Holidays and book carnage

It's always such a sad thing to get rid of books, at least in my experience. You picture them the first time you held them, crisp-paged and pristine and clean-covered. Now that they are old and dog-eared and have given you all that they can give, it feels like an act of treason to get rid of them, like putting a beloved elderly relative out on an ice flow. I have a stack of books now, spread out over the office floor, like bodies fallen atop each other in the trenches. It's breaking my heart a little.

But when you have 850 square feet for two adults, three cats and one impending baby, then you do what you gotta to have a little more space.

It doesn't make it any easier but it does lead to some funny moments, though. Today James and I cavalierly decided to throw away an entire Hemingway oevre in paperback, but ended up keeping a joke of a self-help book called "You are Worthless" that we got at Spencer's a lifetime ago. One is available at the library, you see, but the other? Who knows if we will ever run into it again! I am also not proud to admit that I got rid of a very serviceable edition of SHAKESPEARE...so that I could keep half a dozen installments in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series.

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I am in grave danger of never updating about James's and my first-ever (and probably only ever) solo Thanksgiving holiday, so I'll tack it onto the end of this entry to make sure it gets covered. We spent Tuesday cooking our feast. Our menu? I'll write it out, all fancy-style, so that it looks most impressive:

Salad of mixed greens with balsamic vinaigrette
Curried pumpkin soup
Roasted red potatoes, red onions and butternut squash
Stuffing*
Turkey**
Chocolate pecan pie

*from a box, though we added red peppers and celery of our own
**Turkey, free-range, organic, heritage breed bought directly from farm that cost $45 for EIGHT POUNDS

We drove down to Luray, VA on Wednesday. Home of the scary Luray caverns that you are forced to visit as a child when you grow up in Virginia. Luray is located in the Blue Ridge mountains, right in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. Our cabin was located atop the highest of these mountains. We drove up and up and up, around twisty switch-backed roads, and I was so carsick. I also, on the way, as the streetlights faded behind me and the 7-11s grew few and far between, realized how much being out in the middle of nowhere scares me. For better or for worse, and as much as I enjoy nature, I am a creature of the city. I'd rather see a rat with a big, fat scaly tail than a fox or a snake or whatever else lives in the woods. Ugh.

Speaking of woods creatures, on Wednesday night, I was relaxing in front of the cabin's HUGE plasma TV when James came in. "Did you get the bags?" I asked him.

"No, and I am loath to go back out there because of the FUCKING BEAR that's out there in the yard," he replied.

It seems funny now, but I have to admit at the time that I was quite upset. I ran around the cabin locking windows, as if the bear could get in that way.

We had a very low key time. We went out to eat Wednesday night at the town's fancy Artisan Grill. The next morning we went to a dingy little diner that I loved. Then we cooked our turkey, ate our dinner, and watched movies the rest of the day. We saw (OK) and The Men who Stare at Goats and (GREAT) I Capture the Castle, based on the Dodie Smith book of the same name. Friday morning we got up early and drove back home. The drive should have taken 2 hours but took 5 because I stopped at every antique store we passed.

So that was our holiday and it was so restful that I don't know how I am going to face next year's drama and sniping and running around like chickens with the heads cut off, but luckily it's a year away. Maybe my entire family and James's will get kidnapped by Colombian drug lords by then.

Here's to hoping!!