I wish I could say it was a great thanksgiving. It certainly seemed like it should have been. I wasn't expecting it to be anything but a really nice holiday, which is probably why I took it so hard when it wasn't.

I was two hours late picking up spouse, just because I knew Daniel was also coming over and I needed to make sure the spare room was clean and vacuumed and the sheets were in the dryer before I left. There was just a lot to do, in addition to food prep. I had to disassemble my whole living room setup and fix it up for company. It was just one of those days when you go to use something and the battery decides that it needs replacing right this very now. Or you get to the car and realize you need to get gas. Just constant little hiccups.

Driving the beltway the evening before thanksgiving is something I can now check off my bucket list. That was super fun - only two close call accidents. So I'm white knuckling it on the drive there expecting some lulu to careen into me, trying to make sure I follow the spaghetti noodle routing through the packed highways. I get down there and poor spouse - he'd been waiting for me outdoors for 2 hours. There wasn't anywhere better nearby for him to go, unfortunately. Spouse is pretty cold resistant and the weather wasn't bad, but still, not a great start.

We get back and Daniel is waiting for us, so I was glad I took the time to make sure the spare room was in order before I left.

Spouse seemed kind of tired and subdued but I did leave him in the cold for 2 hours so I figured he just needed some time to warm up, say hello to the kitties and see all the thanksgiving preparations I'd been up to. He's not a petty person so the delayed pickup shouldn't be grudge-worthy.

I get up the next morning and start doing thanksgiving stuff at 7am. I set out coffee and start working on the snack platters. Takes me a few hours to get everything perfectly laid out with the drink options and the bucket of ice and everything. Nobody seems to care but whatever, it's only morning. So I get the greenery out of the fridge where I'd stored it and work on making a little centerpiece wreath. The snipped leaves didn't stay as fresh as I'd hoped, but it was good enough. I sit on the couch and stitch the greenery together with needle and thread. Spouse and Daniel are doing their own individual thing and don't pay any attention to me. And that becomes the theme of the day. I am busy working on food or whatever all alone and nobody tries to have a conversation with me or remark on what I've set out. I'd asked spouse to make a list of movies to watch, which he didn't do, and he just gave the DVD binder to Daniel to flip through. Like, ouch.

The cricket bread got a little bit of interest. Nobody gave a shit about the turkey or anything else. Everything came out really good, too. (Except oddly the mashed potatoes were not my best.) It was just really sad and deflating. I tried really hard to make everything nice and I think I'd have gotten the same response with a discount bucket 'o slop from walmart. The whole dinner had all the celebratory cheer of a hospital cafeteria meal and there didn't seem to be anything I could do to fix it.

After dinner I needed a nap because I'd been on my feet all day. When I got back up an hour later, nobody had thought to clear the dishes or put anything away. I got to work doing the dishes and whatnot and by the time the kitchen was clear I was too tired to make dessert. I fixed everyone a man 'o war thinking maybe a little bourbon would add some social lubricant or at least spark some conversation. "Hey, I think I hate bourbon!" Nobody said thank you or anything. Nobody gave a shit. There were cocktail swords with fancy cherries. Nobody cared.

Friday was more of the same, except I gave up on trying to encourage social interaction and just accepted my role as kitchen drudge. Daniel left Friday evening. I went to bed early. Thurs and Fri were my predicted lunar holidays and I started getting a headache friday.

I got up Saturday after a night of bad sleep and decided I was going to finish the mural, dammit. Who cares if spouse isn't excited about it, I'm putting a mural on the ceiling. So I put the couch back up and got the mural stuff out. I don't remember how the conversation started but I got into it with spouse, about how much work I put into thanksgiving and how terrible it was and how ignored I felt. He couldn't even pick some movies. I'm all upset and crying on the mural. "Why did you even come home for thanksgiving?" I asked him. "It's the easiest holiday ever, all you have to do is show up and enjoy and be happy." I told him if he wanted to punish me for planning something nice, he did a great job. And I called him a jackass. He said he was sorry and he just zoned out. He did seem truly sorry. He told me I was the most important person in his life. We made up. I had a good nap, and the headache faded. We watched the Wheel of Time series, and Hawkeye, and I finished painting the mural and put in most of the strings for the ornaments.

