We did something unprecedented for Thanksgiving this year: Cute W and I split up. With M in Iowa and J in Massachusetts, neither of them were up for trying to fly over the short-and-hectic holiday weekend. As she has since starting college, M caught a ride with a friend to her grandparents’ house in Kansas City, and this year, Cute W flew out to join her and have some quality time with his family. Meanwhile, J stuck close to home, and I retrieved her so that she and I could host some of my family.
Before he left, Cute W tutored me in his Thanksgiving specialties: pumpkin desserts (I don’t like pumpkin), spatchcocking the turkey, and making coffee, which I rarely drink. I was most intimidated by tackling the turkey, but it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I expected it to be. Cute W usually does it on Thanksgiving day, but I love getting done as much as possible ahead of time, plus I decided I would try to dry brine it, so I took care of it on Wednesday evening.
The next morning, when I opened the fridge, I swear that I gasped and said, “Excuse me!” out loud, because there’s something vaguely obscene about an uncovered bird with its legs spread.
Why does this turkey make me think of a can can girl? I have no idea.
Anyway, my brother and his wife ended up driving up to us a little early because of the weather forecast, and then they got a flat tire along the way, so J couldn’t manage to stay awake to greet them, but we ended up chit-chatting until 2:15 am.
Meanwhile, the cats, who had been vaguely unhappy since their favorite human’s departure (they like Cute W best and I am really very jealous about it. If he is not on the sofa for them to snuggle with by 8:30 pm, they’re clearly disgruntled), abandoned the main floor to hide in our room.
The next morning, there was already snow beginning to stick, and we were all fretting about my sister and her family, who were journeying up from Pennsylvania. They weren’t responding to calls or texts, and my brother and I were beginning to suspect there had been a car accident when we finally heard back from my niece, who reported that while her dad was driving, everyone else in the car had slept almost the entire way up. Now they were only 45 minutes away, and it was time to get out the cheese and other snacks!
Meanwhile, Cute W was fretting because he had not yet prepared the snow blower for winter, and he was sending me screen after screen of text instructions about how to get it ready to use, which I gently thanked him for and told him I was likely just going to ignore. Instead, J went outside with our snow plow and cleared the driveway enough to make it passable.
When my sister and her family arrived, they rushed the coffee machine with a fervor that made me wonder if there is a caffeine 12-step program that they should join, but they soon settled in with helping to get the mashed potatoes going and eating snacks.
I was very glad that my brother was enthusiastic about plunging the turkey with the thermometer, making the “all done” call, and carving the turkey, because that is not my area of strength. My sister had brought along the tofurkey for her crew, and my sister-in-law had made cornbread stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce. While my brother was carving, I was trying to ensure that all of the other dishes were fully warm, baking up the rolls, and almost-but-not forgetting about the canned cranberry sauce. Meanwhile others were getting the table set and lots of candles lit (it was still afternoon, but with the snow it was pretty dark). The turkey was super-juicy, which had my brother and I high-fiving each other. We took a picture of a portion of the buffet because we were proud.
After the meal I didn’t help with clean up at all. Instead, I drank an astonishing amount of Prosecco, sampled three of our desserts (we had pumpkin roll, chocolate mousse, vegan chocolate pie, pecan pie, cherry tart, and whipped cream), and then we ended up juggling room assignments according to each person’s tolerance of cats and each room’s general cat vibes, which meant that I ditched my room to join my daughter and niece in the basement playroom, a veritable hotbed of cat activity.
The next morning I awoke at 7:30 am to the sound of our neighbor’s snow blower, and I pulled out some self-serve breakfast items before heading out to do a bit more snow-clearing of our driveway, knowing full well that when Cute W returned he would not be able to resist “fixing” my inadequate snow removal efforts (I was right: he had the snowblower out today). Still, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant to be outside under the blue sky after a sedentary day of eating and drinking. As people gradually woke up, the breakfast buffet was ignored in favor of hauling out the Thanksgiving leftovers, which I should have anticipated.
Shortly after we waved goodbye to the relatives, J was off to meet up with a high school friend and I snuggled into bed for a long nap. I was exhausted! Then we set the alarm for an early Saturday wake-up and I drove J home and arrived back in town just in time to pick up Cute W at the airport after his oh-dark-early flights home. Another long nap soon followed. And now we are almost fully recovered, and there is a turkey soup simmering on the stove.
I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving.
