My original secret plans for Thanksgiving were to stay home for 4 days with Romeo and play the couch potato, but with his delayed return, the plans had turned out to be 4 days home alone. It may sound great to some of you, but not really to me. Coming from France where there is no such thing as a celebration to give Thanks and eat turkey and cranberry sauce, I don’t particularly see this holiday as a family celebration so I didn’t mind missing out on the turkey event. I did, however want to volunteer my time to help out others. I haven’t done that in a while and it’s good for the soul, particularly on a very wet, lonely day. The idea sounded great, but thanks to some twisted laws in this state, the implementation turned out to be a lot more difficult.

After some 20 unreturned phone calls to local churches and other organizations, I was told that the Hyannis Salvation Army already had too many volunteers, that Falmouth was not hosting a soup kitchen, that most of the non-profits caring for kids had already had their Thanksgiving dinners, and that I should try nursing homes. Nursing home number 1 could not accept my time because I needed to go through some background checks, shots, etc. as a wannabe volunteer and that would take weeks. Nursing home number 2 did not pick up the phone and nursing home number 3 had the nicest activities director, Brad, who was really happy to see some volunteer help come his way.

Well, this was all great until yesterday, when I got a call back from a very disappointed Brad to let me know it would not work out because Massachusetts LAW requires background checks and training for volunteers in nursing homes. I found the legal roadblocks to volunteering rather mindblowing but what was I going to do? Become an illegal volunteer? Back to square 1, except that after kindly making his own 20 calls, Brad had found a camp in Sandwich that would need help. It turned out to be in Mashpee, where I just spent my morning around a bunch of great volunteers, peeling potatoes, carving a Turkey and dishing out meals to be delivered to shelters around the Cape by more volunteers. Why is Massachusetts less worried about my criminal background when I help homeless people than when I help the elderly? Isn’t that some type of discrimination? What if those are elderly homeless people? Shouldn’t MA lawmakers be worried about them too?

I guess, the short story is: if you want to volunteer for Thanksgiving in Massachusetts, plan ahead of time (too many volunteers may secure their spots before you) and make sure your background is clean. Speaking of which, would I pass the background check being from France and all?

Last Friday, Romeo was supposed to fly back from California and after some 3 weeks without seeing him, I had decided I would take the trip all the way to the Big City, namely Boston to pick him up at the airport. With a flight scheduled to arrive around midnight, it would leave me some time to have dinner and catch up with friends. Fate decided otherwise and Romeo would not fly into Boston for another week..

All the excitement of going back to the Big City had been building up and by the time I found out about Romeo, I was just craving Ethiopian food, which is very difficult to find in the bustling metropolis of Woods Hole! Anyway, I wasn’t going to abandon my friends and so I drove up, had a great dinner, some drinks and was invited to stay overnight in the South End, on the same block as Addis Red Sea, the Ethiopian restaurant. Breakfast with friends on a beautiful crisp Saturday morning was great and I decided to spend the day in the city. I went to all my usual places: the Common, Haymarket, Trader Joe’s, Copley Flair (the best place to get cards) and stopped by my old office building to say hi to Mary, the sweetest security guard. Somehow sweet and security don’t feel like they should be in the same sentence, but that’s Mary for you. She is not usually in on Saturdays but that was my lucky day, and I even got to see some of my former colleagues. Some things just never change

I expected the drive back down to my hole/neck of the woods to be rather lonely, but I got a phone call all the way from France. Thanks to my new fancy phone, I got to drive home with Mom and Dad on the speakerphone; not as great as a face-to-face conversation, but you take what you can get.

I am now back in the Hole as people seem to call my new home village, patiently waiting for Romeo to make it back… unless… I drive back to Boston to pick him up? This time, I won’t make any plans… just in case they need to be cancelled… again!