The Sign of a Successful Thanksgiving

I threw out my back lifting the turkey. Well, actually, it was the turkey--all 20 incredible pounds of him, destined for the plates of only five adults and three children--plus the brine he'd been, well, brining in since 4 am that morning. (Don't ask. I have salmonella paranoia and didn't want him brining too long...)

You just know your dinner's going to be a success when you throw out your back lifting the turkey, right? I mean, physical pain! Suffering! For a turkey! There has to be some upside to it.

And there was. Turkey=yummmmmm. Stuffing=mmmmmmm. Gravy=a little thicker than I meant it to be, but boyoboyoboyoboy good. My famous homemade cranberry sauce=remarkable as always. Sweet potatoes=lucious. Mashed potatoes=for the kids who don't like sweet potatoes. (I sure wasn't wasting valuable belly space on regular old mashed potatoes.) Sauteed eggplant and zucchini=mostly uneaten, but still yummy. Homemade challah=incredible. Cornbread=made exclusively by Em from start to finish, and you just HAD to see her face when everyone complimented her and scarfed it down.

I have to admit, I was proud of that dinner. I made it all, from scratch (except for the cornbread, of course, which Em made). And it was controlled chaos. When our guests (my brother-in-law and WeeyumWise and his family) arrived, the kitchen was CLEAN. Howdya like that, folks? And we even had time to go and run a 1-mile kids' turkey trot to benefit the homeless and hungry. (Well, Baroy ran the preceding 5K, then helped Em run the so-called Munchkin Mile. I stayed with N, who tried to run, but then fell down and found himself being bandaged by a police officer helping out with the race, and so was both teary- and starry-eyed for the rest of the "slow because I don't wanna get more blood, Mommy" walk.)

It was good; wonderful, actually, after weeks and weeks lately of non-stop work, of having so little time for the kids and my husband and for doing things I love to do, like cooking. I was very thankful, yesterday.

Thankful, too, for the company. WeeyumWise's mom brought salad, wine, sparkling apple cider, mint chocolate chip ice cream, and a homemade pumpkin-pecan pie. (Insert the sound effect of lips being licked here.) N and WeeyumWise played beautifully together for a good five or six hours, we sat at our kitchen-table-cum-dining-room-table-except-we-pulled-it-into-the-living-room-because-our-dining -room-is-used-for-other-things, and when it cooled down in the evening (a relative term in SoCal, meaning it dipped into the high 60s and we had to change the kids into long pants rather than the shorts they'd been wearing all day) we put a fire in the fireplace and sat and talked and drank wine and ate and ate and ate. Nice. Very nice.

There is a lot to be thankful for. I'm glad there was a day to spend doing so.