Thanksgiving

Sometimes I get the amusing sensation that The Sims is a little truer to life than one might think.

I have a lovely bouquet of anniversary flowers sitting on my kitchen table and the room is lovely and clean and newly organized. My mood rises briefly and noticeably as I pass through it en route to the bathroom, just like a Sim character's Environment meter soars when it walks through a room that has some nice art in it. My mood then drops back to normal as I walk through the Dude's makeshift studio.

Flowers are charming and pleasant, aren't they? Some people hate them "because they'll just die anyway," but getting flowers is one of my favourite things. They make the apartment smell and look wonderful and they make me smile for days.

We decided that other than spending our non-family-filled Thanksgiving weekend being useful, we would also spend it eating good food, as life intended. For our five-year-anniversary, we went to the Keg Mansion and gorged on steak. We dressed up (though we were seemingly surrounded by yahoos who looked like they should have gone to Pizza Hut instead, in their ball caps, jerseys, hoodies, ripped jeans and bar tops that split open in the back to reveal a turquoise bra) and had a cozy and romantic evening.

The next night, on actual Thanksgiving, the Dude made a delicious beef stew and I made my first ever pumpkin pie. Both turned out quite nicely and we had McPal and his fiance over to join us. Sharing home-cooked meals with friends has become one of our favourite ways to spend an evening.

It wasn't the first time we've spent a family holiday in an less conventional way, that is away from family. We miss them, but it really brings home the fact that he's my family now. I'm home where the Dude is.

There is a point in a relationship where being together is the priority, and that's a beautiful place to be. It's a feeling of being on a team, of being connected, of being a unit. It's the understanding that on important days we're not going our separate ways to do our own thing. It's the sort of unity I've always wanted. In three and a half weeks, it'll be permanent unity.

Wow. That kind of blows my mind a little.