Monday, November 15, 2004

With the Jellied Cranberry Sauce from the Can and Everything

I am a pilgrim. Did you know that, internet?

My mother's side of the family is directly descended from a long line of Pilgrims all the way from the P. M. (Plymouth, Massachusetts) and we all have skin white like blinding, blondish hair and a long history of closet skeletons, silent inner tensions, and the not talking about it to prove it.

We're also not very good dancers, though that is allowed now.

Anyway, it should come as no surprise to anyone that, given my heritage and the fact that I LOVE to eat almost more than anything in the world, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. So much so that I am SO SUPER EXCITED about Thanksgiving this year, and it's almost like when you were a kid and Christmas was almost here but not quite and you counted down the days on an advent calendar or your hands or something and then when it was finally Christmas Eve you thought you might explode from all the counting and anticipation and then you couldn't even sleep at all that night so that Christmas day was THAT much farther away and you wanted to die. That's how excited I am about Thanksgiving this year. Like, I can't even wait to defrost that turkey. And cooking the day before, because I'm going to be cooking so much food that I won't possibly be able to cook it all in one day, not even if I tried really hard? I'm totally swooning at the thought of that, of there being so much food that I'll have to cook a day in advance. That is so totally so much food.

Every year throughout my childhood I was always the "creative child" (re: retarded at math and so praised for fashioning things out of construction paper) who made the centerpieces for our Thanksgiving tables. Usually this meant arranging fruit around a pineapple with a stuffed, felt turkey head pinned to it, or applying copious amounts of glitter to anything standing still. Once, I made a whole paper circus out of this kit I had, and then applied glitter to that and THEN arranged the pieces around the pineapple turkey. It was only this past year that I made a tiny black eyepatch for the well worn turkey head when he turned up out of our holiday storage bin missing an eye. Poor old turkey head. At least I didn't try to put glitter on the eye patch because I THOUGHT ABOUT IT; I REALLY DID.

One year for Thanksgiving, in the bygones past, I dressed up as Pilgrim and then I dressed up my sister as an Indian--or Native American, if you will; whatever--and then I dressed up my brother as a little Pilgrim man with paper belt buckles on his shiny black dress shoes and everything. Then our parents took us all out to Shoney's for dinner. I don't remember why we went to a sub-par chain restaurant for Thanksgiving instead of cooking it at the house like we have every other year, but there you have it: I even made that Thanksgiving festive.

I even have the photographic proof, and people, if I had a scanner I would totally post it here for y'all to see because it is WICKED funny.

This year Dominic and I are celebrating my favorite holiday together for the first time ever, and I don't think he will ever comprehend the depths of my excitement. Adding to that excitement, he has invited some of his co-workers over to share the day with us, and I just can't get anymore excited than I am right now because we will have a whole day dedicated to eating and eating and drinking and watching television and sharing all of that holiday yummy goodness with friends--people who otherwise might be forced to eat at sub-par chain restaurants on Thanksgiving.

And right now I'm trying to devise a way to dress Mia up as an Indian because, really, that would be so totally cute, and there's already a Pilgrim up in this house.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

My descendants have an acronym too. The P.I.

8:04 PM  
Blogger Carrie said...

Yeah, I remember when you dressed me up like an Indian. Thanks for taking advantage of the time that I would actually allow you to do that kind of stuff to me. I appreciate it.

10:56 PM  
Blogger Carrie said...

Oh yeah, Thanksgiving is just so wonderful. A whole holiday dedicated to eating. How great is that?

10:57 PM  

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