How I spent my first Thanksgiving

There should be an "Away From Home" in that title. Unfortunately, I don't have that many keystrokes in the title.

I had a good one. That's the short answer.

The long answer is this: for the first time in my 30 years I did not celebrate an important holiday with my folks. Aly and I went to her parents' house in Franklin where we had the annual turkey day meal. They had a lot of the same stuff the Magranes had, an antipasto course (which was awesome), turkey, peas (DelMonte especially for me), cranberry sauce. But they also had this mashed potato dish made with cheddar cheese and sour cream and sweet potatoes with marshmellows. So good.

It was just me, Aly, her dad, her mom, her grandmother, Bob and Lauren. All we did was watch football and eat.

Yesterday Aly had a bad day. It's odd but there are two things that I really have to get used to about being in a relationship. The one thing is, when she's in a bad mood, inevitably I'm in a bad mood. I'm not saying that she intentionally pisses me off, but I really feel bad for her. And when something is troubling her, it's troubles me too.

And it works in opposite ways: as in when I'm ticked off, she usually gets mad. This is sort of a weird phenomena for me, I'm so used to being solo, when I'm mad, I'm mad that's it. I don't have to worry about someone else also getting angry or sad because I happen to be feeling that emotion.

It's sort of nice to have a symbiotic relationship with someone. I guess that's what people mean when they say, "Two people have become one."

The other thing that I wonder about is money. It's no longer her money or my money, it's really our money. And since she makes more than me (even though she lost her job) I'm cool with it, though sometimes I fall into the trap of "Hey! That's my money." And this isn't to say that Aly spends all of my cash, because she doesn't. While I am the cheap one in the relationship (a title I hold near and dear to my heart) Aly isn't exactly Paris Hilton either.

I was doing some thinking about this in the shower today (where this inner monologue was MUCH better) and I've come to the conclusion that I feel this way because I am the first child and very territorial. That toy was mine, this toy was Jay's. That shirt was mine, this shirt was Jay's. And so forth. We shared, of course we did, but my toys were always in better condition because I took care of them.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the hell I'm trying to say, like I said, in the shower today I thought I had a truly profound point, but it's turned to shit now. I am very happy with the way things are going, but I guess sometimes I fall back to my old, bachelor habits. Oh well that's what three or four beers will do to your thought process, it makes it less lucid.

I'm going to be pumped tomorrow. Aly is going dress shopping all day which means I have a chance to finish up my comic strip. I've been corresponding with a dude from SOSH who is writing a graphic novel (his name on SOSH is Shoeless Joe) and he's been giving me some awesome advice. His best advice so far is: make sure that you set some time every day to do your comic. Otherwise, he said, you're never going to do it. And he's right. For the past two weeks I've been like, "I'll do it next Saturday. I'll do it next Saturday." I don't do it.

It has to be a strong decision to make this strip work. Tomorrow I will.

Anthony, Stacy's boyfriend, asked me if I wanted to bounce at the Pour House tomorrow night. It is from 8 pm until 2 am at $10 an hour. I was going to do it, but I have to be in South Hampton, NH at 10 am on Saturday for Brownie's grandmother's funeral. I asked him if I could do it another night and I think he said it would be cool. He has been trying to get me a gig there bar tending, but I'm not sure if I want that. I'd rather bounce, even though the money is better as a bartender.

Maybe I can work my way up to that.