Gobble, Gobble: You're Welcome to Join Us

Sooo, hows about live blogging my Thanksgiving Day?  Why not?  I have a feeling this is going to be one to remember.  We are expecting 35-40 people here.  About half of them my family and the other half the family of my brother-in-law.  It is my hope that the presence of B-I-L's family will have a civilizing effect on my family.  But not TOO civilizing...what fun would that be?  Soooo, without further ado.....

8:21am    I made the ham in the middle of the night...sorta.  I still have to make a glaze so it needs to go back in the oven for a bit so I can use the drippings.  I should have had the ham in the oven already but I was too busy trying to decide whether I should blog the day or not.  Decision made, now off to finish the ham.  Will be prepping the turkey while ham is in....hope the dang thing is defrosted.  Guess I also should have taken care of that last night.

9:09am     So, instead of spending the ham time prepping the turkey, I spent the ham time searching for a roasting pan and aluminum foil. Turns out when B-I-L said there was a roasting pan in the garage he was big fat lying.  Probably not but that doesn't help the fact that I can't find the dang thing.  And he is across town housesitting and using the housesittee's kitchen to make all that Suthin' food for the day.  No help there.  And the aluminum foil they purchased last night?  It's in my sister's car which is parked way away from here at her job watching an old lady who I hope does not choose today to throw in the towel because that would be a real Thanksgiving Day bummer. Off to the store I go to see what $12 can get me in the way of roasting pan and aluminum foil.  $12 being all the money I have access to since my sweet monkeys disappeared my debit card some time ago and I still haven't ordered another.  Oh, and I need a diet pepsi.  Can't concentrate much without caffeine.  While I'm gone why don't you amuse yourselves with a game of "Find the Roasting Pan" with the pictures below.  The game is just like Find Waldo...only, you know, with a roasting pan in place of Waldo.  Good luck.

11:17am     1 Large roasting pan, 1 small roll aluminum foil, 1 large roll aluminum foil: $4.60.  Gotta love the dollar store.  Except I don't.  Because first of all if you are a dollar store, three items should cost me $3.21.  And secondly because the dollar store caused the first near-disaster of this Thanksgiving Day when the perky young clerk informed me that.....

11:26am     Hey, that's the fun of live blogging apparently - shit happens right when you are writing.  So in the middle of reporting on the dollar store trip someone knocked at the door with a kicking-the-door-sound.  I open the door thinking it is B-I-L perhaps with his hands full of Thanksgiving vitils but it is some strange bald headed man with one hand behind his back.  Yeah, should have made note of that through the curtain before my home-alone-female-ass opened the door.  He says hello and then this exchange:

Me: Um, hi.

Him: My name is...

Me: Why is your hand behind your back?

Him (bringing an envelope foward):  Oh it's this.

Me: That's not cute.  You don't come to someone's door with one hand behind your back.

Him: Oh, I'm sorry.  Anyway this is for them (waving generally toward the inside of the house).  They let me borrow it and I am returning it. (He hands it to me.  It's $40.)

Me:  Oh.  Okay.

Him: Don't you remember me, I come here all the time.  My name is Tino (or maybe he said Tito, dunno.  My ears are burning hot with embarrasment now.)

Me: Uh, I'm bad at remembering people.

Him: I know you.  I'm reading your book right now.

Me: Seriously?

Him: Yeah.  It's got a blue cover but I don't remember the name.

Me:  Oh, that's...weird.

Him: Anyway...(backing away.)

Me:  Okay bye.  Oh, come back later for turkey if you want!

Him: I might just do that.

Me to myself: I'm such an asshole.

Okay....ground beef browning too brown.  More of the dollar store fiasco later....

11:48am     Okay, water for stuffing warming.  Five pounds of ground beef browned.  Peas and carrots cooked.  Turkey in oven.  Ham...well, making glaze is more difficult than I thought especially if you use three times the amount of dripping and half the honey.  Glaze is not at all glazy so gotta figure out what to do about that.  But now, back to the dollar store.  So, aluminum...roasting pan...not really a dollar....blah, blah.  So then I go over to the soda case and can't find the diet pepsi at which point the too-perky-for-having-to-work-on-Thanksgiving clerk says, "We don't carry no Pepsi products.  This a Coke state you know."  Now cue in on me standing there fuming, cold sweat breaking out on my brow, staring staring staring at that damn case willing a diet pepsi to appear.  It does not.  Now cue in on me driving around a deserted town dodging tumbleweed and searching, all itchy and leg shakey, searching searching, trying to score a diet pepsi.  And finally after a damn long trek I find a lonely outpost willing to break the pop monopoly and sell me a 20oz bottle of pure refreshing diet pepsi heaven.  (By long trek, of course I mean across the street from the dollar store and by lonely outpost I do mean the Chevron gas station.)

