Between September and December, people get weirdly territorial about seasonal decor. Most of us fall into one of these camps:

Team This Is Halloween, Everybody Make a Scene: Skeletons and pumpkins on the lawn as soon as the clock strikes September.

Team Mariah: “All I Want for Christmas Is You Trick-or-Treaters Gone”.

Team Turkey: The purists who piously display - and ONLY display - autumn harvest décor until the day after Thanksgiving, and how dare you suggest otherwise.

Team Fuck It, Leave It Up: My neighbor, still rocking his 20-foot Halloween skeleton in his yard on Valentine's Day.

Speaking of timing, there’s also the mysterious tradition of holding Thanksgiving dinner at 2 p.m. So then, do you eat like normal that day, or do you skip lunch and show up hangry in your Sunday best?

Do you eat another “dinner” at 6 pm, or do you just…wake up and eat all day?

So many questions.

Anyway, I’ve always been in that purist group. I prefer the security of the familiar.
The tranquility of repetition. (V for Vendetta coded.)

Thanksgiving first, Christmas later, of course.

The real question is, why the hell do we care this much?

The Nov.1st camp isn't trying to "rush" Christmas; they're lingering in the magic of it. And the purists aren't the fun police; they're protecting rituals that give the season a sense of stability.

So, when I, Team Purist, asked my husband to drag out all the Christmas bins two weeks before Thanksgiving, I had a moment of “God, who am I right now?”

But I didn’t care; I was yearning for magic too.

I’m in a season where I need something, anything, to feel new and lighter. Definitely calmer. I feel like my house absorbed every ounce of the stress of the past few years, and no amount of cleaning is fixing it.

I can’t yet waltz into my favorite Amish furniture store with a wad of cash, as the budget committee (i.e., husband) negotiations are still ongoing.

So I improvised by putting up our tree...and immediately ran out of steam. Chronic insomnia is such a buzzkill.

The Balkan Storm ended up finishing the entire job while I was comatose, sleepbuds in, my face smushed in a pillow. The man deserves a medal, honestly.

But you know what? It helped. I changed something because I couldn’t change everything.

Which, honestly, is exactly how this entire year has gone.

Before I get into the next part, I would say that this piece is just an honest look at what changed this year, whether I was ready or not.

When I started this site, it wasn’t because my life was organized (lol absolutely not) or I was in a place to commit a lot of time to it (also no).

I didn’t even have a specific message; I just figured that if I was dealing with this level of insanity, maybe someone else was too. And if one person read it and thought, “yeah, same,” that would be a good thing.

People have told me for years I should write a book. I love the idea, but the timing isn't right for me now, so I just keep saying, ‘someday.’

So this site became the ‘something instead of nothing’, and I just…told my stories.

Life was nuts, and opinions were plentiful, but readers kept showing up. People I’ve never met, who have zero stake in my life, keep coming back to read the next new thing.

Still wrapping my head around that.

If my life proved anything this year, it’s that things can happen out of order and still turn out better than how I thought they were supposed to go.

There’s probably some bigger takeaway buried in all of this, but I just don’t care enough to keep digging for it; it's Thanksgiving, and I’ve got other things to do.

The Balkan Storm has his first Thanksgiving off since…well, since before we were even married. Our Thanksgiving has always been after 8 pm; life in hospitality is like that, but we make it work.

Guess what time dinner is today? Sometime wildly earlier than that.

And yes, I’m already decorated for Christmas. Both things I have mocked for years.

I’m truly living the bit right now with my stretchy pants on, channeling Fat Thor energy and minding my business.

And although I have no place to judge anyone's decor, I’ll probably still be judging Halloween guy. I can only evolve so much.

Happy Thanksgiving, ya’ll.  

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This is where I'd put something more meaningful if I could think of anything. But I couldn't. See you next week.

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