I have many, many things to be thankful for..... the first being a loving family. The rest of the stuff doesn't matter because every one of those people come in the door and give me a hug and a kiss and wish the best for me. I love them with all my heart. I wish only the best for them.

We had a little Thanksgiving this year because of illness and co-parenting. One of my daughters was very sick with strep and a double ear infection. That meant the whole family couldn't come over to Grandma's including the two darling grandbabies. Another daughter, who is the mom of my only grandson, had to spend the day without her boy because it's dad's day to have him this year. I missed all the dimpled smiles. I missed all the love all those people give and I missed the kisses and hugs. Oh, we still had another daughter and her family here but the day seemed small and wrong at first. The two fabulous grandchildren who were here helped with dinner, table setting and I got all the kissses and hugs I wanted from them but they also wished the other cousins could have been here. It was a much quieter Thanksgiving than I am used to.

That being said..it gave me much more time to talk to my son-in-law, much more time to talk to my 11 year old grandaughter who is now taller than me and much more time to reflect on what I am truely thankful for. I am thankful that I have a home to live in and enough food to feed myself and others. I am thankful for a patient husband. I am thankful that my daughters don't live an airplane ride away. I am thankful that I don't really need to shop on Black Friday. I'm thankful that I can cook a turkey, make stuffing and gravy and not give anyone food poisoning. I am very thankful that, in spite of the small table this year, there was enough love to fill the room, enough food to feed the bellies and enough happy faces to make us all truely thankful. It was only a tiny Thanksgiving in numbers.....not in love.

Geocahcing is my new baby. Knitting is my old baby. My toddler. I knit every day and still love it because it keeps my hands busy while I mull over the day's events or watch bad television. I'm deep into a doggie sweater right now that is for such a big dog that I question my reason for offering to make the damn thing. Regardless, I love knitting it and will never lose that passion. This geocaching passion is different. Another passion. We can have more than one, right? I can be out in the woods tramping around in the fresh air, tripping on sticks and rocks in the daytime. Knitting is for nighttime. For watching Letterman. Daytime is for geocaching. Cleaning the house is overrated.

I was out with my GPS yesterday. It was a lovely sunny, if chilly day so I bundled up and headed out armed with a list of likely places to hunt. This is the thing I love...the hunt. It's similar to the hunt for the perfect pair of shoes, the perfect handbag and the best and most beautiful hank of yarn. The difference is that there is no money to worry about and I'm outside instead of in a mall. I get to find something and then sign my name to it just like a credit card receipt. The bad thing is that a person sometimes looks like a fool smacking bushes and burrs away on the edge of a busy road. And I don't have a dog to take with me so that I can pretend the dog led me to the spot and is now just goofing around like dogs tend to do. The sweater is for a dog who only slightly likes me and cats are just no good on a leash. They will only look for mice anyway.

So the GPS leads me to a park I had never been to before. It was a beautiful little park that had a walking trail through a nice little piece of urban forest. I headed out after taking a swig of Coke and locking my car. The pointer on my compass lead me to the trail and I meandered along it saying hello to the many, many people who were out walking their dogs. My first thought was, 'doesn't anybody work anymore?' The second was, 'why do so many people have dogs that need to be walked?'. I followed the trail just occasionally glancing down at the GPS so that I would appear only slightly nutty. See, this geocaching stuff is supposed to be secret. A person is supposed to find things on the sly and make it look like they are doing something else. Me thrashing around in the woods after my pointer told me to leave the trail made me look as though I was trying to find a place to go potty. I found what I thought was the correct co-ordinates for the cache and was poking around a big tree when another woman walked by on the trail with her aged cocker spaniel. I, not having enough experience with pretending I'm doing something else, quickly struck a pose against the tree. Yes, with my elbow propped against said tree and my other hand on my hip. Like I was in a photo shoot for gods' sake! She kind of smiled at me and I said, stupidly, 'Hi! Nice out today isn't it?' She continued walking but kept looking back at me probably thinking that she was going to have to run for it in a minute.
 
Jeez! I was exhausted and wobbly from pretending I was posing for a layout in Field and Stream magazine so I sank to the ground in a heap hoping to blend in with the dry leaves. Gak! What to do? Yank down my pants and go potty? I would most likely be arrested for that. I don't think I could be arrested for looking like an idiot by a tree but I'm going to have to check local laws. I pulled myself together, realized that I was in the wrong spot and commenced to stumbling down a hill to root around in a hollow log. I found what I was looking for but I had to scramble back up the hill as another gal walked past with her old poodle. I came away with this thought: I either have to quit looking for things in the woods by walking trails or learn how to pretend I am doing something else with a high level of nonchalance. Or get my own damn dog.

