Not Exactly What I Planned

Yesterday was an odd sort of day before Thanksgiving for me. I knew I had my girls' class in the morning, but planned on "linging into things" (as my mother would have put it) once they left. I was planning on baking a couple of pies as well as tackling some cleaning.

Before the girls got here I, put the turkey in the bathtub with cold water and weighted it down with bricks, threw the first load of laundry (guest room stuff) into the washer, did the leftover dishes from the night before and went on a search for the cookbook with the recipe for boiled cider pie. There I hit my first roadblock because the cookbook was not to be found. However, I did sort of find the recipe on my computer (only the directions weren't there, just the ingredients). Still I remained undaunted. The girls arrived, we discussed Dante, heaven, hell, and the state of the diocese (among other things and, for the record, our diocese is neither heaven nor hell). While we were discussing I heard the front door open. I thought it was the girls' mom come to pick them up, but in fact it was my husband. And with that opening door my plans went out the window.

He came home to bake pies. However, the first thing he discovered was that I had moved his hunting pants (I put them on top of a laundry pile) and his drag rope was now missing. So I spent the next hour looking for the drag rope, while he began to tackle pies. In between looking of course I was still doing loads of laundryand putting more cold water on Tom Turkey. I went through all the laundry (I thought) and no drag rope was there. I went and looked in the truck (certain that he never brought it in the house), no drag rope to be seen. We decided it must have vaporized and went on to other things. I started to peel the squash, only to be informed by the males of the family, that peeling the squash a day ahead would ruin it. Someone should tell that to the grocers who sell already peeled squash, but it wasn't worth an argument, so I desisted. Then I was going to start baking rolls, but again got stopped in my tracks by the opinion that warmed up rolls weren't as good as fresh ones. I washed a few more dishes, did another load of laundry, changed the turkey water, made up the guest room bed, put laundry away. Suddenly I had a thought. There was one laundry basket that I hadn't checked out for the drag rope, the one that went to my daughter's room at the beginning of the search. Voila, there was the drag rope. Success in one venture anyway.

Late in the afternoon I got a call from my daughter saying she and her bf would be home for dinner after all, so I headed to the store for the quick fixings for spaghetti and garlic bread. I was also supposed to get more lard for the pie baker, but the store was out of lard. So home again, to make dinner, do more dishes,. and ascertain that there actually was sufficient lard for the remaining pies. DD and BF arrived, we had dinner. The turkey got taken out of the bathtub and put in the fridge. DH cut up the bread for the stuffing. I did more dishes...

Now I'm about to go downstairs and begin peeling onions, making rolls, helping stuff a turkey, but not peeling squash (dh has promised to do that). Yesterday was actually more fun than I had thought it would be, even if I ended up spending the day more as the assistant than the chef. After all the fact is that David's pies look nicer and he gets far less frustrated rolling out pie dough than I do. It was also just plain nice to have him home.

Now, I have things to "ling into," so I'll desist. I have a lot to be thankful for this year, including the fact that I'm wearing a size 6 instead of squeezing proudly into a 12 as I was last year. However, the biggest things to be thankful for are not quite so easily seen. One of them certainly is the joy of having people I love around, not just on Thanksgiving, but on other days as well, even when they interrupt my plans or have decided opinions of their own.

Back to Business

Well sort of. I'm in the process of retyping this story I wrote over a year ago. When our hard drive crashed I lost it, although I had a hard copy of part of it (don't ask me where the rest of the hard copy went, because frankly I don't know). So I'm in the process of reconstructing, retyping and revising as I go. I read the first version to my niece and she loved it. I sent part of the first version to my friend Karen and 'Betsy' loved it. Now I have to get my story back together and get up enough nerve to actually submit it somewhere. I figure that if my dd can get up the nerve to submit her writing, I ought to do the same. Of course she's submitting to Catholic publications and this animal based story doesn't exactly meet the needs of those publications, however... I also have this idea for a story about a Catholic junior high school which may be marketable to some Catholic publisher. I figure I can capitalize on my brief foray into parochila school education. Maybe my story about a mouse will actually get published in time for it to be appropriate for Ramona. Maybe I'll never see a book in print. At the very least I'm spending my time doing something more productive than watching ER re-runs.

Meanwhile my oven is cleaning itself (or I certainly hope it is!) and I need to get things ready for Thanksgiving. DD and I had a fun, but hectic weekend. We drove to New Jersey on Saturday to attend my niece's Senior composition recital. We spent Saturday night at my in-law's in the Bronx. We went to Mass at St. Nicholas Tolentine on Sunday morning and then returned home Sunday afternoon. It was a whirlwind trip, we were actually gone for only 29 hours (10 of which were spent on the road). It was fun, however, and Amanda's music was awesome. She had such an incredible variety. I particularly liked "Hang'n Sneakers" and "I Sit Beside the Fire and Think," as well as the piece of electronic music about a star. Abby liked the Irish ballad and "I Sit Beside the Fire." The musicians were phenomenal, the whole event was really fun. Now it's back to real life around here... including oven cleaning.