Every family has traditions.  Even if their tradition is to not follow any traditions.

We’re still working on ours.  It seems time is never on our side.

One of our best traditions is planning to buy a tree the day after Thanksgiving.  Notice I said “planning”.  We plan for it.  We tell each other adamantly, “Don’t forget, we have to go tree shopping the day after Thanksgiving.” at least once a week starting about the middle of October.

Last year, we didn’t even buy a tree.  We just weren’t into Christmas.  The year sucked and October and November sucked and December consisted of us trying to pull ourselves back together again.  Licking wounds and clinging to each other for dear life.

But we’ve never actually bought a tree on the day after Thanksgiving.  Not once.  Something always prevents us from doing so.  And we laugh about it every year.  How we planned to start a tradition and every year something got in the way.

Master’s trying to start a new tradition.  Each of us cooks a big dinner on the weekend.  Tonight, He decided, is His night.  Chicken curry, vegetable curry and rice. 

I know what you’re thinking.  Didn’t He make that recently?  Well, He made beef curry, but yes.  It’s not that He can’t cook anything else.  He can and, I dare say, He’s better at it than me.  We just don’t eat Indian food all that often and He likes cooking it.  And I wanted to try chicken curry.  I’ve never had it.

Tomorrow night, I’ll be making stuffed shells.  We haven’t had them in a long while.  I’m cheating, though.  I’m using Ragu cause we already had it (it was on sale this week so it was cheaper than making sauce) and instead of shredded mozzarella, I’m using slices.  So there won’t be any mozzarella in the shells.  But that’s a-okay with me cause at the meat market we bought honest-to-goodness, from-the-local-dairy ricotta cheese and not the crap at big box stores.

Monday night, I’m cooking that sirloin.  I haven’t decided what I’m making with it yet.  But it might be a side of leftover vegetable curry and garlic mashed potatoes.

I’m hoping there will be leftover steak for breakfast on Tuesday.  Master loves having steak and eggs over easy for breakfast.  And I kind of like it, too.

Another Christmas-type tradition we have is buying a new ornament every year.  We did that last year.  I refused to let it slide.  We were at the TSO concert and Master said something about having enough money to go to Denny’s for a midnight snack or buying an ornament.  And my eyes locked on the new ornament.  And I refused to let that slide.  But it was fine because, though He really wanted to take me out to eat, He wanted the ornament, too.

We’re trying to find things to just bring us together on a regular basis.  Give us a chance to reconnect and relax and remember how good it is most of the time.

There are all sorts of festivals downtown all summer.  It takes us, maybe, twenty minutes to get down there. Since most of them are right after Master gets out of work, I meet Him at work and we walk home after.

And our favorite restaurant has decided to stay open for some of the festivals.  So we stopped in for dinner Friday night on the way home.  They made some kick ass sandwiches and strawberry shortcake.  I’ve never had it on a biscuit before.  Bizarre, right?

He bought me a pretty!  Something we totally don’t need and really shouldn’t have bought and I’m kicking myself for showing interest instead of sticking to my original “I make my own candles.  That’s all I really need.” defense grateful that He tugged me to a stop and thought it was as cool as I did.

It’s basically an oil diffuser.  But they’ve fancied it all up with “mineral rocks” and a fake candle LED bulb inside glass painted to look like a candle.  And hummingbirds.

And now that I think of it, it was my grandmother who started my obsession with birds.  She used to collect all kinds of glass birds.  But lifelike ceramic birds were her favorite.

I’m rambly today.  But Master’s rescuing me from myself and telling me to get my butt on the couch for some TV time.  Have a great night everyone.