We celebrated Thanksgiving on Fire Island as we have for about the past 8 years (with one exception when Jason ruined everyone's plans by saying he was going to come to NY and then cancelling at the last moment). This year it was appropriately cold (allowing for the use of fire places and cute footed pyjamas) but not desperately so. Christine, Kevin and baby Silas came up as well and stayed with Aunty Minkie. The food was good, the table looked beautiful and I got away with only one fight with each parent. Not too bad for one of the high stakes holidays. When I was in nursing school we learned of a study that looked at the relationship between anger and heart attacks. I believe that the researchers had set out to show that people who yell and scream had more or less of a chance of dying from a heart attack than people who stew. Instead what they found was that it was the experience of anger that was the greatest predictor--it didn't matter whether people did or didn't express it. Not to prevent a heart attack, but just because I think it will make life so much better, I'm trying to move myseld into the 'feels less anger' category. We managed the trip back on Saturday night, complete with traffic on the Belt and at the turnpike merge and I believe I was reasonably pleasant.
By Monday I could barely walk because my back was hurting. I told Al that I've read that women's back pain is often tied to the repression of emotions. He said he'd rather have me walking and yelling than calm and immobilised. What a guy!

Monday I had the hospital orientation for my new job. I have been in such successful denial about the reality of starting a new job that I got up Monday morning with no idea when or where I was supposed to show up. It was about 8 hours of sitting in a basement auditorium watching videos and listening to talks on topics such as corporate compliance, HIPAA, and sexual harassment. The sexual harassment videos were definately the high point of the day what with the sexual innuendoes and all the inappropriate touching. Penelope did fine with Al--took 3 bottles with no problem. And I got a lot of knitting done.

Guess we know who Silas got the cheeks from...