The Eve of Thanksgiving Eve

Two places I spend time that you've heard about. Obviously the one is of Lake Eola where I do the Sunday market. The other is the door to the gallery where I spend Tuesday and Saturday. Have I mentioned that the museum is in the National Register of Historic Places? I was considering volunteering there after my internship is up but I'm reconsidering. I really hate sitting there when there are no visitors. I want to be outside in the two acres of beautiful lakeside grounds--today there were only five visitors who arrived five minutes before my time was up.

Speaking of lakes, I often take pictures that are lakeside and for good reason. I did a Google search and found that there are over 120 lakes in Orlando! Within two houses of our front door is a lake and seven houses the other way is another. About one block behind us is another huge lake, on the way to the grocery store(less than a mile) is yet another that Bill and Dave live on. As you can imagine there is water and birds everywhere. When I was 15 my family moved to Melbourne. I remember it being so weird that there were only about two lakes in the region, however, they do have the ocean. Sometimes during the two miserable years we were apart, Bruce would come to Melbourne to visit, we would ride our bikes to the beach, however, I couldn't get out of Melbourne fast enough coming right back to Orlando when I graduated high school. Six weeks later I was in x-ray school, living with Maureen, and the rest is history as they say.

Baxter got a much needed shearing today. While that was going on I zoomed up to the grocery store to buy the Thanksgiving goodies. Returning, I was happy to get a call from Matthew. This will be his first Thanksgiving working. He reminded me that last year he went to Copenhagen during the Thanksgiving holidays. He reminisced about that trip and how cool Scandinavia is. I will miss both Matthew and Jonathan (and Alissa) on Thanksgiving. That I will be reminded of our Mom goes without saying.

This time of the year I guess I'm mentioning her more than typical because this is when things went bad. I won't go into the details but I will tell you that it was on Thanksgiving four years ago that she went into a semi-coma and died on Monday afternoon. Each passing year it gets easier but I suppose you never get over losing your Mom. I've no doubt my boys will miss me terribly when it is my time.

Enough already!!! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around Orlando--I'll be sharing that soon enough. Did I ever tell you that Matt decorated our tree the year he was nine? We moved into a new house nine days before Christmas, Jonathan was two and the twins were five. You already know what a hand full Jonathan was--my, oh my, that is a funny memory.