We’re working on the festive part

I admit that I felt the lack of holiday spirit around here this past week.  I know that Thanksgiving is a North American holiday, and that I should not expect the rest of the world to fall in step, but, wow, I missed the sense that this weekend was different from the others.  Not to mention the start of the holiday season; I guess this is my chance to dig out an Advent calendar and really pay attention to when the holiday starts!  The shops have put in pretty window displays, but only friends from home were swapping recipes this past week.

We’re also a bit weighted down with less-than-fun stuff.  Sydney was waylaid by his second cold in a month, and, after Nathaniel kept us up with much teething trouble in the past few weeks, he’s now starting a cold of his own.  Last night we might as well have read a book as try to sleep.  So our general mood is a bit less happy-go-lucky than we’d like.  I’ve also gotten into quite a losing streak recently: I’ve gotten rejections from just about everything to which I’ve applied recently, be that choirs, jobs, or conferences.  Since I’m on the job market, I’m going to hope that there’s nothing significant about this trend, but it’s a bit unsettling.

In what may have been a miguided attempt to perk everyone up, I proposed a trip to a nice grocery store, one two miles up the road (and a steep hill), and that I knew would have lots of fun things to stimulate our appetites (my motto, if you haven’t already guessed, is: if you can’t sleep, eat!).  On the way up to the store, Katherine walked part of the way with us, but then she tripped and bloodied her lip.  Much crying and requests that she be carried ensued.  On the way back, Nathaniel decided that he was hungry, so he screamed the rest of the way home (which coincided with the busiest sidewalks and the most clueless pedestrians).

We’ll see if we can’t improve things in the upcoming week.

Erin