It is that time of year, folks. By which I mean to say, time to write my obligatory, annual advance retrospective on Thanksgiving. Well, okay, to be fair? Not exactly �obligatory�, but it�s become a personal tradition, you know?
Other traditions include the annual Thanksgiving travel gauntlet. This year�s gauntlet is more fearsome than most. Last year, I flew out Wednesday afternoon. This year, I fly out on the dreaded RED EYE. I am not looking particularly forward to this. I mean, partly I am, because I am a night person, and I�ll feel less awkward about getting totally sloshed on five-dollar bottle-ettes of brand name liquor and subsequently singing real loudly and offering unsolicited parenting advice to complete strangers. But more than anything, I�m already dreading the fact that a confluence of factors will all be adding up to sleep deprivation, which adds up to me staring like a crazy man at the dinner table and getting real chatty about topics I�d otherwise recognize as wholly inappropriate dinner conversation.
Another tradition, of course, would be that which those of us from �modern� (read: broken) families have all come to know and dread: simultaneous dinners. It is about this time of every year that I rue my decision not to enroll in an advanced theoretical physics major, and thereby hopefully identify a wormhole in space, connecting the bathrooms of my dad�s and mom�s houses. �I�ll be right back! Just got to wash up!� [whoosh!] �Boy, you were in the bathroom a long time.� �Well, excuse me for having intestinal blockage! Leave us speak of this no further. In fact�.I have to use the bathroom.� Alternately, I suppose I could just do a shitload of peyote and astral project from side of town to the next. It would be more fun, and less work: my personal credo being served once again.
I also will be making a cheesecake! A new tradition I have just recently started. I will also be fucking that cheesecake up, which I hope will NOT become a tradition. I make this grim prophecy with all assuredness of its truth, I must sorrowfully report, because I forgot to pack my cookbook with the recipe in it before I left the apartment. I can wing it well enough, since I�m not a total greenhorn�and anything with that much sugar has GOT to taste good�but�we may be looking at an explosion and/or some kind of sugary, cheesy, maple-pecan gumbo. Mmm�gumbo.
Fortunately, I have the whole flight to look over the ream of alternate recipes I printed out and sketch out my own roadmap to cheesecakeville. I expect moderate success with this. Much like I enjoy moderate success in all my attempts at getting anywhere without an officially sanctioned orienteering guide of some kind. To be frank, though, even with actual maps from actual books by actual orienteers, I have managed to get lost. Either way, it�ll at least be an adventure. And the Pilgrims were lost, too, y�all! In a way. Not a literal way, but sort of.
Something I hope will not be a tradition, but fear greatly, is the banishment of my parents� adorable dog. You may recall from last year that my little cousin developed some irrational fear of being loved unconditionally by an enthusiastic Labrador with Bambi eyes and an affectionate demeanor, and the poor animal had to stay at the neighbor�s house. I don�t say �poor� because the neighbors are scary or whatever, I mean they�re good people and I�m sure she was well taken care of, but poor because she was deprived of MY COMPANY. Because I wanted to PLAY with her, and FEED her, and WALK her, and PET her, and I COULDN�T, because my COUSIN�whose life span, may I point out, is significantly longer than that of the dog, and I can play with HIM long after she has shaken off this mortal coil, and I�M the one traveling the furthest for this thing, and I think that ought to count for something, and if he thinks he�s going to banish my pet and still enjoy a big fat slice/bowl of cheesecake/gumbo he is sadly mistaken�is afraid of dogs. Clearly, he should be afraid of ME.
Anyway, to sum up: Thanksgiving is all about tradition. Now go out and enjoy you some. Unless you�re foreign or otherwise don�t celebrate Thanksgiving, in which case, enjoy your four day weekend!
Someone Got Here By Searching For: �today was going to be the day� I�m Watching: Scary Movie, which I actually really kind of love. I�m Reading: Well, I�m still reading that same book, but I�m bringing Agatha Christie�s Destination Unknown, a.k.a. So Many Steps to Death, with me as well. Just in case.