so today . . . i am more than a little concerned about what is going to happen with our christmas pageant at school this year...
yes, it is that time again--time to make decisions about what we are going to do for our christmas program. the first year i worked at my current school, i didn't really have a good idea about what was expected. i figured i would teach my kindergarteners a christmas song, and when it was our turn we would sing. their parents would get to see them up in front of everyone, snap a few pictures, and everyone would go home happy.
i was so naive.
in the middle of october, teachers started talking about the christmas program. i ignored it. christmas was still two months away, and how long could it take to teach my kids a song? so we continued working on fall projects and didn't think too much about the christmas program.
at the beginning of november, i started hearing christmas songs wafting down the hallway during music time. i seemed to be the only one who was not yet practicing a christmas song. i decided maybe i should at least choose something, just in case it turned out to be harder than i thought. so i found a nice little song (called happy birthday, Jesus) that had lovely words and a mellow sound, and started teaching it to the kids.
they were less than thrilled. "do we have to sing that song again?" they started whining... in mid-november... "yes," i said. "we have to learn this song so that we can sing for our parents for christmas." but i knew i was in trouble if they were already tired of it with still a month to go before the performance.
and then right before thanksgiving, one of the teachers asked me if i had sent home a letter yet about the costumes for the program. costumes? they needed costumes?? yes, she went on to explain, the parents would provide the costumes, or money to purchase the costumes if i preferred. they were used to it. i just had to send a letter home. and it was best to do it now, she said, before they got busy with christmas stuff.
we hadn't even had our thanksgiving feast yet. we were still busy making pilgrim costumes...
and my song didn't really need costuming. it wasn't about sheep and shepherds or little drummer boys or stars and angels. it was just a nice little song about christmas being all about Jesus. you know, because it is His birthday!!!
ok, so, apparently i needed costumes. i listened to the song again, and decided i would just have the kids dress in party clothes--whatever they already had in their little closets that looked nice would be fine. and it wouldn't cost anybody anything. so i wrote the note to the parents, knowing they would be relieved, and went back to thinking about thanksgiving.
until the next day...
until the next day when the first parent came into my classroom and said, "what do you mean they don't need a costume for the christmas program! it's the CHRISTMAS PROGRAM!! they need costumes!!!!" i tried to explain that costumes were not going to enhance our performance. in fact, costumes would probably distract from the message of our very meaningful song. i assured them that it was going to be fine. our performance would be wonderful. they didn't need to worry about it.
i'm sure they worried about it.
two weeks before the christmas program, the same teacher who asked me about costumes (she really was trying to help me--i was so clueless,) told me that we were going to start practicing on the stage in the gym. every day, we would practice. and not just our class--all the classes. so, it appeared that for two weeks, we were going to spend the better part of our morning sitting on the floor of the gym watching the other classes practice their songs until it was finally our turn. because since the kindergarteners are the oldest, they are always last... and maybe i should mention here that the actual program was not going to take place in the gym--it was going to be in the sanctuary--so i was not sure how helpful all this gym practicing was going to be anyway. not to mention the fact that we weren't getting anything else done! and i was supposed to start reading groups in december...
the next day we tromped up to the gym with everyone else, and that's when i realized that i was in big t.r.o.u.b.l.e. the other classes had hand motions. they had dance routines. their songs were lively and fun. those kids didn't know all the words to their songs, but boy could they move! AND apparently they were also going to have costumes!
my class was going to stand there in their party clothes and sing a song. no motions. no dancing. no costumes.
i was pretty sure that i would be out of a job after the christmas program...
and then the next year, our director decided that instead of just singing a song, the three older classes should put on a christmas pageant. she had seen one done somewhere else and thought it would be a good idea if we did one.
i was pretty sure it wasn't a good idea. but since i'm not in charge of the world, i was suddenly in charge of the christmas pageant.
ok, well technically i wasn't in charge of the pageant, but i had plenty to do. i rewrote the script, because whoever had written the original script had clearly not had four and five year olds as actors. the school bought costumes for the people parts, but the teachers were assigned the task of making the animal costumes, since oriental trading company didn't sell animal costumes. since i was still the new guy, i sort of stood back and watched as the other teachers tried to figure out what to do. finally i couldn't take it any more! "i'll make all the sheep costumes," i said, "if you guys can do the others." they quickly agreed, since there was a pattern for the other animals, but not for the sheep. so i grabbed my bundle of fleecy fabric and headed home...
during the day, we practiced the program--we practiced the speaking parts, and we practiced where to stand and when to move, and we practiced the song. and we didn't make any progress on reading groups... and then at night the teachers stitched our little fingers off (well, not me. i used a sewing machine. but as i later found out, none of the other teachers could use a sewing machine, so the other costumes were stitched by hand, or GLUED together!) we didn't get a lot of work done at school, but it looked like the pageant was coming together.
