It’s Turkey Time

Actually, it’s not exactly turkey time; that’s still a day away.   But today is the day to do all the prepping and kitchen organizing so that tomorrow, official Turkey day can go off with relatively few hitches and I can spend time with DH and the girls.

I’m trying really hard to get my head in a better place regarding this whole holiday.  This year, more than ever, I am stuck in a dumb rut and really wallowing in the self-pity.  I miss my siblings.  I miss my family.  Heck, I even miss my husband’s family.  I want my kids to have the same wonderful memories of Thanksgiving that I do.  And I am, unfortunately, not helping things with all this doomy gloom.

My husband says that the problem with holidays is that the expectations run impossibly high, and then people end up disappointed.  I think he’s spot-on with that assessment.  I do have high expectations (for everything, but especially holidays).  And I’m already disappointed, and nothing’s even happened yet.

I need to let go of my expectations.  I need to stop comparing holidays present with holidays past.  I need to come up with my own, new, fresh and different definition of a successful holiday, preferrably one that focuses on the good fortune and good health we enjoy now, and not one that bemoans how things used to be.

So how, exactly, does one get the emotional part of the brain to embrace the logical solution that the analytical brain has calculated??

Cold Turkey

It’s dubiously ironic that MotherMe’s very first blog post was about turkey. I just got my Thanksgiving turkey today. Actually, I got three of them; one to roast this week, and two to freeze for later. We’ll probably have one for Christmas and the other sometime in the New Year. Good thing it’s cold outside. I have some time to rearrange things in the freezer to make room for 34 1/2 pounds of spare turkey.

This is our fourth year buying free range turkey, incidentally. It’s also the fourth year that we’re on our own here for Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone else has either moved away or is busy with other folks, so it’s just me and DH and the girls who sit down for the big meal. Some of my inlaws stop by later Thanksgiving evening to visit, so we do get to spend part of the day with family. But I can’t help but feel a little bit left out. Growing up, Thanksgiving was a huge, hectic, all-day affair, celebrated with cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles and who knows who. There were lots of women in the kitchen and lots of kids running around. I remember helping Gram set the ping-pong table up for 20 or more people to eat. My grandma’s teeny tiny house was bursting with warm bodies and good smells and noise and happiness and hustle-bustle. My house, now, is just…. me. I’m the only one in the kitchen, and DH and the girls are the only ones eating. It’s pretty darn lonely, to be honest.

I don’t mean to be all down in the dumps about Thanksgiving. I’m so lucky in so many ways, and we do have an awful, awful lot to be thankful for. But I can’t help but feel a little bit let down again this year. It’s so weird to have Thanksgiving as a quiet dinner with DH and the kids after the giant holiday affairs of my youth. And I’m especially sad that my own kids don’t have all the hooplah that we did, with rarely-seen cousins to play with and family all around. I’m finding it harder and harder to muster enough energy to even mash the potatoes.

Sometimes, it’s really hard to be grateful for what you have when all you can think about is what you’re missing.

Okay, So It Wasn’t ALL Bad

This weekend involved lots of self-pity and wallowing-y moments, but it did have some bright spots. It wasn’t all gloom and horrors, no; not really.

Since Independence Day is our country’s birthday (in a fashion) we celebrated the way we celebrate all birthdays in this house: we had a cake decorating party. And how can one be gloomy when there is cake? It’s hardly possible.

There was frosting:

There were toppings, in an appropriate color palette:

There was, of course, a cake to be decorated:

S4 commenced the requisite Taste-Testing of the Frosting (all-important, after my last fiasco with buttercream):

…and the verdict is….

…we’re good to go!

There aren’t many opportunities to photograph when you’re swishing frosting on a cake AND trying to keep your busy little helpers from swishing frosting on each other, the table, the chairs, the windows, etc. Thus, you must trust me when I tell you that we frosted the cake.

Then came the fun part. Toppings!

Of course, no amount of admonishing my offspring about saving the toppings for the cake could keep them from sampling the goodies.

At least they got some on the cake, right?

Speaking of cake, they did a really nice job.

And how could one have a birthday cake without candles on it?

Yes, those are sparklers on the cake. It’s the Fourth Of July, which might as well be “Fireworks Day” in our neck of the woods. Gotta have the sparklers.

And in case you think we aren’t cool or something, let me just say this:

and this:

Yeah, Duff Goldman. Take THAT.

In other happy-picture news, I peeked out at the garden yesterday, and guess what I saw? A baby tomato!! It’s so teeny tiny, but it’s there! And my other tomato plants have flowers! Wooot!

And there’s more. Oh, yeah, baby, there’s more. Like, my first nasturtium bloom:

Nevermind that little bit of red lettuce poking up on the right. It was in my salad today.

Meanwhile, we have a wicked cucumber plant doing all sorts of acrobatics on the trellis:

Do you see the little flower near the ground? How exciting is that?!

Sigh.  Doesn’t that just make you smile?  It does me.  I can’t wait for all the plant sex to start.  It’s very exciting.

It appears that the secret to happiness- in my case, at least – is to set cakes on fire and film plant pornography.

I must be really, really tired.