronics. People literally set up tents, sometime for three or four days in advance so they can be the first person in line and be sure to save $200.00 on that item that they didn’t need in the first place. I’m not sure why they call it “Black Friday” unless it refers to the black hearts and greedy nasty attitudes of the people pushing and shoving and fighting over items in a store. People have been assaulted, knocked down, trampled, and a few have even died. There was a picture in the paper during the last one of these days of a grandmother pulling a gun on another shopper who was fighting her for a certain toy. What??? Was she really going to kill a complete stranger over a toy??? And yet, —- I hear people say that “it puts them in the Christmas spirit”. In my personal opinion, if that kind of chaos is what it takes to put you in the Christmas spirit —- you have already missed the entire meaning of Christmas.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here at home with Julie and Jim. The food was typical Ms. Kate wonderful and we ate our fill. Ms. kate made slightly smaller amounts of each item so while it looks like we pigged out because there weren’t many left-overs, we each only had a plate full. Jules didn’t even finish her plate but set it aside and had the rest of it for supper. I went back for more oyster dressing and turkey gravy for supper. Ms. Kate had made a pumpkin chiffon cake for dessert and we each only had one slice of that. So, no over -indulgence here and we aren’t still suffering from over stuffed tummies today. The only downer for the day was when Ms. Kate grabbed hold of a pan that I had just taken out of the oven. She had even warned me to be sure and use a hot pad because that pan was going to be extremely hot. But —- in her haste and a momentary mental slip, she wrapped her hand around that handle and has several burned spots on her hand. She says it is still very tender today and I have no doubt it is.

Julie and Jim will be heading out before too long I reckon. They are starting to pack thing up slowly because if the dogs get wind of it they will start being a pain in the butt with their barking and jumping around. Ms. Kate has been gathering up some of her craft paper to send home with Julie. She  has shelves and shelves of it that she has bought over the last decade and since she has stopped scrapbooking and started making cards, she uses a different kind of paper. So, she’s sending a bunch of it home with Julie to give to Julie’s friend.

I’ll bet there will be a lot of Christmas trees put up today. There was a time that we would start putting up our Christmas trees the day after Thanksgiving. But that was when Ms. Kate had me putting up seven trees. These days we put one up simply because that is all we have room for. I don’t know when we will put that one up because we are going to be gone on vacation for awhile. It hardly seems worth the effort to drag that heaavt trees and all of the stuff that goes with it up from the basement, only to have it up for a couple of weeks and then haul it all back down again.

Time to drop off for today and get some other stuff taken care of. I hope your weekend is full of joy and peace. Shalomn.