M.O.W.

Another blink of the eye and another 10 days gone. I genuinely hope that remains the case for the upcoming 2 dozen. There is a part of me that feels like I should be taking in these experiences and trying to wring all that I can out of them, but there really isn't much time for that kind of reflection in this program......so I try to settle for just making it through by staring directly ahead at all times.

The Thanksgiving holiday was fast but enjoyable in its own small way. Tia and I ended up having our own turkey day after being ostensibly uninvited to our erstwhile friend's home. That is a long and convoluted story, but the moral is don't mix friends with business. We were invited to two other Thanksgiving events, but declined both and opted instead to make a meal at home and watch football. Tia is a mean cook and we ate particularly well. It was pleasant enough, but it was a bit solitary (and the fact that it did not stop raining throughout the day did not help matters). I suppose thats why we opted for an overnight trip to Niagara Falls the next evening. The trip to the Falls was really enjoyable and, in the area we were near, just as tacky as we both recalled. We lost a little bit of money at the casino, an equal amount at an arcade, and saw a gorgeous fireworks a light display in temperatures reaching into the low 20s. All in all, a nice way to close out a brief, but refreshing, holiday.

In addition to the usual holiday stuff, Tia has been trying to get me to love thy neighbor a bit more and volunteer around the holidays. I don't mind doing it, but without her I lack the motivation. Thankfully, she does not. We have volunteered with very positive results in Portland, so we ended up delivering food for Meals on Wheels (MOW) here in Rochester on Friday. We actually ended up delivering food in the downtown region, taking 10 meals to people in 2 separate high rise tenement buildings. The buildings made me thankful for what I have to be sure. Between the flickering dim lighting, the general disrepair, and the smell of decaying food I realized how very good I have things. I hope that I, nor anyone I know, ends up in such a situation.

We also adopted a family for the holidays. It seems a far better thing to do than buy gifts for people who don't have any needs and few wants that cannot be immediately gratified (or if not gratified by them, would be far beyond me to afford either). So the thought went anyway. We both still feel pretty good about it, but it is hard to want to shop for a person who requests things like a Baby Phat jacket and gold hoop earrings (suffice to say we did not pick the family we adopted. Also, no one in this family will be receiving a Baby Phat jacket). It is much easier to shop for her kids which need all the basic kid stuff and some toys to boot.

In both situations, I really wanted to feel that warmth the spirit of giving is supposed to give you way down deep, but all I really felt was sadness for the people getting MOW food for their paucity of options and a bit offended by the fact that a teenage mom would want more than the basics for herself with two kids to contend with. Not that it is fair to blame anyone for asking, but I suppose I always expect one to sublimate their own wishes for the benefit of their kids. I guess I also don't expect a teenage mom twice over, so people don't always make the best decisions.

I guess it is about that time again, time to load up the backpack and get geared up for another day sitting in an auditorium listening to endless hours of lecture and hoping that some of it sticks. Four weeks and counting until I can sling that aforementioned backpack into the deepest region of the closet to moulder for the better part of a month. I can hardly wait.