Posts Tagged ‘Thanksgiving’
Turkey Feast
In classic Cyndie fashion, we did not have one turkey for our Thanksgiving feast; we had two. She soaked one in brine and purchased a smoked bird from a local barbeque joint.
A Thanksgiving feast deserves to be served on a royally set table so Cyndie pulled out family heirloom china and silverware and augmented them with her hand-crafted dried leaf place markers.
Speaking of leaves, we put all five extending leaves in the old Hays family table to provide generous elbow room for our modest-sized gathering.
While dinner was cooking, I guided a group down to the barn to offer the horses a few Thanksgiving carrot bites to brighten their day. I was greatly impressed with Light’s quick acceptance of my message that I had no more treats for her. She is prone to prolonged, insistent begging for more when we start offering treats. In this case, she reacted as if she totally understood what I was communicating and turned around to walk away and stand beside Swings, who had already given up on a chance for any more bites of carrot.
When we returned to the house, there was time for a little word-guessing game in front of the fireplace before Chef Cyndie made the call for “hands.”
Much feasting ensued.
All visitors were sent home with generous servings of leftovers, but due to some strategic pleading by me earlier, they made sure to leave a little for me, as well.
Today, Cyndie and I are heading north to spend the weekend at the lake, because we can. Our leftovers will be going on a road trip along with us.
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Thin Ice
The first extended freeze of the season has finally arrived. Could it be an indication we might get a return to a more wintery weather pattern than we had last year? Seems like it barely got around to freezing last winter, and when it did, it was quickly followed by a thaw.
I checked out the ice on Paddock Lake yesterday morning and found it wasn’t thick enough to support my weight yet.
No skating allowed.
By the time I went out for the afternoon feeding, the edges of that puddle were beginning to disintegrate by sublimation. If we continue to experience a prolonged dry spell, it may just disappear without ever melting.
I don’t think the horses will mind that one bit. In reality, they are intelligent enough to be very wary when it comes to ice. They probably don’t even like me joking about them doing figure skating jumps and spins.
Cyndie is in the midst of double-duty activities to rain Christmas decorations down on our living quarters while also preparing to host Thanksgiving day for our kids and a few smiley folks from her clan. I alternate between following requests to help and staying out of her way as best as possible.
Just to add a little excitement, our clothes-washing machine produced an error code in the middle of a load, related to it not draining. Several go-rounds of bailing water out and re-trying proved fruitless, and we opted to call an appliance repair service.
When I saw on a YouTube video that accessing the drain pump meant tipping the washer and working through the bottom, I bailed out (pun intended) on trying to do the repair myself.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving will be spent waiting for a repair person to disrupt life in our utility room downstairs.
My sanity is on thin ice while turkeys are thawing, green beans are flying around in the kitchen, pots and pans are getting used faster than they can be washed, both ovens are doing double duty, pie fillings are dripping, smoke alarms keep pre-beeping close encounters with full panic mode, and all the while Cyndie simply floats around like a principal ballerina as cool as a cucumber, glowing like an angel while doing the work of 10 Chefs plus two.
Basically, it’s just a normal November Wednesday.
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Feeling Thankful
I’m particularly thankful on this final day of the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend. The good fortunes bestowed upon us by the universe, chance, choices, and a smattering of genuine efforts are beyond measure. As such, engaging in the exercise of naming a few that come to mind provides valuable perspective for a immeasurable phenomenon.
When I realized the automatic waterer for the horses in the paddocks was getting warmer than a hot tub, I looked up the temp control details online. Upon opening the access panel of the waterer, I found there was no thermocouple to adjust. After I got over the shock and traced wires several times, suddenly my fingers landed on the leads to the unit that was just dangling in air. I don’t know what caused it to slide out but I’m extremely thankful the fix was so easy and the water is now a reasonable temperature that won’t sting the horses’ lips.
- The surgical incisions on Cyndie’s ankle have a ways to go before the skin has healed fully. Still, already she is experiencing joyful relief over the absence of the screws and plates that once held the shattered bones together. They eventually became a problem of their own. I’m really thankful for the good work of the surgeon and staff of the hospital and Tria Orthopedic for their excellent treatment of Cyndie’s injury.
- This is an ongoing appreciation but lately, I’m feeling particularly aware of the mental benefits of successfully treating the depression that dominated much of my life from childhood through roughly mid-life. I am so very thankful for the doctors and therapists who guided and educated me, some of whom I can’t even recall names or faces. I guess I wasn’t focused on the guides but on the destination.
- Lastly, for this exercise, I want to tell you how thankful I am that you are reading the odd chronicles I decide to post here every day on Relative Something. To the worldwide audience of WordPress bloggers who happen upon random posts and end up returning for more and the friends and family who understand I don’t use other social media and keep in touch by reading me here. Even if I don’t know you are following along, if you are reading these words right now it means something to me and I am thankful internet stranger(s).
Maybe by exercising my thankfulness muscles in this way, I will continue to gain prowess in my journey toward optimum health. Mental “planks” as compared to the back-saving core exercise I continue to employ. Thankfully, those seem to be helping me to avoid prolonged repeated episodes of debilitating pain.
Happy last day of this (U.S.) holiday weekend!
