THANKSGIVING AS USUAL -- HARDLY!

 

Since I get to enjoy Thanksgiving alone every year I'm not as inconvenienced by the pandemic as many others. Shortages at the grocery store are to be expected, I read. However since I buy turkey slices from the deli rather than an entire turkey this shouldn't affect me.

However if I end up cooking a pizza or plate of spaghetti for my Thanksgiving dinner that's perfectly fine, it's nothing I haven't done before and it's all good. In fact, I've embraced TV dinners for my holiday meal if that's what it took to avoid dining with family and others. But now I'm alone and free to do whatever I want.

Here it is, the day before Thanksgiving and while eating breakfast a big chunk of a back tooth came out! It seems one tooth after another is going bad! And I'm a fanatical brusher & flosser too. I shouldn't be experiencing any of this!

Anyway, the dentist office is closed until after Thanksgiving. Bad things always happen at the worst possible time, so this is no surprise.

Tomorrow, I will be chewing my holiday dinner very carefully.

For Thanksgiving breakfast it will be buttermilk biscuits with orange marmalade. I love the history behind it. There are many versions of how marmalade came to be. My favorite is the one I heard in Scotland.

During the 1700's Spanish ships used to dock in Dundee. They dumped oranges that were starting to go bad from their cargo holds. Boys would gather them up and take them home to their mothers. The mom's cut off the bad parts and preserved the good. Sons were told "More m'lad!" and thus the name Marmalade was derived. Ever since, Seville oranges are shipped to the British Isles in order to create this delicious concoction.

As to the holiday shortages I'm more concerned with the disappearance of paper goods, most of all toilet paper! Who wants to go thru that misery and desperation again! I still don't understand why panic buying was necessary the first time! Good grief, the stores remained opened all during the pandemic! Had it not been for hoarders there would have been enough of everything to go around!

I have a strong feeling the hoarding hogs are those people labeling the virus a hoax, in other words the Trump turds! The same fools who are denying climate change is real.

This November was the only in memory that I was forced to use my air-conditioner. The first two weeks were summer hot and humid!

Also I can never recall a November hurricane and there were actually THREE at one time! And one was a horrendous Cat 5! We're now into the Greek alphabet when it comes to names. Growing up, I don't remember tropical storms being given names as they are now. These were reserved only for hurricanes.

Between the weather, the pandemic, and the deranged despot in the White House refusing to go, I'm having a harder time getting into the holiday spirit this year. But I'm trying!

I am sticking to my now Thanksgiving and Christmas tradition of a new dessert and at least one new side dish that I've never tried before during my holiday meal. This year, it's a butternut squash & egg mini frittata & caramelized onion puffs along with my turkey & mashed potatoes; and for dessert a cranberry white chocolate blondie bar.

Holidays are big cheat-on-my-healthy-diet days and it will always be thus!

Sadly, with climate change, I'm liable to see year round hurricanes during my lifetime. But for now, I just want to celebrate and enjoy holidays without them, plus no future dictator in the White House!

TRUMP GO AWAY & GET LOST

 

I am sick of your fat ugly face; your lies, your boasting, your elementary school insults, your total sliminess, ignorance, and utter incompetence!  The fact that you made it into the White House at all leaves me foaming with contempt at so many of my fellow Americans!

The vote was much closer than it should have been. When I went to bed during the wee hours of Nov. 4 I felt sick! I thought you had won re-election. I strongly believe that never would you have left office and we'd have ended up with a dictator for life. And worse, you would have turned into the most horrid one during our lifetime, all the earmarks were there!

I'm not surprised you declared an early victory. Lord knows you and your ass-licking sycophants did everything possible to suppress the vote and cheat. 

Fortunately sanity prevailed! Biden won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. So get the hell out of the White House Trump and take your white trash family with you!

Afterward I watched you on TV whining about voter fraud with no evidence to back it up. You came off looking like a big cry baby, but that's exactly what you are and always were. The rest of the world is laughing at you. I know I am!

The White House should be fumigated before the Bidens move in. However the Trump stench and stain will probably linger for decades to come.

Sadly, my state (Florida) went for Trump. Neighbors on both sides of me displayed big Trump banners flying from their flag poles. I considered buying a Trump Halloween mask and sticking it atop a long stake and planting it in the middle of my yard. But worried it might get me unwanted attention from the FBI or even the police.

Thankfully on Saturday Nov. 7 Biden was officially declared President Elect! I read somewhere there should be no gloating. Well I know plenty of Trump supporters ready to gloat like a showboat had HE won! Crowds on the evening news were shown dancing jubilantly in the streets. And I was dancing right along with them in my living room!

We dodged a dictator!!!

If Trump wants a recount, give him one. It will be highly entertaining watching a sore loser lose twice.

CUT OFF

 

I wanted to scream and claw my face in frustration! Shortly after, gloom set in followed by depression. I ached for my normal life back. Everything suddenly felt strange and abnormal. My internet connection abruptly had vanished and wouldn't be back anytime soon. I'd lost all hope as to anything resembling a solution.

This happened around 9:30 AM on a Thursday. I'd just logged on a half hour before and was in the middle of a Dear Abby column when this tragedy occurred sending me into a major funk.

However I was sure it would come back, it had disappeared before and always did, but not this time.

I was on the phone with an ATT technician for what felt like hours performing all manner of maneuvers but to no avail. I needed a new modem; he said and would send one out. I told him that I was unqualified to install it. He insisted it was easy if I just read the instructions and I'd save $99. -- Seems not so long ago a visit was only $20. But I was onboard for saving money!

This should be interesting I thought, given my age, lack of technical skills, and impaired vision.

But in the meantime, I faced a miserable weekend.

What happened to me? I am someone who loves and enjoys my own company. This was so unlike me! I recall days, even weeks alone before I owned a computer and had only a handful of cable TV channels, yet I was so elated to be alone and set my own schedule, life felt like paradise on earth. -- But then, I had to go and get addicted to the internet!

I kept reminding myself that everything else was still there. Thankfully this time I didn't lose my landline or television which is rare under the circumstances, usually when one goes kaput the others follow. And I could still work offline on my latest novel, which I did and made strides there.

Without internet I was glad that I didn't cut my newspaper subscription back to Wednesday & Sunday only, which I had seriously been considering to save money. Sadly, a daily newspaper has become a luxury. However there is not a feeling to compare with spreading its pages out on the floor beneath a window and reading it there. Even well into my 80's and beyond (if I live that long) I plan on doing it that way. 

But I missed the stories online, I missed Google Search, and I missed Facebook! Also I wasn't looking forward to ferreting thru 500,000 emails when I got back online! That's a major chore, plus it's annoying! Spam doesn't catch everything.

The modem arrived sometime Saturday. I don't know exactly when, there was no knock and no one rang my bell. I discovered it in the early evening. Thank goodness some porch-pirate didn't get there first!

Sunday AM I opened the box and started reading the directions. The first thing it said was to take a photo with a cellphone of your existing modem to remember where everything goes. -- I DON'T OWN A CELLPHONE!!!

The rest of the directions may as well have been written in Mandarin Chinese.

I called ATT back and made an appointment to have a technician come out here. The earliest time I could get was Monday between 2:00 - 4:00 PM.  That's also the time I eat my lunner  (lunch & dinner combo) however I was desperate to get back online.

The ATT tech said the problem was with my computer and the modem they sent was useless. I told him to take it back with him. He replied that he couldn't, I would have to make a special trip to the UPS store.

To make a long story short, he changed the setting on my computer and told me to cross my fingers. Like a miracle everything came back, but I don't know for how long. Like me, my computer is old.