Pre-Thanksgiving Thoughts

  My dad owns a restaurant and he's owned it for all of my life. I have found that I get less and less excited about Thanksgiving every year.

Now why may you ask? Why does Thanksgiving not mean the joyous, great, fattening times that you and your family have?

First of all the restaurant is open on Thanksgiving! You guys thought Thanksgiving was about being thankful. Oh piss off, we all know it's a consumer holiday in which marks the beginning of the "real" Christmas season in which we all spend too much money and time buying gifts and not enough time with the people we truly care about. So either I had the choice to sit home while my family worked (once my brother was old enough to hold a bus bucket and eventually a tray he was working on Thanksgiving too). My mom used to work at the restaurant  on Thanksgiving but my parents are divorced and she lives in Florida so that would be really awkward now a days.

So on Thanksgiving instead I found myself at a variety of different venues here's the list

1.) The Garcia Family Thanksgiving- Hectic, overwhelming, never on time, and so NOT my Italian family Thanksgiving. I have spent Thanksgiving and Easter with this family. The thing I always found the most strange was that they served corn as a side dish. I know corn is a HUGE foundation of our diet and the first T-Gives, but christ almighty, never had I ever eaten corn during my holiday meals.

2.) The Breakers Hotel in Florida enjoying glass stuffing ( no joke). Anyways before we could make it to this world famous hotel the house down the street caught fire and my uncle was pulled over for speeding while my cousin and I were laying down in the back of the SUV floor hidden by a blanket.  I really couldn't make this shit up if I tried. The food was great but it was a buffet in an elegant ballroom and I really wanted to trade in my skirt for a pair of jeans and some heavy winter socks, curl up in butterball ( ha ha get it) and fall into a turkey coma listening to the football game.


3.) Working @ the restaurant-  I spent last T-Gives sorting out seating charts the night before and still found myself fucked over halfway through the day. I worked the entire day going on a slice of bread. I was waiting to eat with my brother at the bar (so classy) but he "got sooo hungry" he ate without me. Oh yeah and my dad showed up with his gf and her family to eat dinner. 'Nuff said.


4.) Having dinner alone with my mom..this was actually kinda cool because I didn't have to go anywhere with a strange family, we watched the Macy's Day Parade, my friend Nick brought us donuts in the morning (SO SWEET), and bopped around the house in our sweats. She watched the football game while I did homework, and we both napped on the couch.

5.) T-Gives with my brother's then fiance (now wife) without my brother- Obviously John was working and Melissa felt bad I had no where to go. So I went to "Grams". For those of you who haven't met Gram she's the most adorable, soft spoken, awesome lady you will ever meet. I think she could actually kick Betty White's ass. Anyways the thing I always notice about other people's holidays is that they are soo much more QUIET. It's deafening to me to hear so much silence. I'm used to 12 guests or more T-Gives when I was a wee child and family screaming at you if you should by chance infringe their view of the television.

Norman Rockwell, what's up?

6.) T-Gives with my boyfriend of the times family- This was after a long day of working at the restaurant. I smelled like a kitchen, my feet hurt, and I was exhausted. I was just expecting to meet everyone on the couch to watch a Christmas special and have dessert with them ( it was really late for normal Thanksgiving meals) when I called my then boyfriend and he told me they hadn't eaten yet and they were waiting for me. So I had myself a little happy cry in the car before heading into their house because I was soo excited to sit down for Thanksgiving dinner (with a normal functioning family who can actually cook). I had already eaten but I pretended I hadn't and it was seriously awesome. The 3 glasses of wine may have contributed to my warm, jolly feelings. But anyways someone should have taken a photo it was such a freaken kodak moment. Damn them.

7.) A holiday dinner with my best friend Nick, his family, and his now ex gf- This was not at the Link's home. This was at their relatives. It didn't really occur to me how weird it was that I was going to dinner with his family until we walked through the door and his relatives had to figure out which one of us was Nick's girlfriend. Maybe they thought we were a creepy Mormon threesome? But the entire family had thoroughly puzzled looks on their faces when we walked through the door and seemed a little on edge the entire time we were there, even my chocolate creme pie and flowers couldn't subside the wandering questions in their minds!

It's cool as a fictional tv show but apparently not as reality tv...

Not sure where I will end up this year, freeloading a free meal, joining in some other families T-Gives conversation, while judging their family traditions..BUT we shall see.

A Turkey dose of Teen