Breaking Dawn - There's a story in all this.

It's breaking dawn, no, not the movie, the time of day. I was sleeping nicely after a frenetic Thanksgiving Day when my presence was requested at the local Home Depot by my wife to come and get "my" ten poinsettias for $1 per plant. Dutifully, I slip out of my heated waterbed and trundle outside to the frost-covered car and drive to the store to help out.

Upon arriving home, I scan the disaster that is my home. After eight hours of cooking two turkeys, 20 pounds of potatoes, making home-made stuffing (3 batches), and enough gravy to float a small boat, I washed and dried dishes for four hours. Sadly, there's still four hours of dish washing to go. I guess that's what happens when you have 26 relatives for the meal and everything is homemade and no automatic dishwasher. The turkey carcasses are being boiled down into broth for the next turkey day in April. We did bag 2,000 caramels in bags last night much to the chagrin of my visiting Wisconsinite nieces. And the Sheepshead card game was lively. It was nice to watch the 85-year-old Alzheimers-afflicted patriarch beat the pants off of his daughter, son, two grand-daughters, and a great-granddaughter (more interested in chewing and drooling on the cards than playing the game). Alzheimer's, such a weird disease. He can't remember what he ate two hours earlier (turkey dinner on Thanksgiving), but knew what each player had in their hand instantly and counted trump without fail.

The sun's up, and now I won't be able to sleep until the circadian rhythms overtake me around 2 p.m. It's a perfect fall day and there are plenty of leftovers for sandwiches, but not for at least a day, I'm full, and I have words to write before I sleep; words to write before I sleep.