12:48pm     Just fielded a call from Grandma who was dropping not so subtle hints that she wishes I would drive 38 miles round trip to bring her the makeup bag that she left in my van last night.  Reminded her that she was going to be here in a couple hours and despite her wish never to be seen in public sans makeup she would indeed survive the experience and so would most of the public. 

My resolve to clean as I go is fading.  I am tired and hungry.  Could use more diet pepsi and pizza.  Unfortunately I have neither.  I was about to congratulate myself for my plans to clean the guest bathroom (yes, I pat myself on the back just for thinking of doing good shit.  Pathetic?  I'll be the judge of that.) when I realized that if there are going to be 40 people in the house, I should probably clean more than one bathroom.  Damn.

1:13pm     Bro-in-Law, Chris, just got home and announced his aunt is not going to make it.  And since she and her offspring and various hanger-ons (hangers-on?) count for 10 people, I am so not cleaning a second bathroom.  And what the frack are we going to do with three turkeys? Well at least they weren't bringing anything so no one has to bust balls to make another dish.  This tips the balance of people decidely in favor of my family so what few members of his family are showing up are So.Screwed.  So much for civilizing effect.  This is going to be interesting. 

2:04pm     Stated start time for this hoe-down was 2pm.  My turkey is not due out of the oven until 3:30.  My sister is on her way to the store now to get some stuff we missed...including cranberry sauce (yeah, who the heck forgets cranberry sauce today, right?)   We don't plan on breaking bread (oh, crap...is someone bringing rolls?) until 4:30ish.  We announced 2:00pm because Chris' family is physically incapable of being anywhere on time.  By his estimation, a dinner start time of 4:30 has to be presented to them as 2:00pm if there is any hope of us eating on time.  Now in fairness to them, our family is also incapable of getting anywhere on time.  But if we are told 2pm we will be there by 3, 3:30 at the latest (maybe 3:45 if we are expected to dress nicely and/or bring a dish.)  But 4pm is just tacky.

Holy heck you really don't know how much useless crap you have in your house until you try to clear that stuff away to make room for a houseful of dinner guests.  Good grief!  And of course cleaning means mostly just taking armful loads of crap and throwing them into a room you hope no guest will accidentally walk into while looking for the bathroom.  That room will be the triplet's room because honestly new crap will feel perfectly at home with the old crap already in there.  Just gonna hang a skull and crossbones poster on the outside of the door and hope that takes care of that.

Half the crap filled room.

2:38pm     Sis to me: Sindy get off the computer and start cleaning. 

                        Killjoy.

3:21pm     Turkey done basting and out of the oven.  Toilet room cleaned and stocked.  Front hallway decluttered.  Eating and sitting areas wiped down and vaccuumed.  Goal of cleaning as I go not met and resignedly given up on.  Not one person has yet arrived including Grandparents and Aunts and Uncle who are supposed to be bringing my children to me.  They were due here 23 minutes ago so hopefully we'll see them in another hour.  For now, off to the shower I go.  If I can get myself cleaned and dressed before guests arrive it will be the first time in .... ever.

4:22pm     Most of the posts for the next couple hours will have to be made on the sly as my sister has said, and I am inclined to believe her, that she will kill me if she finds me on the computer.  So, as for getting dressed before guests arrived....so, so, so close!  But the knock came in just as I was making my way up the stairs.  Actually, not that close I guess since it was 30 minutes before I came back down again.  But Chris' always-two-hours-late family were only an hour and a half late.  They beat our family.  Very annoying.  And because Thanksgiving snuck up on me this year - what!  Late November!  Why didn't someone tell me??? - I hadn't picked out anything to wear.  My choices: ridiculously wrinkled dress or inappropriately dressy skirt/top outfit.  Winner: black jeans and slightly dressy top chosen solely because I don't need a bra with it because as it happens, I can't find any of my bras.  My kids arrived just a few minutes ago so their cuteness will keep the in-laws eyes off me for a moment.

