Non-Procrastination Post

As my friend Red Fraggle pointed out recently, there has been a bit of a procrastination theme to my posts/life lately. Sorry to be the one note pony (intentionally mixed metaphor), but you know me . . .

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In non-procrastination news, I have a big decision to make about Thanksgiving. I'm not going home to Newport for the holiday for a couple of reasons: (1) I don't necessarily want to spend more time with my stepsiblings than necessary. One visit every couple of years seems about right. (2) It's a long-ass trip to take twice in three weeks. (3) The weather there has turned from fall beauty to crappy constant rain, and I've seen enough of that to last me a lifetime. (Of course, as I type this it's 38 degrees and pouring buckets here. You can imagine my mood. If it were just a few degrees colder, it would be an awesome blizzard, but no. Must be rain. Ugh.) (4) I have to work on Friday, so even if I made the trip to Newport, I'd have to drive back on Thanksgiving Day anyway.

My Dad's family (minus my dad and stepmom in their Belizean paradise) always celebrate Thanksgiving on Saturday (my grandparents' thought being . . . "let the kids have Thursday with their in-laws and not have to choose sides." That way they get to see all their kids (except my ex-pat dad) nearly every year. They're smart like that. This is also why it took me YEARS to figure out why I associated Thanksgiving with college football, even though there were never any college football games on Thanksgiving Day.) So I will have a traditional family holiday, just not at the officially sanctioned time.

Here's the decision: do I spend the day alone (which I've done on many many years and really could not care less about) or do I accept my bosses' kind invitation to celebrate with them? They're great people, I vaguely know some of the other people who are going, it would probably be fun, and it would be one more opportunity to start really creating a life here but . . . I'm anti-social. The idea of driving on my own to a party with tons of people I don't know sends me into a blind panic. What if no one likes me?! What if I don't have anything to say to anybody?! What if I just sit in a corner like a lump and feel pathetic all afternoon?! (None of these are unprecedented occurrences.)

So that's what I'm thinking about this damp morning.