happy thanksgiving.

I just finished cleaning my room, and man it feels nice not to have half of my growing wardrobe on the 2x2 foot space not taken up by furniture. I always vow to myself to keep it clean, keep it neat and tidy... the next thing I know, old cheetos bags are mixed in with guitar picks and dirty sweaters, all crumpled together beneath my feet. Oh, and there is nothing so sweet as the taste of pain after turning an ankle on a shoe hidden by layers of debris. It makes me want to scream, yes!

(whew... I'm all out of breath... just returned from the living room where I had the inaugural christmas dance with my brother. "Simply having a wonderful Christmastime" by Paul McCartney was never meant to be treated with our clumsy renditions of popular dance moves like "the shovel," "the sprinkler," or my personal fave, "the shopping cart." Nobody ever told us though; and if there's one thing I know, it's that you can't thwart the Swarts.)

Today was a really nice day. I did get kinda suffocating-feely after about 4 hours with the fam and left to come home. It was nice to get back to the solace of these four walls. Dad, Dan and Tanya and I went on a walk earlier in the day, from whence comes the picture above. I ate lots of food, including some incredible persimmon pudding and the best sweetpotato casserole I've ever tasted. Everybody was there at different points in the day; tensions rose and fell like an ebbing tide. My family really has a lot of lovely people in it. A couple of phone calls to and from friends also put me in a good frame of mind. I (almost) feel ready to go back to work tomorrow.

I'm actually thinking about getting up early and (yikes) buying a computer. I've been using my grandparents' old Dell since about May, when the crap lap took one final shuddering breath and forever closed its large glassy eye to the cruel world. I really want a mac laptop, but not having the 2500 lying around in petty cash, I may succumb and get a 400 dollar HP desktop tomorrow that could blow the pants off of this baby on a bad day. We'll see what happens. I may leave the house an extra half hour early or so and meander over to Best Buy; if they have it, they have it, if they don't, it will be my message from the heavens. I wish I was more valuable. Then I could just afford to buy things. Oh well. All in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Or the beholden.

So, darlings, Christmas is coming, and I wish you all a very merry season. Let's mean it this year.