Greetings! Thank you for joining me this Saturday, please come in and join me for a quick chat.

This week has thrown me for a loop being Thanksgiving week. The moment I got off work and went out to check on my spinach, lettuce, and tatsoi (bok choy), I immediately thought it was Friday afternoon as opposed to Wednesday afternoon.

I have been covering these veggies and the back garden with 2 layers of frost fabric to help it survive the nights in the low 20’s-degrees Fahrenheit. The temperatures sure dipped fast from the lower 40’s to the low 20’s. I’m glad these veggies are hardy.

There was no Thanksgiving festivities around the house this year – no ham, no turkey, no family gathering. Mom was actually complaining about how none of her family invited us to a Thanksgiving dinner.

Who told you to alienate everyone? I wanted to say but held my tongue.

No one in the family would go to mom for help anymore. They are all afraid of how she’d react as she tends to over-react by about a mile. Instead, they all come to me, which sucks.

I usually tuned into the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade but opted out this year. I knew how mom would react, how she would’ve ruined the entire atmosphere and sour my mood by her complaints about the country becoming too “left”. Just as a side note, she thinks the entire world is becoming too “left” just because people are being more environmentally conscious and raising concerns about climate change. I told her once I believe in climate change and she gave me a lecture on how climate change is a bunch of bull crap.

Sorry for the heavy stuff.

Anyway, I spent Thanksgiving doing a jigsaw puzzle I last tried to complete almost 3 decades ago. I think 6-year-old me would be shocked at the progress I’ve made after 3 days because I remember on my last attempt, I couldn’t even complete the border.

This puzzle is a well-known painting called Picture of Shanghe Market in Pure Brightness, which depicts an open-air market in ancient China. It’s painted with black ink on yellow parchment.

I haven’t done a jigsaw puzzle in 13 years and have completely forgotten how much joy I had doing these puzzles, no matter the difficulty level. I’ve done jigsaw puzzles from a young age and I will probably keep doing them until I can’t.

If you’re in the US, did you feel this year’s Black Friday sales was longer and started sooner? For me, the sale started last weekend. I was able to get a new 5-tier shelf for next year’s seed starting, grow lights for my plants, and other gardening supplies. With a couple of new garden beds I put in this year, I have to start more seeds indoor as well as get some size-appropriate cloth for shade and insect for the spring and summer.

The most exciting thing I got from the sale was a brand-new phone with a $200 price drop from the original price. My current phone will be 5-year-old in a few months. From my past experience, electronics nowadays usually only lasts about 5 years, so I better get a new phone before this one truly fails.

I also had to get a new battery and SSD hard-drive for my laptop. It’s only been a year and my laptop is already running out of space. It gave me quite a fright when a message popped up telling me the battery has failed. Though I don’t think it’s failed, I will keep a backup battery in case. I do hope I can get the IT people at work to swap out the drive for me, though. I don’t have the expertise, the tools, nor the nerve to go through the process.

#weekendcoffeeshare is hosted by Natalie of Natalie the Explorer. I appreciate you stopping by. Until next we chat. 🙂