We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at our friends the Rustias with some of their family and some of our other close friends. Four of them, Lois and Ramon, and Mae and Martha, are off to Puerto Rico this coming week to escape the winter. It’s been very mild so to me, it feels silly to flee. But then I generally enjoy winters here. It’s beautiful and intimate and I get a lot of work done. There was more food than a whole busload could eat. In addition to turkey and the usual side dishes, there was a whole table of hors d’oeuvres. I made cranberry-apple sauce. I prefer that to regular cranberry. I confess I made enough to save a bunch out for us. I also made guacamole and chopped liver. Again with the chopped liver, Woody saved some as he’s fond of the way I make it. Finally I made a rum pumpkin pie that even after all the other food, disappeared within minutes. Not a crumb left. It was a delightful Thanksgiving and lots of good food and conversation although I got into an argument with a vet about feral cats, a subject I’ve spent some time studying. He was on the other side of TNR trap neuter release. Community cats like Martha and Mae feed and neuter and notch in Puerto Rico have a right to live out their lives together. The couple collected kittens and found homes for them. By the way, it always astonishes me that people writing about cats go on about how they are solitary creatures when cats generally form communities when feral. I overdid exercising this week so my right knee has been very painful, although it’s easing now. My left knee, the first operation, was successful and strong. The right knee has never stopped hurting although Beth Israel claims there’s nothing wrong with it. Sometimes it hurts only going down stairs. Sometimes it really gets painful as it did this week – but it’s easing and I hope to go back to exercising today. I do a combination of specific knee exercises and weights and a few other types. This week I have finally put away all the light clothes into the hall closet – now almost at the end of November. That’s how mild and sometimes warm this fall has been. It reached 60 yesterday. Now it’s supposed to go down into the 40’s today, finally. All the leaves have fallen but we’re still getting veggies out of the 2 upper gardens. Tonight I’ll make a stirfry with Chinese and red cabbages along with fresh ginger, red onions and mushrooms. I made an interesting dish last night with beef and quinces. It’s called Persian, which of course means it’s Iranian but we don’t like Iran so such recipes are labeled as if from the time of Cyrus. I have been trying to get my office and bedroom in order this week. Things tend to pile up. I only got to write two poems this week. Last night I dreamed I wrote a new short story. My agent still has the last one I wrote, The Service. It’s probably time to take it back and send it out to literary zines. I do mean pile up. There’s a big pile of old sheets on the bedroom floor that have to go off Monday to Joan Norris’s no kill wonderful shelter, The Last Resort. Yesterday I cleared whole snowdrifts of paper from the floor of my office. More today.