Turkey Day Road Trip
2004-11-29,

This holiday weekend wasn't a bad one - pretty good, in fact. Turkey Day was spent in Columbus at my brother's place. I took the van with H, the kids, my mom and her husband, who's in chemo recovery for his cancer, in tow. It was snowing at home, but the farther south we went, the less there was, until there was no sign of it at all. Managed pretty decent time, considering the weather.

It was a pretty casual event, which suited me just fine. H spent the day once again fascinated by myself and my Republican brother, and how we can be so alike yet so different. We're basically opposite sides of the same coin. We have many similar pet peeves and quirks, but our ideologies are totally divergent. This doesn't cause any tensions at holidays, mainly because we've agreed to disagree and have chosen to avoid confrontation, at least so far. I imagine one day we'll have it out and not talk to each other for years, and so be it. If it happens, it happens. I'd like to think that we could have a reasonable diatribe on our views, but chances are slim that it'd go that smoothly. His overbearing discussion tactics and my penchant for snide and terse comebacks would quickly dissemble into an argument, I fear. Thus it is with brothers. We've never been friends, and have mainly kept the peace through minimizing contact to a few days a year. Add wife-buffers on both sides to the mix, and happy holidays to all; atheist Democrat and Christian Republican can coexist in peace, in short bursts.

Friday was basement-cleaning day, mainly for the kids, who were behind on helping that section of the house recover from numerous invasions by same-age visitors. For me it was finish-the-damn-kitchen-floor-already day, on which I got a swell start. I'm now up to about 90 percent done with the floor, as opposed to the 80 percent previous. I'm sure I'll have it done by 2007 or so.

Saturday was even more casual, consisting of a few chores during the day, and, after dropping off the kids at their dad's, doing a little Xmas prep shopping, mainly for our annual Holiday Potluck. We made our annual peruse of World Market's holiday selection; they usually have some appealing stocking-stuffer chocolates and such, not to mention a decent wine selection. We also managed to make it though Bed, Bath and Major Life Decisions without incident, other than a nice sit in the ultra massage chair that left both of us just short of drooling.

Sunday managed somehow to be on the verge of hectic. After a slow morning, we dawdled our way into rushing to get ready for leaving for H's dad's place in Mentor for a post-Thanksgiving gathering of Italian proportions. Then we had to rush off to rehearsal back in Medina. We managed to only be 20 minutes late. Nothing like stuffing yourself at dinner and then trying to remember lines.

Something I realised this weekend, is that this is the first amidst-work four-day vacation that I've had in three years. Since then, I'd either been between jobs or worked on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Strange to be surprised by such a thing, but there it is.

I don't know if it's a product of getting older or what, but I've come to realise that sleeping in on the weekend tends to completely mess up my sleep schedule. I managed to be up until 4am on Saturday night because I just wasn't ready to sleep, and was up until 1am last night. Am I really going to have to become one of those people, who have to wake up at the same time every day, working, vacationing, retired, whatever? Maybe it's inevitable. But I don't like it. Maybe I will eventually, but I don't now. Meanwhile, I'm tired from an apparent lack of sleep from the last two nights, so maybe I'd better learn to like it. Or lump it.

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