Thanksgiving

My mother says that my last few entries haven't sounded like me.  I guess working in the elementary schools has quelled my sardonic-ness and my penchant for language.  I just hope it doesn't destroy my wit to be working in schools.  Anywho, that's something to obsess about late at night when I'm falling asleep, not on this fine day off.

No, today is a day to talk about Thanksgiving.  I don't do Black Friday, so today is recovery from the event.

I hosted my first Thanksgiving ever yesterday.  My family was all split up, and my mom, dad, and Morgan went to see my mom's family in north GA.  I didn't fly home because I'll be home in a month anyway.  So, I hosted Thanksgiving for some of the City Year folks that didn't have any plans.  So, the final guest list ended up being smaller:  me, Sophie, Tom, Kat, Jyrell, Valerie, Charles, Will, and Jake.  Everybody brought stuff, but my job was to make the stuffing and the turkey.  I figured if I was going to host, I could at least knock out the "must-haves."

So, I started on my mother's dressing recipe.  Made the eggs, no sweat.  Crock-potted the hen, no problem.  Made the cornbread.  Okay, some issues.  There is no self-rising corn meal in California, so you have to make it out of normal corn meal.  And then I forgot that there was a difference in baking soda and baking powder, thus nearly poisoning my entire T'giving party with an overdose of sodium bicarbonate.  Luckily, Val tasted and made a face like she was dying, so I went back to the grocery store late Wednesday night to buy ingredients to redo the cornbread correctly.

Day of, I got up early (like 7 AM...so, technically, I slept in two more hours than I usually would have done on a Friday) and started making the turkey.  I have never made a turkey before, so I didn't really know what was going on.  I took out my thawed turkey, removed all the bits (that always make me want to vomit, touching raw meat.  Why is poultry so much more disgusting than anything else?), and prepped it, put it in the oven, and waited around.  Watched a documentary on Burlesque dancing.  (This post is becoming a boring point-by-point...)

People started arriving and I started chugging mimosas.  Football and tennis were watched.  I made dressing and helped Val finish up the vegetables.  We made a spread that covered my entire dining room table.  Some people said some things that they were thankful for and we all dug in.  We had so many leftovers, it looked like we hadn't even touched the food.

Then, we played some drinking games.  Some people got plastered.  Everybody passed out.  People army-crawled to throw up.  Then, we cut some pies and ate some more.  I fell asleep from being up so early, and loved it.

My first T'giving by myself was a success...and I'm going to write up a list of the things that I'm thankful for a little later today, but for now, I'm thankful that the day rocked.

Some memorable quotes from the day:
"I met the bar-back of my dreams last night."
"(Name removed) is coming over?  Shit, I can't be nice when I'm drunk!"