4:59pm     Utter exhaustion has kicked in.  Brought with it a throbbing head ache.  Grandma (my mom) just arrived a minute ago and was quickly escorted upstairs where her makeup bag was awaiting.  Three guests, maybe four saw her unmade face.  We will hear about it for many Thanksgivings to come.  All the food is ready and just warming.  Football game is on.  In-laws have a bit of spice in them after all.  The grandpa of the bunch a short time ago bellowed to the youngest member of the family (8years old?) "I'll kock that can out yo mouth, boy!"  And with my sister's threats to kill me we are all tied at one a piece in the race to be the nuttiest family at dinner.  Granted, things are ridiculously tame right now.  Ugh, one member of their family is trying to keep one of the triplets from hurting themselves.  Must investigate....

5:09pm     My daughter SKINNY just streaked through a room full of men she is not related to.  Lovely.

5:29pm     My  brother finally arrived.  For some inexplicable reason, my sister has insisted we wait for him causing one in-law to say, "I'm not complaining really but we arrived early for once in our lives!  Haha."  Yes, 1.5 hours late is considered early in suthin' Geogia talk.  Time to eat!!

8:32pm     I am back to where I was twelve hours ago. Alone in the house.  The guests have come and gone.  I sent the triplets back to my brother's house to be with their grandparents and so that I can have quiet time for cleaning (read: watching tv and snoozing).  Sis and Bro-in-law are headed across town to go walk someone's dog. In hindsight, most of my blogging energy should have gone to the actual dinner time.  That is when most of the drama happens, after all.  And this dinner did not disappoint.  But the kind of drama we ended the day with is not the type that will be laughed about next Thanksgiving or the one after that.  It's too long and complicated for me to delve into here.  So I will give the ending tomorrow.   Suffice it to say, for now, that I have an overwhelming desire to put foot up my mom's ass.

Better moments to remember:  My son SWOOSH very loudly narrating his business in the bathroom: "Where are you poo?!,"  "Thats looka banana poop," "Bye-bye penis!"

Most inappropriate food related comment:  My brother as my b-i-l's cousin unveils her strawberry chocolate cake: "Oh my God that looks really unhealthy!"

The triplets do not get this Thanksgiving Day eating.  SWOOSH spooned some rice into a cup of ginger ale and tried to drink it.  SKINNY would eat only cranberry sauce.  BLUE decided ginger ale was a complete meal on its own.  I've decided that my kids are not welcome at next year's Thanksgiving.  I don't know where they will go but they can't stay here.  Wild animals, I tell you.  And of course the person what done gave them life is the person expected to run around after them and thus is the person least likely to actually eat at Thanksgiving.  Not cute.

Gonna put away an army's worth of food and then pray for my mother's black, black soul and then pass out.  Tune in tomorrow for details on what turned out to be the worse Thanksgiving ever, so far.

9:45pm     My brother's girlfriend has me on the phone listening to the knock-down brawl going on between my brother and my mom.  And by knock-down I don't mean physical at all.  They are screaming so loudly about the horrible thing my mom did at dinner tonight that Lamonique is worried "the white people around here are going to call the cops on us."  And that makes me laugh and makes her laugh but there is still all the screaming.  Lamonique hides herself in the bathroom for some of it.  It's the only way I can hear her talking to me.

I will likely not blog about the horrible bad thing my mom did tonight after all because shortly after I made the 8:32pm post above, my sister called me and asked me not to blog about it.  As the horrible bad thing happened to her, I have to respect her feelings about sharing it.  I'll see how she feels tomorrow but for now I'll have to be circumspect about it.

9:57pm     My mom just called asking me to find a hotel room for her to stay in tonight as she will not stay with my brother.  Yeah, finding an empty budget friendly hotel room on Thanksgiving night is no problem at all.  Even if it were easy, I don't think I am in the mood to do anything for her.  Sooner or later she has to learn that her unacceptable behavior has consequences and sometimes those consequences are that her kids will be too pissed at her to do her bidding.  Forget the hotel room, I'm going to try and find someplace open right now to get myself my nightly butterfinger bar.