Happy Thanksgiving, so much to be grateful for:)

 What happened to the Chinese food idea?

 Someone wash those windows!

 Who got into the pie?





    Happy, happy Thanksgiving to everyone.  I hope you all eat until you are stuffed and have great times with family and remember just how wonderful life can be.

     Yesterday was a very interesting day even for me.  I am up and running around trying to get as much done as possible.  I mean I am in overdrive.  I have two full men's suits to get altered before 3 o'clock.  These were taken in on Tuesday from a young man that lives in a community 40 miles away.  He was getting married on Saturday and his suits had just come in.  So of course I said yes because I felt sorry for him.  I was so glad I did this because his best man was his older brother that was severely disabled.  He was so cute and funny.  The groom kept calling him brother.  As in "Stand up straight brother." Extreme scoliosis, made this suit hard to fit.  Such a sweet relationship and love between these two brothers.  But full alterations on mens suits including the vest of the disabled man are a great deal of work.  So I was trying to get as much done as possible before I left for rehearsal.

     My ballet mistress calls me while I am at my sewing machine to tell me not to forget the Russian costumes at the high school.  I run upstairs to put some makeup on and don't even set my Chia pet hair.  I only have 15 minutes to swing buy pick up the costumes and get to the rehearsal.  So I get tot the high school and they closed at  noon, I cannot find my outdoor key card.  I try every door and then say to myself, " What the hell, I can get these on Monday we do not open until next Friday".  I head to the studio, right when I walk in my ballet mistress says ,"Miss Kim where re the Russian costumes"?  Now I knew that the Russians were dancing at the Festival of trees on Friday morning, why did my brain say I did not need these costumes?

     I made the cutest set of Nutcracker Russian costumes, but two of my dancers have outgrown them and I know there are really nice Russian costumes that I made for Fiddler on the roof that are at the High school so I am not going to make another size.  I rush back to the high school because I know there are basketball games going on at the big gym and I will find a janitor or another coach with a card, I have all the indoor keys. I found a colleague that walked me over and we reminisced my coaching days.  He passed me in and I started the long process of opening the doors into the costume closets.

     I watched too many slasher movies about high schools so walking down those dark corridors and turning corners is creepy.  I unlock the smaller choir room door, go across the dark room then unlock the passageway between the choir room and the band room  it is dark and you have to walk across it to find the light, then you unlock the big band room.  My costumes are in a huge closet that is in the ceiling of the entire band room.  I have to get into it from a ladder stairway that comes out of the ceiling.  I cannot reach the door handle unless I stand on a chair.  So I drag a chair over and the long handled hook that opens the door is not hanging on the door frame where it has been for the last 28 years.  What else can go wrong?  Well I now have to balance an upside down metal trash can on top of a chair and I still cannot reach the handle. "Flip"  So I go looking for something that I can use as a hook.  I get the big bass drum over the shoulder thingy as it has hooks on the end.  Now I am balanced on top of a chair, a trash can holding a bass drum vest and trying to precariously get the hook into a loop on the ceiling above me.  It looked like a Doctor Seuss movie this was also in the semi darkness.  Finally after a few tries ( that base vest was heavy) I hooked the loop and the damn closet was locked!

     Now I have to find a janitor.  I have many keys but I do not know if my theater key or green room key will work and I cannot reach the lock.  So I leave my vest hanging and go in search of a janitor.  When I finally find one I don't know him, he speaks Spanish and I am trying to explain what I need.  He is looking at me like I am from outer space eventually another janitor came by and he knew me so they both followed me in the dark band room through my maze.  When janitor #2 saw my chair, garbage can and a bass drum vest hanging form one hook to the ceiling he started to laugh. My reply was "Well you try it."  He goes and gets a ladder.  (show off) gets up and unlocks the stairway)  I go upstairs and start turning on lights so I can find the Fiddler costumes.  I get what I need and rush back to the studio.  We rehearse I get kids fitted and I get a call from a soldier that is at the shop with a dress blue so I tell Miss Jena I have to go and she says in a very rude tone "Oh just go be you".  As I am leaving the studio one of my older girls says to another. "I wonder if Miss Jena means that in a good was or a bad way".  I told them they do not want to know what she really thinks.

      Now I am home trying to get the suits done and I finish about 2:30.  Then I clean the shop and start on mom's room and bath.  The housekeeper does the upstairs every other week and she was just here on Tuesday so it is in good shape I think.  ( that I think is a big old joke)  I change sheets, dust vacuum, scrub the toilet and sink, grab all the rugs and towels that are on display to wash.  Hub's come home as I am finishing this and I tell him I have to run to K-mart and I will pick up tacos for dinner.  I get home and we eat and then I head upstairs to start cooking.

     The first pan I take out of the cupboard to put sweet potatoes in has mouse poop in it.  I wash it and start the sweets.  I pull out the turkey and start the giblets boiling.  The pan I pull out is full of mouse poop.  Now on closer inspection the entire cupboard is taken over.  We have traps out but I am freaking out.  I have thawed pumpkin and pie crusts out and I have a huge cupboard that is a cess pool.  I also have a pregnant daughter coming and this is dangerous.  Mice carry disease.  I call Hub's to go get the turkey roaster off the back porch and line it with foil.  Then I start pulling all the pans out of this huge cupboard.  The kitchen floor is covered with pans and poop.  I will not reach in the back of the cupboard.  It is dark and goes clear under my arm length.  I leave it and go over to pull the squash out of the garden basket.  I am trying to calm down so I can continue.  One of my strategies when things get hairy is to  stop what I am doing and go into another project.

     There is a distinctive smell to the baskets.  Something is rotten in Denmark.  So I start to look and sure enough a rotten potato and squash at the bottom of the big baskets.  So I empty the baskets all over the floor.  Between pans, poop and vegetable you cannot walk in the kitchen.  Hub's realizes a major melt down is about to occur and steps in and starts to fill both sinks with hot bleach soap water and proceeds to wash every pan we own and that is a lot.  Out dining room table is covered with pans and then he sweeps out the cupboards and sprays them down with bleach and drys them out.  It was a great deal of work.  I am trying to cook around him.

     Thank goodness daughter come in with her husband at this time and sees the mess.  We won't let her into the kitchen until it is cleaned up, but she did press the linens and get out the silver, she also pulled the china form the cabinet.  Once I was able to really clean things up she set the table.  I continued to clean and disinfect until 11 o'clock.  So the lovely picture I woke up to today was a nightmare to create.

Have a happy Thanksgiving and I hope today goes way better for me....

Kim