Strange to think this is the best Thanksgiving I will have had so far-Paul and I are together and very happy-Fox is talking to me again-Mozart and Gonzo are still in the family. So many blessings, so many wonderful miracles to be thankful beyond the ability to articulate!

It started snowing yesterday, we have an inch or two on the ground with much more to come in the next days. Paul and I have the wood stove in the parlour cranking out the heat. LOL, he calls it a lounge, but it's not, trust me-it's not a room we hang out in, it's a room where we warm our backsides, peer out the front window , and then head back to the real lounge-Paul's study!

Paul's study, a corner of which I have glommed for my own until we can have the window in our spacious bedroom fitted with a new double glazed window. Paul's study, which doubles as the lounge, guest room, and for this winter owing to the window situation, our bedroom. Every night we pull the futon out and every morning we fold it back up.

We have a lovely routine. We wake by around 0600. I start the kettle, he lights the stove in the parlour. I make toast, tea, and coffee (for a Brit, he sure likes coffee. For a Yank, I sure like tea). We check the website he and a friend started here in the UK after LATOC went dark:



We read the news. We check our diaries-any appointments today? We decide if we need to go into town, decide which are pressing chores (food, laundry, firewood) and which are not (painting the kitchen, bathroom, parlour).

I'm sitting in my corner of the study, watching snow flurries and sipping orange-pekoe tea. I have pressing chores today, the first of which is to dig out the huge two person shopping carry-all, and go into town for the semi-annual toilet paper run. We'll bundle up thick-snow, after all is cold, and wet. We'll trudge merrily through the snow to the Lidl, where I hope to find sufficient quantities of toilet paper to get us through until at least May; we'll load said supply into the carry-all and trudge back through town to our house.

Where I'll put the kettle on, and Paul will restart the fire.

I need to get the kitchen curtains finished today, and maybe the bathroom curtains as well-shouldn't be too much of a chore to get the bathroom ones done, but the kitchen set is turning out to be quite the chore.

And sometime today I need to call my son, to wish him a Happy Thanksgiving, and call the sewing machine mechanic to schedule a drop-off of my latest charity shop find-a 1970 made in Scotland-all metal Singer Straight-Stitch 449!

We have a bunch of charity shops in our little town and the managers know us by name, especially at the British Red Cross shop where we have found the most amazing things with which to furnish our home on a strict budget.

The latest find cost us £20 ($31.55) which is an exceptional bargain-the sewing machine is one of the best and most simple of the 'vintage' Singer machines, and can be converted to a treadle machine at the wrap of a belt-should the grid go down I will be able to provide for us financially by taking in sewing.

Mr. Lindsay will go over it with a fine tooth comb, and I will do a lot of sewing on it! I do have another sewing machine here-also a vintage Singer, a 1978 Singer 513 Zig-Zag, also a charity shop find, and brought into perfect order by the aforementioned Mr. Lindsay. But something about this simple little 449 straight-stitch really appeals to me. It also came installed into a sewing cabinet-OMGsh, £20 for all that!!

NOTE: The difference between an antique Singer, and a vintage Singer is that an antique is one of those lovely black beauties made from 1848 until 1920. The vintage are the ones that came after that, and go through to 1980. After 1980, lol, they are just old, and you rarely see them as they went nearly all plastic gears by then, and cost more to repair than to replace. UGH-planned obsolescence.

We are simplifying our life, and it is a wonderful life. Thank-you, God.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Update on Mozart and Gonzo-they will more than likely be moving to Southeast Alabama this weekend or next to live with...

MY SON FOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday morning I woke up to find an email from my son's friends who have been keeping me updated on Fox these long and horrible years of our estrangement-Fox wanted them to give me his phone number so that I could call him if i wanted.

If I wanted!

It took me until last night to screw up the courage to ring, and I tried to time the call to coincide with his work schedule in hopes of reaching his voice mail. the friends suggested I take it very slow and carefully, so I was planning to leave a simple "Hi it's Mom, I love you, here's my email address" and then hang up quick.

He answered the phone. He said "Hi Mom!" We talked. He got a lot of amusement from hearing his new stepfather is a fellow I met online, and was concerned that Paul might be an "Internet weirdo" OMGsh, he cares!!

He asked me to email him pictures, he said he would do the same, and asked if I had a web cam so we could vid chat. he said he's coming over this spring or summer and looks forward to seeing Paul and me.

And just before we rang off, he said, in a matter of fact and natural way, "I love you too, Mom!"