and it did. it took a lot of work that first year, and all of us were ready to jump off a bridge and cancel christmas, but the kids looked cute, and their parents took pictures, and everyone went home happy--especially the teachers, because the pageant was DONE!!
unfortunately, we did such a good job, and the kids looked SO cute, and the parents took SO many pictures, and everyone was SO happy, that we were expected to do the pageant again the next year... and the next year... and the next year...
but this year is going to be a little bit different. this year our kids are younger--they are about six months younger than what we usually have--which will make a difference in the pageant. we don't have enough kids who can handle speaking parts, so this year i will narrate the story while the kids (in their costumes, of course) will act it out. and then we will sing a lively song at the end. with hand motions :-)
this year, we decided to wait until after thanksgiving to start working on our song. which meant that today was the day! so during music time, i started describing to the kids what we were going to do, and why we were going to be singing the same song over and over and over again until we knew it really well. they seemed to be listening, so i went on to describe how we would act out the story and how we would wear costumes. and then aiden raised his hand, and excitedly said, "can i be spiderman?"
spiderman? in the christmas pageant?? i can see it now...
and then sadie said, "i want to be rapunzel!"
spiderman and rapunzel in bethlehem... it's only a matter of time before the angry birds try to get in on the act too!
Monday, November 28, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
a memorable thanksgiving...
today's blog is dedicated to larry and tracie swanson. they were our first "couple" friends and have the dubious distinction of being the guests at our first thanksgiving meal. just so you know, they are still alive...
so today . . . is thanksgiving eve. and i think the time has come to tell you about the first time i cooked thanksgiving dinner. all. by. myself...
when rollie and i got married, we were really young--probably too young to be making such huge life decisions. i had very little real life experience. i went from living with my mom and dad, to living in a dorm room, to living with rollie. and while i knew how to dust and vacuum and clean the bathroom (thank you for making me do chores, mom!) i didn't really know how to cook. when i lived at home, my dad always made oatmeal for our breakfast (sometimes chocolate oatmeal! thank you dad!) we all ate hot lunch at our respective schools, and my mom cooked dinner. and then i went away to college and discovered the joys of saga food services! choices, choices, choices, and none of them required me to get near a stove!! so basically, rollie married someone who could bake chocolate chip cookies and zucchini bread...
but when our first thanksgiving rolled around, i decided i wanted to cook a big thanksgiving dinner. mostly i decided this because our thanksgiving vacation was only four days long which really didn't leave us enough time to go home for thanksgiving. so even though my foray into providing meals for our new family had pretty much consisted of kraft macaroni and cheese and hamburger helpers, i was prepared to do whatever i had to do to make our first thanksgiving memorable...
... and it was. but not for the reasons you might think...
it started right after halloween. i got out the cookbooks people had thoughtfully given us for wedding gifts and started planning. i made a menu. i made a grocery list. i made a timeline. because as anyone who has ever cooked a thanksgiving dinner knows, you need a timeline. thanksgiving dinner does not just happen, people--it takes planning! i'm not so sure i realized this before... it seemed like all my previous thanksgiving dinners had just sort of appeared. i guess that's what happens when you aren't the grownup responsible for feeding the hungry hoard of family members. but this year, it was all up to me.
we were on an extremely tight budget when we were first married. extremely tight. i'm pretty sure that is why we ate so much kraft macaroni and cheese, because i could buy four boxes for a dollar. so going to the grocery store and buying whatever i needed all in one week was not an option. i had to divide the list so i could buy the non-perishable items early and watch for the best deal on a frozen turkey. it became clear to me, as i pushed my shopping cart up and down the grocery store aisles, that i was not going to be able to afford everything on my list. i was going to have to make choices...
but this was our first thanksgiving! i wanted it to be memorable! so i started looking for cheaper alternatives. as i was comparing prices, the first thing i noticed was that those bags of dried bread cubes that the stuffing recipe called for were kind of expensive. but i needed dried bread cubes if i was going to make stuffing. but i couldn't afford the dried bread cubes. so i decided to make my own. bread was cheap. i figured i could buy a couple of loaves of bread, cut the slices up into cubes, dry them, and ta-da! i would have bread cubes for my stuffing.
and that is exactly what i did. it took me one whole afternoon, but i cut up three loaves of bread (because i wanted to make sure i had enough) into tiny, half inch cubes. then i spread them out on every cookie sheet i had. i discovered that i didn't have enough cookie sheets, so i put aluminum foil on every horizontal surface i could find and covered it with soft bread cubes. and then i waited for them to dry...
i did all of this several days before thanksgiving, because i had no idea how long it was going to take bread cubes to dry. and i figured that once they were dry i could bag them up and save them until the big day. plus, i knew it was going to be a lot of work to cook thanksgiving dinner, and this was one thing i could do early...
