Friday, November 23, 2007

Fall Festivities

[Welcome, visitors from Scribbit! If you want more holiday tales, you can always check out this post, or this one. Or any post from any December, really. Go ahead - it's free!]

We got up bright and early last Thanksgiving Day - not voluntarily, of course, but when you manage to get your 2-year-old to bed by 7 in the evening, you've got to accept that she is going to be chirping merrily in your ear around 6:30 AM. I went downstairs full of plans to make the house presentable and to finish cooking the dinner for our guests. Larry, it seems, had no such concerns about holiday hospitality. I mean, unless he felt that painting the front door this morning was the best way to show people how welcome they are in our house on Thanksgiving. So he painted for a while, and then he decided to while away some more time chipping off the extra concrete around the front stoop railings. A must-do item on anyone's get-ready-for-Thanksgiving list, I'm sure.

When is a day off not a day off? When I do all the things I normally do, plus try to keep the kids from wrecking Daddy's home improvement project. And I can't even go out tomorrow, as I have no desire to be mingling with all the crazies who get up at 4 AM to purchase some special at Best Buy or WalMart. (My apologies to any crazies who may be reading this, but really - you are freakin' nuts.)

Where was I? Oh, yes, our arsenic-phobic neighbor and her husband decided not to come over. I'm betting she heard that I cook the turkey in one of those plastic oven bags and decided not to risk it. The meal wasn't all I had hoped, as I managed to dry out the turkey and oversalt the stuffing. But no matter - I was so sick of all the food after cooking for 3 days straight that I had no desire to eat any of it anyway. My parents and my brother ate everything politely, and then my brother valiantly read several Curious George-type books to Rachel. I don't know how he managed to do that after eating turkey; even without L-tryptophan coursing through my bloodstream, I start falling asleep halfway through any of those stories. A weird, drugged sort o sleep, that I imagine to be kin to the feeling you'd get if you were slowly being poisoned by carbon monoxide.

Maybe it's old age. Or, perhaps, just a surfeit of parenting.

I don't want any more food ever. Well, except vanilla ice cream. I want that. Maybe I'll ask Larry to go out and get some. 7-11's open, right?

Oh, and I need to remember that I shouldn't buy sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving. No one likes them. And the kids just pick the marshmallows off the top. Next year, I'll skip the cooking and the scooping and the mashing and simply throw a bag of mini-marshmallows on the table instead. Problem solved.

13 comments:

  1. Love your marshamllow idea. We cheated this year - paid $59.99 to a local restaurant and they cooked the whole meal - we just picked it up. NO STRESS!!!

    Nice blog - I'll be back!
    Hallie

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's funny - mini-marshmellows!!! Our day was pretty good and my turkey turned out fine. It is too much work for something that lasts only about 20 minutes. See you soon. Kellan

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm with you - I don't understand people who shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It's nuts. No sale is that good.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I make the sweet potatoes just for me...I love 'em! And wouldn't you know it...this year I just made a small batch because I figured no one else would eat them. Everyone scooped them up adn gobbled them down almost before I got a chance to put a small dollop on my own plate!

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    By the way...someone found my blog by Googling your name and then they read through all of my archives over the next few days. So...thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ah, the memories. I haven't had Thanksgiving in over 15 years. Keeping the kids out of Daddy's hair, now that's a fun way of spending the day off. Just think that on Monday they'll be back to school. So, you said over at Diesel's that you want a banner? If you e-mail me, I'll try to explain how I did mine. I asked for help too, but nobody did, so I had a hard time figuring it out, but I finally did (although I'm sure my way is not the most efficient way). We non-tech people have to stick together. My e-mail is esfingecolibri at gmail.com (just substitute the "at" for @, and take out the spaces, I don't want any spammer-robots to get a hold of it).

    ReplyDelete
  6. I got a text at 7:00 AM from a friend who was up and out the door at 4:00 AM. I couldn't even fathom rolling out of bed at 4 let alone getting dressed and shopping.
    Sorry about the dried turkey..that's a bummer but hey they ate it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. WWofW - Don't gloat.

    Kellan - I had the same thought myself.

    Sue - Unless we're just justifying being lazy....

    fmlp - hey! You're stealing my audience!

    theresa - thanks - I'll be in touch with you definitely.

    jen - maybe the draw was that she got to go out without the kids...

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm sure it was all much better than you claim, and everyone appreciated your effort and the company! And KUDOS to you for takign on teh challenge in the first place. I have no desire EVER to be responsible for Thanksgiving dinner. SCARY!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Excellent post! And not just because I agree with everything you said, either!

    ReplyDelete
  10. You are funny!! I hated sweet potatos until my sister made some for me this year. No marshmallows there. I called them candy potatos and even my two year old ate them.
    My husband normally goes out shopping with all the crazies while I stay at home and sleep. This year there weren't any really good deals.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Oh how sad because I LOVE sweet potatoes--and the way I make them they're just glorified dessert :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Love the marshmallow tip! Great post...

    ReplyDelete
  13. I'm not a Fan of Black Friday, either. I'd rather stay home and shop cyber Monday, myself.

    ReplyDelete