Novembers Rock

Each year around Thanksgiving, I give thanks for making it alive through another 365 days. I've always been a big birthday person who wants the song and the fuss, but this year, I almost forgot it was my birthday. Perhaps it was the pregnancy hormones, the preoccupation with hosting Thanksgiving, or the dread of braving LAX to pick up family. Or perhaps celebrating a birthday just seemed inconsequential when soon I'd be celebrating an actual birth. In any case, the fact that I was now 32 slipped my mind until a balloon-bearing pug appeared at the shower door while I was washing my hair. I lavished kisses and gratitude on both he and the hubby, who insisted that he had nothing to do with the balloon.

In the afternoon, hubby surprised me with a gift of his own: Singstar 80s for Playstation 2. This was a big surprise for two reasons. Reason 1: To save money, we'd agreed to eschew exchanging any gifts until the baby's birth. Reason 2: Vince hates singing. HATES it. His giving me a gift that required amplified, obnoxious singing was akin to my agreeing to let him keep his turntables in the nursery. Oh, wait, I did agree to that. I guess now we're even.

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To cap off the day, we went to my favorite local restaurant, where we stuffed ourselves silly, because, of course, we wouldn't be doing enough of that the next night.

We awoke at dawn the next morning to prepare Thanksgiving dinner. Rather, Leon and Claire did most of the preparing, I scurried around obsessing over Thanksgiving minutiae, Oliver anxiously hovered about the kitchen, and Vince showed off his Guitar Hero skills to my mom. Later on, Vince did put down the guitar long enough to perform his man-of-the-house duties by carving the turkey.
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Dinner went off without a hitch, and at the end of the night we were bone tired. Vince teasingly observed that, though exhausted, I seemed to love playing hostess. I realized it was true. The mad rush of preparation was worth the incredible feeling of having a house full of friends and family. And that led me to wonder, "Hmmm... I wonder how many more babies I can convince him to have?"
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