The Joynoelle Fashion Show last night was a thing of wonder and beauty. The beauty is pictured...the wonder is that it went off without a hitch. Fashion shows are not easy to produce. The sewing seems to be the least of it. There are so many things to consider....venues, menus, seating, models, hair, makeup and shoes...jeezlouise the shoes! The shoes alone are a nightmare of epic proportion. What color do they need to be and how to they look with the dress and do they even fit the model. This is the stuff that makes me so happy that I am the seamstress and not the co-ordinator. I only have to get the garments to fit right. I do not have to worry about shoes and if one of the models is wearing bright orange toenail polish.

The venue gets staged in one day. Seating, lighting and decorating. It is epic. The working studio gets a complete overhaul as well. I was sewing up until 4 p.m. yesterday and there were people cleaning around me. I dared not to drop one pin on the floor or one piece of waste fabric because someone was there in a second to suck it up or to remind me to mind my pins, please. The phone calls are relentless. The music is usually turned up too loud for my taste but I think it's that way in order to drown out the tension in the room. There are trucks of furniture to get where they are supposed to be and then unloaded. And then set up. Wine glasses, programs, gift bags....things have to get put together and moved. People come in and out. There is much talking and last minute game plans. Still...I sew away. There are dresses to be hemmed, snaps to be sewn on and maybe, just maybe, this dress can just have a pin stuck in it to hold this one thing here so that I don't have to turn the thing inside out one more time and try to get it under the presser foot of the machine.

Here's the deal about that: many, many runway garments are made and then fitted to the model in the 'runway ready' manner. The dresses are made to fit a size six. However, those skinny beautiful models are usually a size 0. I can almost see their backbone while looking at their front. All of the garments have to fit so there are great handfuls of fabric to get rid of or to hide in some ingenious way. The hems are actually done the correct way...the sides? Not so much. Zippers are taken out and basted back in with the extra fabric pressed back. Edges are steamed back within an inch of their lives and then tacked so they won't flop forward. Tucks are taken. Pleats are made. Waistbands are taken in so much that I swear the garment could fit my 8 year old grandaughter. And at 4 p.m. yesterday I was in the 'let's just pin this sucker' mode of operation.

I hightailed it home to change into something that didn't have wads of thread stuck all over it and made it back to the venue in record time. I had makeup on and some kind of hairdo going so things were good there. There were still a few things to be done so I pitched in to help and then suddenly it was all done. The scrambling madness was over. The music was starting as I found my place to sit down and relax with my glass of wine and enjoy the beauty. The dresses were just lovely coming down the runway towards me, the models were beautiful and the shoes were perfect. It nearly brought tears to my eyes. Live fashion is magical.

The past two weeks have been long...extra long...and I'm tired. I need a really long, really comfy nap. I was in New Orleans for a week and spent Halloween on Bourbon Street. It was fun, actually crazy fun, up until 1 a.m. or so when the shooting started and a young man was killed not 20 feet from my husband and myself. Even more scary than that was the mass of humanity that began running and screaming. Mind you, all these screaming, running people were pretty darn drunk and dressed up in costumes so the whole thing had a nightmare kind of vibe. It was an experience I will never forget and do not want to repeat. I will not be attending Mardi Gras.

The city of New Orleans is so beautiful that every day I wandered in a different direction and found something fabulous. I visited the tip top of One Canal Street and had a guided tour of the city spread out beneath me by a lovely man by the name of Charles. We talked for a long time and it was one of the best and more enjoyable visits I had. I walked and walked the streets every day taking pictures and resting occasionally. I ate my fill of Beignets...oh, maybe I could have just one more. I geocached. I shopped in the French Market. I roamed around looking at the grand architecture of the place. I had a long and indepth talk with a local artist who just blew me away with her drawings of the French Quarter. I had a long talk with a street musician. I sat in Jackson Square and listened to an old drunk black guy give relationship advice to a young and also drunk white gal. I picked up a few tips. I found a yarn shop on a narrow side street. It was a darling shop and besides buying a hank of yarn I also learned the secret place to go potty in that area. We all must have our potties mapped out if it's to be a day of walking and wandering.

I came home exhausted from the trip and with a little cold. There was a hacker on the plane who coughed all the way from Atlanta to Minneapolis. Fortunatly I am not as sick as that poor soul seemed to be. I managed to finish my pooling blue socks on the plane in spite of it all. I also came home to lots and lots of work. There's an upcomming fashion show and the amount of work that remains to be done is staggering. Staggering! I've worked all week and yesterday put in an 11 hour day. There's more than a few specks of blood from pricked fingers on those dresses. The work space some days also inhabits a year old lab and a 3 year old boy so on those days it's like working at the circus. I need a whip and a chair. I'm taking the weekend off and maybe only dropping in on Sunday to see how things are going before I get back at it on Monday. Today is set aside for cleaning and a birthday party. Tomorrow is nap day. I can feel it.