A combination of not having Dinner last week and having a birthday Dinner this week for someone whose birthday is actually on Thanksgiving, has completely thrown off my sense of time. I keep having to remind myself that it is not the week after Thanksgiving, and that I do not have most of December to go before Christmas. It is, in fact, two weeks to Christmas. It is 10 days until I leave for Christmas to visit my parents, which in turn means that it’s seven days until my mother remembers all the things that she wants me to bring her from the US that she swore she wasn’t going to need this year.