Can you imagine being the neighbor?

These people need lives. Now. It's amazing and all, but really, lives.

Still working on the spirit of giving

So I tried to do the "Let's pick out toys to donate" thing with Abigail, and I guess it sorta worked. She immediately picked an old Elmo, which I'd been hoping would go away, and then a small doll. And then a broken puzzle. Um, we can't do that, sweetie. Are there any other stuffed animals we could give away? (She rarely plays with stuffed animals) Nope. That's all she wanted to give away. And I didn't want to force it. She should give freely and not feel like it's a punishment.

But is it really bad if I sneak into her room while she's at school and thin the stuffed animals a bit? Hmmm ...

We gather together

I must soon be off to buy cider for the big kindergarten feast, but all this talk of Thanksgiving has me a bit nostalgic and sad. Thanksgiving was a huge event in the Buxton family. The many, many cousins and second cousins and who-knows-how-they're-related cousins gathered at the family homestead, where enormous folding tables stretched the length of my grandparents' basement, leaving the littlest kids (me and my three male cousins for a while) to make do with an old sofa and a coffee table. There was of course tons of food, including at least four or five varieties of pie with lots of Cool Whip.

But what I really miss was the long afternoon after lunch. The adults would play endless games of pinochle, leaving us kids to devise our own fun way out in the Missouri boonies. If the weather was warm, that meant a wagon ride from Grandpa out into the woods and down to the creek, past "Daniel Boone's" bed springs. If it had snowed, there were cardboard boxes to sled in down the steep front yard. And there were always the games in the garage, one of the few ways the older cousins mixed with us young ones, deigning to allow us to join the Blind Man's Bluff and Red Light, Green Light. We played our own card games, too, usually 21 or Gin. Ahh, fond memories of teaching little Trae 52-Card Pickup, which he adored and wanted to play again. My memories of my grandparents' house really have little to do with them, much more about the cousins.

This year, I won't even see my mom. We'll do a couple of gatherings with Brad's family, but they're always a bit strained. There won't even be pumpkin pie (though I'm making a fabulous pumpkin cake). And mom is going to London for Christmas. It's going to be a very strange holiday season lacking any connection to my family. I adore traditions, am really a very conservative person when it comes to institutions and history, and losing all of mine this year makes me sad.

I don't even have a Black Friday shopping buddy.

But we'll start new traditions. One I'm stealing from an acquaintance, Abigail and I are going to go through her toys Friday and pick out a few to give away -- both to make room for Santa's goodies and to give a Christmas to poor children. Then we'll take our choices over to Goodwill, our final acts of thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The purge

So it's time to update all this. I thought I'd start chronologically, but then, heck, everyone just wants to see Halloween anyway, right?



I made that (with Mom's help)! Isn't it great? Okay, so it's not PC, but it's great! (And I'm going to take Abigail to the Catawba's Yap Ye Iswa Festival this weekend, so she'll learn about real Native Americans soon.) She had a wonderful time, really getting into the candy hunt this year. She raced from door to door and down driveways (saying "Steep hill! Steep hill! Steep hill!) and got through Nana's street in no time. She also loved giving out candy again, standing on the porch shouting, "Hey, kids! Come get candy! Blow pops for the big ones! Nerds for the little ones!" Halloween is such a great expression of the pure joy of childhood.

And so for the big news -- Employment! Yes, I have a job. I am going to be the editor-in-chief of a new lifestyles magazine. It will publish bi-monthly and I'll only be working 20 hours a week, so I'll still be able to pick up Abigail from school and screw around online and in the house. I'll be overseeing editorial content, assigning stories, managing freelancers and getting on their cases about deadlines. It should be a lot of fun! And it will set me up so well for a year or so down the line, when I want full-time work, hopefully in a university setting. And the best part, I found out about the job just by running into my old boss at the grocery store. It's amazing how things just work out sometimes. (okay, yeah, and I'm giving a lot of credit Upstairs for some answered prayers about what I should do)

Hmm, what else? How about more pictures!! Who needs to be thoughtful when you have pictures?!

We went to an atrocious Clemson football game last month, where the crowd went wild in the third quarter when we finally got our first first down. It wasn't pretty. But it was wonderful to see my college family again. And we took Abigail for the first time, so I got to show her around campus and show her off to my friends. She had a blast and still talks about being waaaaaay up and seeing Lake Hartwell.



I know other things happened in the interim, but they have slipped my capricious mind, so I'll just jump to last weekend, when Abigail, Mom and I went to Carolina BalloonFest in Statesville, N.C. Once the hot air balloons started going, we had a great time. Abigail was mesmerized for a while, then went to jump in the FREE moon bounces (note to similar festivals, that's BRILLIANT!). Her day was truly made complete, though, when she got to ride in a balloon. It was a two or three minute ride, but she was thrilled.