Sunday, December 5, 2010

Thanksgiving Hoopla

I'm not sure why, but posting this has been stuck in my brain and can't seem to get onto the page.  Maybe because the drama that some people thought would ensue did not.  I know some of you have the music all set to crank up when you do the I told you so dance, but really, there's not a lot to tell.  I could make up stories about the turkey being done at midnight on Thanksgiving, so we were forced to gnaw on the railing that s-ster just installed.  I could tell you that we got into such a brawl over something trivial that we will never be allowed back.  I could say that the sisters made such embarrassments of themselves that the men left and didn't come home until they were stinking drunk.  I could say that k-ster and I had to pull over on the highway because we were having such a fight that no one could drive.  I could tell you those all of those things, but they would not be true.  There seems to be a myth in my family that when I am involved in something with one or both of my sisters, it can only end in pure ugliness.  Not true, not true, not true.

For those who just tuned in, k-ster and I drove to my sister a-ster's house for Thanksgiving this year.  My sister e-ster was here with her boyfriend and my parents were in Florida with my mother's brothers and their wives.  So, we had family togetherness, just not the normal family togetherness we usually have.  A-ster and s-ster (yes, s-ster welcome to the blog.  I know you've been waiting  with baited breath and you've finally made it~!) live, let's say,  in the middle of the country.  I flew down in July to help them move and thought maybe joining them for Thanksgiving would be fun and certainly cheaper than flying to Florida, as we usually do every other year.  I thought it would be fun to drive, since flying really wasn't such a hoot in July.  Remember when flying was hassle free?  And we'd have our own vehicle in case we had to make a break for it so we could do things at our leisure.

The ride there wasn't bad at all. One toll, not too much traffic, pretty scenery.  Really, no biggie.  I hate to drive and go on long rides, but this was ok.  I did have a moment when I regretted my decision to try to crochet and had to stop all movement for a while and get my head back from its state of near nausea.  I thought I might have outgrown that carsick feeling from reading and crafting, but, no such luck.  We got there at supper time, my father's favorite way to estimate time.  We'd always be somewhere by supper time.  Or we'd be back by supper time.  We always eat supper, not dinner.  A-ster made supper that night.  I'm not used to her fancy cooking, so I wasn't sure what to do when she served this.  Was it soup?  K-ster hates soup, what am I going to tell her???


Just kidding, that was the turkey brining overnight.  Can you see how big that bird is for just 4 people??? It was 21 pounds!  She got it from a farm down the road, so we know where it came from and that was cool.  I was expecting some skinny thing because she ordered it in July, when they were still chicks. I figured they'd be half grown by now. I didn't expect anything like this.  I will say that turkey is turkey, but the thing I noticed about this one is that NO ONE smelled like turkey for the rest of the day.  One of the things I hate about Thanksgiving is that once you're done and people start digesting, that's all you smell for days to come.  Not this bird.  We ate it the next day and night too, same thing.  And I stole some for the ride home.  No problems there either.  So, lesson learned.  To keep from stinking up the car smelling like turkey, don't eat commercially grown birds.

I don't think I talked much about the surroundings of a-ster and s-ster's house, so I'll elaborate here.  I think k-ster was as surprised as I was the first time I saw it.  I had expected somewhat of a classy place, being that they were so excited to be moving, but I had to bite my tongue when I saw it.  Even this time, it sort of took my breath away.  She'd told me they had done some work on it and  I realized they did try to jazz it up, what with all of that lawn ornamentation.
You can take the girl out of the trailer park , but you just can't take the trailer living out of the girl.

Ok, ok, I kid.  On their side of the street, all of the houses look like this.
No, this is not their actual house, so if you are googling it so you can go and steal all of their belongings, you lose.  This is on their street, not their actual house.  These are what I consider normal houses, on a normal street.  Why the aforeshown mobile home is 1/4 mile down that same road, and the only one on that road, is a mystery to me. Especially mysterious since right across their street, all of the houses look like this.
It's kind of strange neighborhood, architecturally speaking.  Giant mcmansions on the right, normal one story houses on the left.  Rolling hills and what looks like it might have been farmland on the right, portioned lots with fenced yards on the left. And a random mobile home that has 2 other trailers beside it(you can't really see them off to the right), kind of like in-law apartments.   I went out for a walk on Thanksgiving and took these pictures.  It was a gray day, cold, and not so great.  It was only when I came up on this that I knew why they chose this street.
Yes, it's a mess.  Ramshackle remains of buildings.  Right next to the mobile home.  A lot like some of the yards we know around here.  This could be the yard we grew up in or it could be Audrey and Alec's.  You don't need to know who they are because they are long dead and gone, but we know and someone is smirking right now because they know how true this is.  So, while I puzzle over how someone can move as many times as she has and know that this is the place she wants to stay for a while, I  find reasons for what makes it all tick.  It must be that she knows if she gets homesick, she can just walk down the road and get lost in a field of rundown crap and she'll almost feel like she's 8 again.  .  Or maybe it's this.

