Thanksgiving week

 A series of powerful storms are passing overhead.  Streets are flooded and highways are closed around here.  High winds have blown over trees – none near me, thankfully.

Monacita, who used to work with me at the Oregon Zoo and now lives and goes to Grad school in San Diego, and who introduced me to OD, is in town this week, and we are meeting at Mike’s Drive In, which has some of the best hamburgers in the area.  Conveniently for us, it is Family Night there too, and the otherwise sort of expensive burgers are cheaper.  They have good milkshakes there too, but I may pass on one myself – I’m cold enough as it is.  I missed her last visit – I had to work all that week, but it’s been a very slow week for work, and today would be my normal day off anyway.

On that subject, work did call today and there is work for me tomorrow; four charter buses are going to one of the Private Schools we serve and taking kids to two places – I’ll be taking a busload of kids roller skating.

My parents died when I was 15, and I lost most of the rest of the family too, most especially my father’s side of the family.  I last saw my aunt and uncle at dad’s funeral, in 1977, but after that, I had no contact with anyone on that side of the family tree.

In 2009, 32 years later, a cousin on that side of the family discovered my name on Classmates dot com, where I had been registered since I got online in 2000.  A couple of people have found me that way – a cousin on mom’s side found me that way too, and I drove down to Southern California for New Year’s Day 2009, and saw, at the same time, my brother, whom I had lost for 18 years.  A friend of his had found me on Classmates in 2007, but we had not seen each other since 1988.

Thursday, the cousin who found me in 2009, and who lives all of ten miles away, is taking me and his wife up to her parent’s house in Washington for a family Thanksgiving.  That has been a welcome routine since 2009 – I’m not alone and family-less any more.  I have had worse holidays than this one will be, and although Perspective is nice ( is Everything, really) I am glad that this year I am not "the cat who walks alone".

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