The Army's Not The Army Anymore

I salute all Veterans on what was a gorgeous, if chilly, Veteran's Day. As I did on Memorial Day in May, I celebrated by watching the Donald Duck in the army cartoons on The Chronological Donald, Volume 2. Disney did a series of propaganda shorts during World War II featuring everyone's favorite temperamental fowl, including the Oscar-winning (and incredibly surreal) Der Fuhrer's Face, the Donald-nephews home front spoof Home Defense, and my personal favorite, the hilarious The Vanishing Private, where Donald dons the ultimate in camouflage to avoid Sargent Pete.

To be honest, I spent most of today feeling a little down. It's not easy being a single girl during the holiday season. I called my mom to say "hi" and find out what she, my stepdad, and my brother are doing for Thanksgiving and Christmas. She was in a very good mood; she was just about to head over to the house she and my stepdad are in the midst of buying and work on painting rooms. It doesn't sound like their really doing much for Christmas, and less for Thanksgiving. I called my sister Rose afterwards to arrange to go shopping this week. She sounds like she's going to try to go down to North Cape May for Thanksgiving or to her boyfriend's; she said she'd probably join friends for Christmas.

I never have handled change well, and I've never really been alone for holidays. I'll probably go to my biological father's across the train tracks for Thanksgiving. I might see if I can go down to Cape May County for Christmas anyway, even if they aren't doing much. I really don't want to spend half of Christmas Day alone and feeling left out and miserable, like I did last year. The morning went well, but once everyone went their separate directions...I didn't have a direction to go in.

What I'd really love is to have someone who could visit ME for the holidays, who could enjoy a meal and some presents and music with me in MY apartment, instead of me having to try to wedge into someone else's holiday.

Work went quickly, but I was depressed and stressed from the long lines and made many mistakes. On the other hand, Danielle, one of our younger managers, called me later and asked me if I wanted to switch my first day off this week from Tuesday to Thursday and take someone's 4-8 hours Tuesday night? Did I ever! I originally asked for Thursday off anyway, but there was a mix-up - I have counseling Thursday!

Lauren and I are working on an extra-long Monkees role-play story for NaNoWrite this month. Part of it has already been posted - look for more soon!

Oh, and Miles the WebKinz is still quite happy. I bought him a treadmill to work off those honey roasts he loves. I earned almost 1,000 points at Quizzy's tonight doing the kids' questions, and I rock at the Link'd game, too. (My brother Keefe and I liked to play Connect Four when I visted his house.)