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Food Thieves
A while back I mentioned the rats weren’t doing the usual tunneling under the barn walls. Maybe that’s because they were finding everything they wanted inside.
Asher had started to show extra interest around the pallet where bags of feed get stacked. I assumed it was likely rodents were leaving their scent under there and figured Asher wasn’t hurting anything since he wasn’t digging. Although, he was spending so much time there and being so quiet about it, eventually I decided to take a look for myself.
That is a shot looking under the pallet. There is a pile of horse feed from a breached bag above. The wetness on the plank in the foreground was from Asher’s mouth. He was working hard to consume every morsel he could reach.
In pulling bags off the stack to find which one was leaking, I discovered it was three bags that had been chewed open.
I salvaged some of the feed pellets but it was hard because most of it was contaminated with shards of the plastic bags the thieves had chewed through.
I’m afraid I may have spoiled the rodents’ Thanksgiving feast by cleaning it all up.
Cyndie and I drove to her brother’s home in Edina, MN for a fabulous feast of Thanksgiving-worthy flavors. I shouldn’t need to eat again for a few days.
It is official now. Christmas decorations can legally go up and carols are allowed. I will do no shopping today as an intentional snub to the rampant over-commercialization of the holidays. I did charge a few dollars on Wednesday night to rewatch “Planes, Trains, & Automobiles” to get me in the spirit of the season, though.
It worked. Gobble, gobble, gobble.
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Some Leftovers
Twas the day after Thanksgiving and all through the house…
I’m taking the day off today. Instead of something fresh, I present the wayback machine for anyone interested in revisiting a leftover blog post from the more than 10-years I’ve been posting to Relative Something. Doesn’t require reheating.
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Fitting Feasts
Despite the peculiar Thanksgiving “ungathering” in the U.S. yesterday, brought on by the miserably timed (like there would ever be a good time) runaway community spreading of COVID-19, I am personally aware of many feasts that were had by individual households anyway.
I unwittingly broke a loose promise made to my mother a lifetime ago by not eating our Thanksgiving dinner at the old family table. We were gifted with rights to the table when we bought our first house, with the requirement that we host Thanksgiving on it for years after. Yesterday, since there were just the two of us, Cyndie and I chose to dine at the coffee table in front of the fireplace instead.
Cyndie performed her usual heroics in the kitchen and prepared a turkey with classic side dishes that could have fed a houseful. Luckily, she had baked most of the extras the day before so she could distribute portions to her mom and our kids in advance for a modified version of sharing the holiday feast together. Cyndie did her own custom door dash delivery to each of them.
In true 2020 pandemic fashion, the Friswold clan logged in for a video conference from each of our homes for the chance to see faces and hear voices on a day when we would normally have been together. The typical hijinks ensued.
“You’re muted still!”
“Turn on your video.”
[waving hello]
[all talking at once]
[followed by awkward silence]
Ah, but there is nothing like actually hearing the voices of our loved ones. Priceless.
As Cyndie and I got a few bites into our plates of Thanksgiving goodness, after voicing adoration for each of the fabulous flavors, I turned to her and asked, “Are we supposed to start arguing over politics now?”
Mostly, we just cooed over the fire in the fireplace, the exceptional quality of our holiday feast, and how good we have it despite the national crises simmering all around our country.
Much thankfulness ensued.
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Tuesday Before
‘Twas the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and all through the house
all the creatures were stirring because they knew something weird was up!
No one is coming and we’re going to stay home
the pandemic is raging so we’ll feast all alone.
A pandemic Thanksgiving is a very strange thing. It does feel like a holiday week, except for the part where it doesn’t feel like a holiday at all. So far, our family has been lucky. Every time I have started to think I might be getting sick, it turned out to be a false alarm. To the best of my knowledge, neither of Cyndie’s nor my family members have needed to be hospitalized.
The reports getting more and more exposure on the news from doctors and nurses who are burdened with caring for the rapidly growing number of patients who need intensive care are heartbreaking. I can imagine how frustrating it must be to head home from a long shift of being over-worked and driving past locations where people can be seen gathering together and/or not wearing masks in behavior that comes across as disrespectful of the perils and subsequent burdens that fall squarely on the front line healthcare workers.
There is such a disconnect among people with varying levels of concern.
One nurse said they have to eat like snakes. With no time to take breaks, they grab food when they can and swallow it in one bite so they can get back to tending to someone struggling to breathe.
Meanwhile, retail industries are advertising holiday sales like nothing is amiss, hoping to avoid financial collapse of their own businesses by propping up a facade that everything is just fine. Keep shopping!
Just don’t hoard paper products or cleaning supplies.
Who would have guessed that toilet paper would become a treasured stocking stuffer for Christmas?
I’m still commuting to the day job, where stress is high, but looking forward to staying away from people for the coming long weekend. Cyndie has stocked our shelves with ingredients to entertain us both with her culinary arts.
The entertainment of watching spectator sports played in empty stadiums hasn’t hooked me as a desired distraction so I expect I will lose myself in more books and movies or take some deep dives in my music library this weekend.
Think of all the gas we are saving by staying home.
Let’s all offer a toast to the doctors and nurses who are working harder than ever in conditions that are riskier than ever this Thanksgiving.
Maintain safe social distances in their honor and remember to give thanks for every blessing that can still be found, even in an otherwise difficult year.
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