There's still an hour left of Thanksgiving, 2008.  It's been a great day.

In the past, Jay has had a lot of away games the night before Thanksgiving, so he's gotten in the habit of coming home around one or two a.m. and putting the turkey in the oven.  We wake up to the delicious smell of roast bird.  You know it's Thanksgiving before you open your eyes.

This year, Jay had no game so he wasn't up after midnight.  He had planned on putting the turkey in around 5 or 6, but he slept late.  This is a good thing, as he doesn't sleep so well most of the time, so even though we woke to the smell of nothin' dash nothin', I'm glad he got a good night's sleep because we had a lot to do today.

He made coffee and got the bird in the oven around 8:30.  I was very busy at this time, reading my latest Michael Crichton novel.  Then Jay went to work out and I called my sister and we walked around the lake.

Katie came over in the morning to help Josie make a pie.  Josie had decided to try making a chocolate cream pie with berries in it, like one we saw in the movie "Waitress".  We never actually saw the movie pie finished so we don't know if it looked like the pies the girls made, but they tasted pretty good, so it didn't matter what the movie pie did.   It was Josie's first pie, but Katie has made many a virtuous pie in her time.  There was that one time when she was aiming for a banana cream pie and didn't have the right ingredients, so she made up a new recipe on the spot and wound up with banana pie with a hard candy shell, but most of her pies look like the hero pies photographed in cookbooks. 

Jay and I had been invited to an early afternoon cocktail party with some friends from MCTC.  It was really fun.  We had cheese and crackers and dip and wine and if you think that a bunch of academics sipping chardonnay in the afternoon would be dull, you'd be totally wrong.  We were drinking pinot grigio and talking about  Star Trek. At least Tom and I were.  We're both totally pumped about the new Star Trek movie.  Jay, in an attempt to fit in with the cool kids, mixed up Star Trek and Star Wars.  Jay, I love you, but don't bet heavy when you're not in your field. 

We were having a lovely time but we had to leave because too many people were waiting for us to do too many other things.  Katie, Josie and Zack finished baking the pies, put the turkey in the fridge, packed up the cookies and headed to Tom and Kelly's house where all the Pivec's who hadn't left town to visit new grandchildren in far away states were congregated.  Jay and I swung by our house, grabbed the cranberry sauce and rutabagas and headed west.

Tom and Kelly's was fun and there was a ton of food, all good.  I ate too much.  The most exciting moment of the day occurred when Mary's puppy, Gordy, jumped up on Jorie and knocked Jorie's loose tooth right out of her face.  Jorie was a trooper and showed everyone her tooth and the bloody hole in her mouth.  There was also a rousing game of Catchphrase, which proved to me that I really need reading glasses.  I couldn't see any of the words so it took me awhile to come up with clues. Jay and Josie got caught up in a huge card game after dinner so Katie, Zack and I left without them.  We headed further west to my folk's house, where most of the Hubbell's still in town were waiting to eat forty lbs of turkey.

Mom's got a nine foot island in her kitchen and it was completely covered with food.  That didn't even include the seven or eight pies people had brought, including one of Josie's chocolate cream and berry pies and a bunch of pumpkin pies that Kent made.  Kent is as good a cook as Jay is and makes a living at it.  He actually took over the potatoes from Grandma.

"Watching a professional in action is awe inspiring!" Dad said to me.  That is so true.

During dinner, Tyler caught up with us on the phone.  He's in Austin and had dinner with one of his friends from work.  He sounded like he'd been having a good day but he chastised me for not calling him earlier.  My own first born child, and I neglected to call him on Thanksgiving.  I explained to him that my long distance card had expired and I hadn't realized it until it was too late to go back to Sam's club but he just laughed at me and told me I sucked.  That made me laugh really hard because it's true.  Of course, if my kids don't know about my telephobia by now, I guess they don't know me at all. 

By 8:30, Jay and I were exhausted and Josie was chomping at the bit to get back to Tom and Kelly's.  She was spending the night with them and the plan is to head to the outlet mall at midnight and downtown at the crack of dawn.  It doesn't sound like fun to me, but neither does going to see Twilight and all the kids did that last weekend.

Twelve minutes till Black Friday.  I don't know why they call it that.  I would understand the name if it's a bust and no one makes any money, but since it's the biggest shopping day of the year, it ought to be called Gold Friday.  But no one asked me.

It was Jay's and my twenty ninth Thanksgiving together, for which I am profoundly grateful.  Not only that we're together, still having fun but that we are privileged to be doing it all in the greatest country the world has ever seen.  All their lives I've been telling my kids that the word 'free' means 'someone else paid for it' and that goes for a country as well as anything else.  I'm grateful to all the people throughout our history who have paid for our freedom, from the daring capitalists of the Revolution to the men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq today, including our nephew, Pete.

Thanks, guys.  We couldn't do any of it without you.

 

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