Saturday, December 7, 2013

deo gratias

Thanksgiving was last week, and the world has tumbled into Christmas crazy more quickly than ever before, obliterating the post-Thanksgiving glow. But here are some things that happened.
  • All four of my younger siblings were home at the same time (as me.) That has happened in the past few years but not on Thanksgiving, as I went to college like 2000 miles away, and never came home for such a short break. For the three Thanksgivings since I graduated, my brother has been in Europe every single time. So this was the first time in seven years that we've all been together for the simplest and nicest holiday.
  • We finally did a turkey right. We never used to do that when I was growing up, because at some point one of my younger sisters said "I don't want tuwkey, I want hamballs," and we just went with it for as long as I can remember. Then when I went away I realized that everybody else did turkey, and it was very good. So Matt and I have been trying to convince my mom to do turkey ever since. We made baby steps over three years-- from no turkey, just ham, to a ham and half a turkey, to this year's big fat turkey and no ham! (Well, there was ham around the house, and we ate it all day while we were making the turkey, but it was obviously singing BGV.) The turkey turned out great, even though we roasted it in my grandma's old metal dish pan, and we got a huge pot of turkey stock from it too. 
  • We bought a clownishly ugly car for Matt's mail route. It's yellow... former-taxi cab yellow, and blue... half-done DIY paint-job blue.
  •  I accompanied sibling #3 to a consultation with a natural health lady, who strongly suspects that my sister has really bad gluten and dairy allergies, and put her on an elimination diet to figure out if there's anything else going on. I was slightly gratified when I walked in after the appointment and my sister introduced me as "the one I was telling you about who keeps telling me to eat sauerkraut," and the lady was like "That's the best advice anyone's given her!" We went to Trader Joe's and loaded up on the very few food items that my sister can eat on this diet. Anyway, I'm glad because she's been diagnosed with ADHD by a shrink at her college, and getting her diet balanced might help her get off Ritalin and in general be happier. I wish I could show you the Polaroid from the No-Cavity-Club at the dentist's office when my sister was six or seven-- my mom found it recently and we all gasped at how zombie-pale she was, with huge dark bags under her eyes. She totally had allergies.
          I took her home and we made kimchi immediately.
  • The whole family INCLUDING my mother played a game of football in the yard. I don't think that has EVER happened. It was awesome.
  • We played our homemade version of Balderdash in the evening. We just pass around a few dictionaries and everyone takes turn finding a funky word, for which everyone else invents a bullshit meaning, and then we vote on the most likely one. I highly recommend this game.
  • I finally told all four of my siblings that I am pregnant and the two eldest immediately scrapped their plans for traipsing around the world this summer, which I thought was sweet.
  • Hey, I'm pregnant! Don't come to my house, it's very dirty.

6 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. I am due June 11! I might tell my siblings (especially my brother) that the baptism is going to be more meaningful than seeing me in my underwear with a lizard child for about 5 minutes before I tell them to go away.

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    2. Good to know you have a pretty realistic grasp on what life with a new babe is like. ;)

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  2. THAT is the REAL game!! Some goofball invented "Balderdash" so they could make money selling pencils to people to write down the crazy words with....
    I love that game!

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    Replies
    1. exactly! Once you've had the fun of looking up the words yourself, you'll never go back to the stupid board and parcheesi pieces. Seriously, you can use your fingers to keep score.

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