The proverbial ditch.  This is so foreign to us around here.  We have nothing like this on our streets.  No drainage ditches, just drains right on the side of the road.  These always remind me of my cousin's house in Louisville because that is probably the first time I saw them.  All I kept thinking about was snakes must live there.  And small children must crawl into those tunnels.  And now my sister has one right across the street from her.  Maybe she likes the thrill of never knowing what might crawl out of it.  Or maybe that she will sleep walk one night and fall into it and she'll have a great story to tell about the night she fell in the ditch.  Or maybe she'll have a golfcart some day and end up driving right into it like some friends of ours did in Florida once.  Or maybe so she will be able to tell her kids to stay away from the ditch and say it in horror or italics every time like it's really the scariest place on earth.

So, Thanksgiving was a day of cooking (for a-ster), correcting papers (for me) and watching football (for the boys and for a-ster for about 10 minutes).  In a-ster's kitchen, only a-ster lifts a finger.  I washed a dish and two mugs and that was all I was allowed to do.  She didn't want help, so I sat at the table and graded a mountain of papers.  And marveled that she has this great counter/cutting area because I like space to cook and this is space.

We had turkey, two kinds of stuffing (one had hamburger, so I didn't have it), potatoes, winter squash, Brussels sprouts, green bean casserole and cranberry sauce.  I think there must have been another dish but I can't remember what it was. I didnt' have the green bean casserole until the following day because I just don't think cheese belongs on the Thanksgiving table.  Plus I think it was even better the next day because anything with cheese is better on day 2.  We ate some time after the game, it was dark, so I have no idea what time it was.  Then we finished the meal with a fabulous Italian concoction.  It's called something di pepe (aci? api?  I forget).  It's like ambrosia with little pepe which is pasta that looks like tapioca.  It's custardy with canned fruit and the little pepe.  FAB-U-LOUS and truly better on day 2 and probably even better on day 3.  Again, not Thanksgiving like, but I couldn't resist.  Later, we had dessert which was either apple or pecan pie, or both.

We went to the zoo on Friday, instead of shopping like those other maniacs out there.  I am sure the traffic we drove in was caused by the nut jobs who were trying to get a bargain.  You might be surprised that I like zoos, being so nature loving and crunchy as I am.  But I just can't resist a zoo, especially if I think the animals are being treated OK, which I think they were at this one.  And it was free, so what's better than a free trip to the zoo?  That night, we drove to a big park that had those big light displays and you drive through and see them.  It was fun and not so cheesy like the one I went to here one time.  It was cheesy, dont' get me wrong, but it wasn't 1970s cheesy like the one I went to here.  This was just corny.  The one I went to here had lights that looked like they were from 1970 and needed some serious updating.

And that was it. Then it was home on Saturday.  Another harmless drive.  K-ster didn't threaten to leave me at a rest area.  I didn't tell him that if he didn't slow down I was going to jump out of the car.  We did hit more traffic than I expected for a Saturday and since we came home a different way, we paid tolls up the butt.  But it was slightly faster so now we have to decide which way is better if we drive next time.

See, we didn't get into trouble, so there will be a next time!

So, put away the I told you so music and save it for another time.

3 comments:

  1. Funny post. You had me going there. I'm so glad it was lovely.

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  2. I'm guessing 21 pounds is a big bird...I guess so, I pushed an 8 pounder out and that felt big enough...
    I don't think I could have eaten him though having seen him all cute and chick like at the farm...I prefer my turkeys to be total strangers when I pour gravy on them.
    PS: You can still love me, my Ugg boots don't stink!

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  3. I'm glad you made it through without incident so you can get an invite for next year. I think people are free to put up a trailer wherever they want in most communities, even if it doesn't seem to fit in with the McMansion set.

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