I swear, I don’t know where the time goes. Here we are, closing in on Thanksgiving, and the Christmas decorations are already out everywhere – and next weekend it will be the Christmas Tree lighting in Bulverde. Since my daughter has decided that Bulverde is the place that she eventually wants to be in (mostly for the school district) we do take an interest in civic festivities going on there. Hope it is cold enough for the snow-making machinery this year. We plan to dress Wee Jamie in his elf costume again.

Anyway, Jamie’s preschool is out for the entire week. The staff held a pie social for kids in each class and their parents on Friday afternoon; we all went out to the landscaped playground and had pie, before taking the kids home for a week of shopping, feasting and general frivolity.

Saturday – we went around to a selection of our usual grocery stores for what we desperately hope will be the last time we need to run out to the grocery store before Thanksgiving. Every year we say this, and every year we wind up running out for something at the last minute …

Anyway, the turkey is already set. HEB had a coupon last week: buy one of their spiral sliced hams and get a frozen turkey of under 12 pounds for free! Yeah, can’t beat that deal with a stick. $24 for the ham – which got parted out, vacuum-sealed for the freezer for future meals and the bone consigned to a batch of ham and bean soup – and the turkey is thawing now in the refrigerator. We’ll mix up the brine tomorrow, and brine it for another three days.

Cosco first thing Saturday wasn’t too horrific – we escaped with a gargantuan tin of Walker’s Shortbread (the real stuff, imported from Scotland.) I think eventually the tin will contain either sewing stuff, or maybe odds and ends of hardware, screws and plate hangers in the garage. Nice cookie tins have an afterlife of centuries. There is an ornate tea tin knocking around our family which is going on a second hundred years, as it managed to survive the 2003 fire … and if it is still at my sisters’ house, the Eaton Canyon fire earlier this year.

My daughter also bought a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce at HEB which had a translated label which amused us no end. Apparently, it translates as “Salsa Inglesa”

As for Thanksgiving supper itself – all the customary dishes that we do like – the oven-roasted brussels sprouts with onion and kielbasa sausage, baked sweet potato streusel, mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy, with pumpkin pie for dessert – this time made with the little pumpkin that Jamie painted at nursery school for their Halloween bash. The parents were asked to contribute small pumpkins – so, when it was brought home, I washed it off, cut it in half, cleaned out the seeds and baked it until it was soft and mushy. Then vacuum-sealed and frozen.

The only bafflement, grocery-wise this week was the total inability to find frozen artichoke hearts anywhere at all. It’s kind of an esoteric item, but HEB usually has them, and Trader Joe’s almost always … but still, nowhere to be found anywhere lately. I wonder if there was a bad harvest year for the artichoke crop that usually gets frozen for sale.

So that’s how it stands this weekend – a rainy one, as it turns out. I am working away on the Return to Flannel Romance, which I plan to release as a reader’s Christmas present – on Christmas Eve, I think. My daughter says she will laugh and laugh and laugh, if it turns out to be the most popular of all my books…