Then sunday morning came. We'd made tentative plans to see French Dispatch in the theater, but when I reminded spouse I could tell he had forgotten. It wasn't in the local theaters anymore anyway. So we left to take him back and I realized I was still really hurt about the whole thing. The dominoes had fallen and an apology can't put them back. I was really, really hurt. I worked so hard and put so much thought into trying to have a nice thanksgiving. Spouse hasn't been home in two months. He knew I was excited. I just made a fool of myself running around trying to make something special. It hurts more because I hadn't considered the possibility it would flop. Like, how stupid am I? How can I ever get excited about putting on another celebration like this again?

The drive was very quiet. Maybe spouse just thinks all my ideas are stupid. Maybe it's better to shut up. I'm used to muffling myself around, well, everyone but spouse. I can tell when people don't care and that's fine. I like chattering about my latest weirdness but I don't want to bore anyone. But with spouse it felt like I could be more open and he was interested. I've been sharing dumb stories about my driving failures and cat photos and whatnot with him this whole time because I thought it would help to keep him hooked in to what was going on. I'd text him the same stuff I'd say to him if he were in the living room. But now it just seems like I was an inconvenience or an annoyance. Who cares about some stupid cat photos, honestly. He knows what the cats look like. There's nothing terribly interesting about my life right now. I was working on thanksgiving stuff the whole past two weeks and obviously nobody gave a shit about it. It just seemed like maybe I had assumed goodwill that wasn't actually there. And that's a bit devastating, to realize maybe the oddness that was all you had to share with your partner wasn't wanted. All I have right now is my weird perspective. I can't borrow a personality with money or friends or social media drama or work stuff or whatever.

Anyway I pretty much cried the whole drive home. I got in bed and slept and slept. I had to get cat food on monday so I managed to run that errand, but whenever I tried to do more I just ran out of steam. Why bother.

I'm not mad at spouse, I'm just so hurt and disappointed. I am really, really hurt. I didn't think I could fail at this thanksgiving, when we've been apart for two months. I have no idea what I could have done differently to make it better. It wasn't perfect but it was pretty damn good, and I put so much thought and effort into it. I tried to be frugal with my choices (cricket flour aside). I used old curtains for the tablecloths and I got a lovely tablerunner off amazon warehouse for $8, normally $30. I got nice serving stuff from the thrift store. I made the centerpiece out of stolen greenery. I used the cleanest kitchen towels for napkins instead of buying new. It was a really pretty table.

What a waste. I seriously could have gotten tubs of premade food product from walmart, dumped them in a feeding trough, thrown some spoons on the table and saved myself a shitton of work. Seems like all I did for three days was cook and wash dishes off in the kitchen where I couldn't hear anything or participate. I hate cooking and I hate washing dishes, but it would have been worth it if everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Instead it got all the welcome of soggy cold fast food delivery that got dumped on the doorstep. Nobody helped me (to be fair, the kitchen is too small for multiple people, but I would have appreciated the offer).

I've had better, more cheerful thanksgivings when I was single and alone, seriously.

Now I have this second turkey in the freezer, supposedly for christmas, but I have no desire to pull together another feast in a month. I don't know what I am going to do with it.

I didn't text spouse until monday evening. Normally I would at least let him know I made it home without a crash. I didn't want to deliberately ignore him and drag out the drama but I don't know what to say to him. He said he slept poorly sunday night and I replied it was because there were no kitties there. He said that me being angry at him makes him anxious and he wanted to know what he could do. I said I wasn't angry at him (I'm not - spouse is a very honest person and I value that, but the double edge means he won't fake thanksgiving excitement he doesn't have - can't really be mad about an honest person being honest) I was really sad because it seemed like I was just cluttering up his life with dumb garbage. He said that it wasn't true, that he liked the stories and cat photos, but he is terrified of failing the training. He has to pretend he likes his classmates and his roommate is always watching foxnews or football. Spouse is more extroverted than I am but he is still pretty introverted, and his idea of a fun sport is larping, def not football. He's out of spoons, he says. He wants to come home on the weekends more often but apparently he saw a guy fail out already because he went home on the weekends and slacked off.

So I guess this is the stress of the new job/training/moving situation bubbling up.

