It looks like I may have overdone it a bit last week. Turkey, Pie, Lobster tails, more turkey…and too little walking.
While it was quite pleasant to take part in the feasting – and let me tell you, there was feasting – it also made the Mii I started using on Wii Fit Plus look like a blimp. Embarassingly so… Evidently my BMI is hovering around 29(ish). My weight, surprisingly, fell to only around 205…so I’m a bit confused as to why my BMI went up. Personally, I’m chalking it up to a computer error with Wii Fit…
In any case, I don’t entirely think it’s a bad thing that I enjoyed the time with my family. It’s a rare thing when we can turn off all the distractions, and enjoy each other. It’s also a time for those time honored traditions for every family. At the Kamensek house, it goes something like this:
Somewhere between noon and midnight the day before, Robin starts running around boiling Sweet Potatoes for her pies (and woe be upon he who buys the extra large ones like I did this year). I putter around trying to help, especially when it comes to using the blender to make the mixture smooth. In the meantime, the kids are busy starting to get themselves wound up on various bits of sugar – tasting the mix, eating candy freshly bought by the visiting Grandparents – but generally trying to stay out of our way. Inevitably, we only manage to get the filling done, and settle with making sure there’s enough time to thaw the 12 lb. bird in the fridge.
This becomes the topic of some debate, and ends with me pulling out my iPhone, and proving myself….wrong…. this time…
After a night of fitful sleep broken by alternating snores (both mine and the dog’s) and frightening dreams of some unforeseen turkey tragedy a la “A Christmas Story” we wake early to start preparing for the frenzy to come.
The day, which ends up being something of a blur, becomes a mad rush of running around baking the pies first, then prepping the bird…and then….Nothing. Three and one-half solid hours of nothing. Just football, some beer, a nap, and waiting…. Until the last mad hour of getting the table set, and the sides finished up.
Then we all march solemnly into the Dining room, where all is set splendidly on the table, and say a prayer of thankgiving (mine was particularly good this year, thanks to the cheatsheet I downloaded to my phone) and then get to eating with Christmas Carols slowly wafting through the air with some nice conversation in between bites.
Randy, our yellow Lab, starts to get a little whiny about this time – which ends with Robin walking into the Kitchen with his bone, and prodigiously stuffing it with some dark meat. Normally this would take him a solid 10 seconds to get out – but with some ingenuity and peanut butter, we manage to make that poor sucker work for his food over the course of a solid hour – followed by another 3 hours of licking the last bits of flavor out of the bone…
We end the meal with dessert, but that’s not the best part. The best part (other than the Baltimore Ravens winning a Thanksgiving Day game) comes not on Thanksgiving (at least not this year) – but the day after. And it has nothing to do with the leftovers.
It’s about decorating.
This year I had all the plans right. The first floor lights, and the second floor lights. I finally got up the nerve to get my neighbor’s tall ladder, and thanks to some warm weather (unlike last year’s frozen spectacular) put it up against my eave, grabbed my lights, worked my way up the ladder…. And promptly chickened out about 1/2 way to the second floor…So the first floor windows and our shrubs look fantastic – while my upper windows will suffer with just some candles…again…
Meanwhile, while I’m confronting my own fear of ladders and the upper floor, the kids are inside assembling the tree (that’s right, we put ours together) only to break into my lighting the yard to tell me I need to put the lights on the tree – which I do particularly well (thanks to a spinning tree stand). I don’t think the tree stand is actually supposed to let the tree spin, but it works for me, and makes my life easier – so I don’t ask those kind of questions…
Eventually, I manage to finish the lights, and the kids finish the tree and we all finish filling the front rooms with decorations including at least 1/2 dozen nativity scenes…. I know it’s about Christ’s birth…but do we really need the entire collection of politically correct nativity combinations? (well, it’s not that bad, and I do enjoy them).
Once all of this is finally put together we get to have that last great Thanksgiving tradition: Turkey Sandwiches for Lunch, Turkey and Dumplings for Dinner, and setting your belt at least 2 holes looser….
-M.Kamensek
Stay tuned! I have a treat for you Gamers out there – my review of Star Wars: The Old Republic and my experience in the BETA TEST! Eat your heart out, Mr. Jones!
Authors bio is coming up shortly.