Progress

Since Thanksgiving landed on the 28th this year, I thought it'd be pretty slack of me not to write about something I'm thankful for on the last two days.  Also I'm a bit anal - I get it from my mother - so not doing it would have really bugged me.

But well, I feel pretty awful, so I'm not going to make some artistic, flowy, poetic entry into what I'm thankful for tonight.  Just cutting to the chase.  Sometimes you just don't have the pretty words in you.

My mom hadn't spoken to her brother and his wife in over a year and a half before tonight.  I stopped speaking to them about a year ago because...shall we say, what happened that made my mom do it got about ten times worse.  Details aren't important; that's just the lead-in to why tonight was important.

This past weekend, my uncle asked my grandma to invite us over to his house for a Thanksgiving meal today.  He knew he had to get her to do it, because my mom had ignored all of his previous attempts to reach out.  My mom said that with the look in my grandma's eyes, and knowing as a mom how she would feel if her kids couldn't stand to be in the same room even on a holiday, she couldn't say no.

So we went.  And it was really good.  Things were a bit weird between my mom and my uncle, but you could chock that up to how crappy my mom feels.  She, Chelsea and Blake left about an hour and a half into it because Blake was ornery and really wanted to go, but Mommom and I stayed and hung up for another hour or so.

And it was fun.  We laughed and talked and joked and it wasn't weird at all.  I spent most of the time talking to my cousins, but it was never weird between me and my uncle and aunt when I did talk to them.  And I'm glad that I have so much fun with my cousins.  Dusty and I are finally at the stage in life where we seem to really like each other.

So, long story short, it's not 100%.  My family may never be close like so many of the families I see/know, who spend all day on holidays laughing together and making memories and all that Hallmark-card-type stuff, but things are better now than they were before.  Possibly than they've ever been.

It's progress.  And for that, I am thankful.

Three pictures from tonight.

Dusty and I sat on the couch for a while after dinner taking selfies. Food coma euphoria. ;)

me and Brianna. she turns 15 in February, and I am old.

for some reason, to me, we both look much older than we are. (Dusty's 23. we're the June babies of the family.)

And with that, I bid you adieu.  It's time for me to dope myself up on some Benadryl and go to sleep. Early day tomorrow!