Anyway I told spouse he should come home but just stay off the computer. He could do arts & crafts projects or a jigsaw puzzle or something. He gets in this rut of playing civ (which is what he did on thanksgiving) and tunes everything out. Like he swears civ isn't his depression game but it totally is. He gets anxious and he binges civ. No more civ until after the move, I say. I ordered him a jigsaw puzzle. We have a billion minis he could paint. We do not lack for crafty options.

He has a big test tomorrow. I've offered to bring him home this weekend but he wants to see how he does.

I considered throwing the mural in the dumpster but I still like it as an alternate christmas tree idea and want to see it out. Spouse doesn't seem to care but whatever, he's not home, I do what I want. I finished painting the night sky and it came out all right. I think it could have been better, now that I know some tricks, but it's good enough. Some parts are quite lovely. I got the UV paint and used an old toothbrush to splatter stars all over it. This didn't work as well as I hoped. It looked perfect when fresh but the paint dries transparent and loses some of the brilliance. I ended up painting in some stars with regular white paint and a paintbrush (tedious) and then I had to go back over the whole thing with more UV paint. I'd got an assortment of syringes for craft purposes with different blunt metal tips. The best way to make perfect dots for stars was to use one of the syringes, load it with UV paint, and then dot the paint with the fine metal tip. A fat blob of paint dries more opaque and has more glowing power, even better if laid over a white paint mark.

To hang the ornaments I cut a 3' piece of super cheap filament rope (I don't even know where this rope came from, leftover from something) and unwove the fibers. Basically same as fishing line. I have a reel of fishing line but I'd have to find it and then cut 50 individual 3' pieces. I got a pack of large beads and threaded a bead at the end of each filament and tied a knot. Then I used an awl to poke a hole in the mural, fed the end of the filament from the backside to the front side, and held it in place with a dab of white glue. The bead on the backside anchors the string and keeps it from pulling through. I'm only hanging lightweight paper ornaments so it doesn't have to be heavy duty.

The cats fucking love bead on a string. I had trouble keeping them off the mural at this point. Bead on a string blew their little kitten minds and they are all about it.

I wanted to get spouse to help me hang the mural before he went back, but it didn't happen, so I did it myself. I knew the hardest part would be making sure the hook alignment was straight. I figured out where I wanted the centerline to be and I taped a piece of string at the top of one wall and used that as a straight guideline, running across the ceiling through the spot where I wanted the mural. Then I measured off the hook location from that. I used 6 cup hooks, 4 for the corners and 2 to stabilize the center. I'd used the awl to punch double holes at reinforced points in the mural and looped heavy craft thread through the holes. Wire or ribbon would have worked too, but thread is easy to knot and I already had some out in a navy color. The project has to be lightweight, so heavy thread should be plenty sturdy.

Then I lifted the whole thing up and hooked the thread loops in the cup hooks. It went easy enough. I was worried that the unbalanced load of the mural on just one or two hooks would be too much strain and pull them out before I could get all 6 hooks engaged, but they held up fine.

So it's on the ceiling now. Big mural painting thing on the ceiling, with fishing line strings dangling from it. I can see how it could be improved, but I think it's pretty rad. The UV light really brings out the glowing stars, and, as a happy accident, the cloud paper I used in the center of the mural glows through some spots of the paint layer like a real nebula. Can't see it in normal light, but it adds real depth like the iridescence in an opal gem.

Now I just need to make a bunch of paper star ornaments. If spouse comes home for the weekend I know how to keep him busy.

So the grey project has been going about a week now and it seems to be okay. I have no guilt about it because the whole thanksgiving fiasco just emphasized the importance of maintaining my individual identity, separate from spouse. Even if he's not interested in stuff like ceiling murals, I gotta do what I do. Thanksgiving is such a collective holiday that it almost loses meaning to the individual. I went all in on that group experience and got curb stomped. But I am still my own person, outside of marriage and family and friendships, and that is something worth remembering and being grateful for. I am only controlled and limited by the outer collective as much as I feel like it.

It's not bad to feel sad now and then. The emotions themselves are not "bad" and I'm not ashamed of having them. It's not "bad" to have the experience of holding them.

Not sure when I'll be up to making another big dinner, though. Next thanksgiving might be a "your turn, spouse".

So that's that. At least I got all the leftovers, I guess.