I’m going to go out on a limb here and declare Thanksgiving my favorite holiday. Quite a controversial statement, I know. Hopefully, Olivier Martinez doesn’t come over and give me a turkey day whooping for uttering such a contrarian viewpoint. (In his defense, he’s French, so he probably doesn’t really respect the whole Thanksgiving dealio. Come to think of it, Gabriel Aubrey is Canadian, so it was probably just another ass-kicking day for both of them and not the holiest of eat-fests).
Actually, I need to amend my earlier statement – Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday after my birthday month, which is, quite clearly, my favorite holiday of all. I have no idea why it hasn’t yet been declared a national holiday.
Anyway, there are, obviously, many, many reasons to love Thanksgiving. When you combine stuffing your face, stuffing your shopping cart, and all day reality TV marathons, well, you sirs, have the makings of a PoeLog trifecta of awesomeness.
We actually kicked off this year’s festivities with Greige Tuesday. Oh, you don’t know about Greige Tuesday? Well, it’s kinda like Black Friday, except its Tuesday. It’s the day you REALLY get a jump on the shopping crowds by battling the after-work, get-a-jump-on-Thanksgiving-traffic-travellers and driving out to the outlets to load up on Brooks Brothers deals (suits for my prepster-for-life XFE, non-iron button up shirts for lazy me).
This 40-percent-off extravaganza is followed by wings at Hooters. It’s a Greige Tuesday tradition. And, pretty wild for a school night. This year’s Hooters entertainment was provided by an approximately 4-year-old boy who appeared to be the son of one of the Hooterettes and was running wild around the restaurant way past his (and my) bedtime.
It’s always so much fun to watch young women in tight orange shorts twirl a child around dangerously close to my beer.
We’ll skip Hallow Halls Wednesday (where one spends the day surfing the Web looking for upcoming CyberMonday deals and waiting for early release from work), and get to the main event: Thanksgiving.
One of the things that makes Thanksgiving so dang awesome is that we spend it with friends. And lucky for us, our hosts, Matt and Melissa (the M&Ms), do all the work. All we do is bring some booze (gin, usually) and wine (couple of bottles of Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, couple of bottles of Langmeil’s Hanging Snakes Shiraz). That’s it. Melissa does pretty much everything else (this year, she allowed our other friends Troy and Eddie to bring pies).
It’s our seventh year over there, and the M&Ms always lay out quite a feast – 20 lb turkey, dressing, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, candied yams, green bean casserole, gravy, rolls and two types of cranberry sauce, including the jellied kind out of the can for us white trash nostalgics. I swear, cranberry doesn’t taste right unless it’s got ridges in it.
Of course, it all kicks off with tons of drinking options (sangria, pineapple infused vodka, about 4 kinds of gin) and snacks, including my favorite: pigs in a blanket.
After stuffing our collective faces and livers for hours on end, we attempt to play a board game. This year it was something called Apples-to-Apples. I couldn’t possibly explain it, but let’s suffice it to say, I tried far too hard to be clever with all of my answers. If you have to explain everything with, “See, what I did there? It’s a joke. It’s meant to be ironic,” you are not going to win.
But, the very, VERY best part of spending Thanksgiving with the M&Ms is that they don’t eat leftovers. So we actually bring empty Tupperware over and they fill it up! It’s freaking awesome. It’s a Thanksgiving miracle.
My personal chef XFE turns the turkey into amazing open-faced sandwiches with avocado and provolone on sourdough bread that we then eat for several days. Served with leftover side dishes, of course. They’re already perfect and don’t need to be adapted into anything else.
We had managed to stay away from most-shopping related activities after Greige Tuesday, but finally succumbed a bit on Sunday. Let me tell you something, the Sunday after Thanksgiving is an AWESOME time to go shopping! Nobody is out! They’re all worn out from chasing down deals on Black Friday and Small Business Sunday. We cruised right into Best Buy (where XFE bought some video game) and had the run of both Trader Joe’s and DSW.
About that DSW: a simple window-shopping trip for casual shoes for XFE turned into us walking out with nine pairs of shoes. (To be fair, two pairs of “shoes” were fancy new house slippers for each of us, and another pair was flip flops for me. Hardly shoes, really. More like “minimal coverings for the bottom on one’s feet”). But that doesn’t excuse the rest of that shoe shopping spree.
It was probably more than either of us would have predicted going in. I guess we were lulled by the ease and emptiness of the place. Either that, or a turkey-induced shopping coma. And for that, we only have the M&Ms and all their delicious leftovers to blame.
So, to sum up, this post-Thanksgiving, I’m most thankful for:
- Super clever boyfriends who win at board games (winning phrase? Britney Spears. Nicely done, hun);
- United Airlines miles that let us fly all over the world on fabulous vacations;
- Chubby cats who sleep with you in the winter and keep you warm;
- Fantastic friends who let you come over, eat all their food, stay overnight safely in their house when you’ve had too much to drink; and send you home with a week’s worth of leftovers;
- And, shoes.
*Not an exhaustive list by any means.
