A Different Thanksgiving - November 28, 2024 @goldenoakfarm

Snack remains, forgot to get before photo

On Thursday morning I had slept until 5AM. My shoulder was still bothering me so once I’d gotten the kitchen cleaned up, the snacks made, and a shower, I took more meds.

I had hoped to get the hooks on a bunch of decorations but I didn’t get that far.

My friend arrived around noontime and brought me a waxed amaryllis. She covered the stand with this pretty embroidered cloth and added shells on the top. I had a 1000 piece pumpkins puzzle for her.

So we got started putting hooks on decorations. We emptied 2 boxes and decided to finish cooking the oyster stew around 2PM, I think.

The stew she had made was simple, just onions and celery chopped fine, oysters, coconut milk and heavy cream, and celery salt, just a little. She had made bacon crumbles and croutons for on top. It was very good!

We each had a persimmon pudding for dessert and decided we wanted to watch the movie and rest.

This is a movie she had been wanting to watch again, so I’m glad we did. We both only have it in VHS and I have a working VHS player. I tried to find it on DVD but it was hugely expensive.

I made a couple batches of eggnog and she had some of the apple pie my son had brought home while we watched.

After the movie we finished the third box of decorations and only had the tiny “bitty” balls to fill in the empty places.

So we put hooks on enough to fill the box top the first time. She climbed on the stool and I handed her the bulbs. We got the top completely done except for 2 things: It was leaning badly on top, and she couldn’t reach for the star.

Once things were below shoulder level, I thought it would be okay for me to hang bulbs too. So we both filled in the bottom part of the tree.

We were both very tired and it was all we could do the push it back in the corner and tie it to the wall. I’m hoping to get my son to help straight it up and put the star on the top on Friday.

This is what the living room looked like when I went to bed. The kitchen wasn’t any better. I’d put the candles on in the morning because it was so dark and gloomy from the rain. So I had to turn them all off and pull shades. I didn’t light the masonry heater because it read 116F at 8PM. But I did have to get the woodstove going and it didn’t want to burn well. So I never got to bed until 9PM.

The pain wasn’t bad all day, I guess the meds helped. But they started to wear off as she was leaving so I took more before it got bad.

On Friday, my helper friend is here at 8AM. I’m hoping to have the boxes sorted and ready to go upstairs. There will just be the ones for decorating and I hope to have those done before he leaves at noon. I’m also going to have him clean up the old washer as it got dirty sitting in the cellar for 3 years. Once the living room is cleaned out, I might lie on the couch and watch a Christmas movie…