We hosted Thanksgiving yesterday evening. A total of 12 mouths in our house for the festivities–some were small mouths that only drank from bottles. I only had one glass of wine so I envied the latest addition to our family who got all her nutrients in a liquid form.
I made a joke earlier in the evening that I was thankful that the full complement of people didn’t show because it would have been closer to 20 mouths. This got a couple of laughs and the lament of at least one person who had hoped everyone was going to be at our house. We have exactly 12 chairs in our house. We have exactly 12 silverware settings. I was thankful.
When we were coerced to host the festivities, we sent out the sign-up list for food items. This is how it is done in this family. We got back a sign-up list with more holes in it than volunteered items. Funny how one person pointed out we had too many starches on the list, claimed health issues with this and then she brought a starchy appetizer. And, to her credit, a salad. Which came in 14 containers. That she proceeded to put together in our kitchen as we were trying to do all the heavy-lifting. You know that part of a meal when 10 dishes are going into the oven, coming out of the oven and large pieces of meat need to be carved. She was also a half hour late because as she was leaving her house the salad bowl hit the concrete floor and shattered (it’s in our garage waiting to be thrown away–why it made the trip across town is a mystery).
We had to set up two rooms with two tables to accommodate everyone. We put the kitchen table in another room and used a large folding table to hold the buffet in the kitchen. When I finally got around to fixing myself a plate, I went into the dining room and there were three people in it. Everyone else had decided to crowd around the little kitchen table in the other room. I swear to God that the kid table is always the best table. It was when I was 5 and it’s still where I’d rather be sitting now that I’m 43.
The better-half and I think everyone crowded around the little table to avoid the woman with the 14 containers for one salad. She’s a talker. She’s a talker who lets no one else speak. She fills the room with her words and I used to feel like I needed to be polite and murmur at the appropriate places. Now, if I feel like getting up to go check on whatever, I just get up and walk away. It really doesn’t matter if you leave her stream of talk, because it will be there when you get back. It’s like the time I fell asleep watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and woke up 5 minutes later and there was still the exact same trippy space crap going on.
If you click over to watch that trippy space crap, I’m sorry about 9 minutes of your life being gone–you should have napped through part of it.
I remember one year assigning my sister to bring a salad for Thanksgiving. When she got to my house, she plopped a grocery bag full of unwashed, unchopped salad fixins’ on the counter and walked away. I called her back in and said, I asked for a salad, not a bag of vegetables. That worked. Happy belated Thanksgiving.
It wasn’t quite that bad, but close. Then she left a tub of goat cheese in the refrigerator. It was what I would consider empty, apparently she thought we could use it up. I also discovered it expired 11/5/11. Nothing but the best for us!