and then there was the turkey. i was used to buying meat one pound of hamburger at a time--which i would then divide into thirds and use when making hamburger helper (i told you, our budget was TIGHT!) but i had decided we needed at least a 20 pound turkey! (yes, i know there were only two of us, but the bigger the bird, the more meat. right?) thankfully(?) our freezer was nearly empty. so once i found a grocery store where i could buy a turkey for about 10 cents a pound (if i bought $25 worth of other groceries, which is about all i had,) i rooted around in the frozen turkey bin until i found the biggest turkey they had--a 23 pound bird! i put that thing in my cart, feeling like i had hit the jackpot, and headed home to try to cram it into my freezer.
a 23 pound turkey is pretty big. especially when you live in a basement apartment and your refrigerator has a small freezer...
i finally got the bird tucked away, lined up the rest of my cans and boxes of food, smiled at my drying bread cubes, and waited for thanksgiving...
i say waited, but i was busy! i was still going to classes, doing homework, trying to figure out what i could make for dinner each night with a can of tuna fish, and turning my bread cubes over so that they would dry evenly and quickly.
the weekend before thanksgiving i was talking to my mom on the phone, and i was telling her about my plans for our thanksgiving meal. my biggest worry was how i was going to get everything ready to eat at the same time! i had quite a menu planned and only one oven, which i was pretty sure was going to be filled up with turkey. "well," my mom said, "whatever you do, don't make your own stuffing! just use the stove top stuffing."
just use the stove top stuffing? what was stove top stuffing, and why didn't i know about it?!?! i didn't know about it, because i was never in the kitchen when the actual cooking was happening. "you know, stove top stuffing," my mom continued. "you buy it in a box at the grocery store. then you just boil water, empty the package into the boiling water, cover it and wait a few minutes, and you have stuffing!"
this would have been good to know. it would have been especially good to know before i had spent the last several days cubing bread slices and babysitting them so that they would dry evenly. i looked around my kitchen at my 5, 386 nearly dry bread cubes and said, "i think it might be too late for stove top stuffing..." i quickly recovered. "besides," i continued, "i want to make real stuffing, the kind that goes inside the turkey. this is our first thanksgiving, and i want it to be memorable."
there was that word again...
when i finished up my classes on the day before thanksgiving, i decided i should get out my menu for the next day and get organized. and, i thought, it was probably time to take the turkey out of the freezer so it could thaw...
yep, my 23 pound turkey was still in the freezer, frozen as solid as a rock! blissfully ignorant, i took it out of the freezer and plopped in into the kitchen sink to thaw. hmmm, i thought, i should probably get out the cookbook and find out how long it was going to take to cook the turkey. we had invited company over for thanksgiving dinner, and i wanted to make sure everything was done at the same time. i flipped through the cookbook, and that's when i saw it. that's when i saw how long it takes to thaw a 23 pound frozen turkey!
we were in biiiig trouble!
i spent the rest of the afternoon and evening thawing that big hunk of meat! that turkey had more warm baths than a messy toddler! i dunked it in warm water. i ran water inside it. and that's when i found the bag of giblets. "what's this?" i said to rollie. (it should be noted here that rollie knew exactly what it was, while i didn't have a clue. in hindsight, perhaps he should have been the one cooking thanksgiving dinner...) he removed the bag of giblets, (because there was no way i was touching that!) and i continued pouring water inside the thawing turkey. finally, around midnight, i decided the bird was thawed enough, because i needed to go to bed! i had a lot of cooking to do the next day, and according the the cookbook, a 23 pound stuffed turkey was going to take several hours to cook, which meant i was going to have to get up about 4 a.m.
i felt like overall, things were progressing nicely. my jello salad was made. the bread cubes were hard as rocks (which i hoped was a good thing!) i had a bag of frozen corn and a bag of frozen peas ready to be microwaved. my pumpkin and peach pies were done (i told you i could bake--it's cooking that gives me grief!) and delicious squishy dinner rolls were ready to be warmed and served. i was pretty sure the only thing that had the potential to ruin my memorable first thanksgiving was that turkey...
i got up at 4 a.m. so did rollie. actually, rollie is probably the one who woke up first and had to drag me into the kitchen. i pulled out the biggest bowl i had and mixed up the stuffing. (it may surprise you to learn that i had waaaay more dried bread cubes than i needed. clearly i did not have an accurate picture of the size of the inside of a turkey... even a 23 pound turkey.) when i got out the roasting pan and the brown-in bag, i saw that there were instructions with the brown-in bag... and those instructions said that if i cooked my stuffed turkey in the brown-in bag, it would only take 4-5 hours...
did i mention it was 4 a.m.?
our company wasn't coming until early afternoon, so i put the stupid turkey in the stupid brown-in bag, put the whole stupid thing back in the stupid refrigerator and went back to bed...
around noon, it looked like things were finally coming together. the turkey was smelling really good. i had disposed of the extra bread cubes. the table was set. it was time to make the sweet potato balls.
sweet potato balls are a family tradition. we had had sweet potato balls at every thanksgiving i could remember, although again, i had never actually been involved in making them. but how hard could it be? take a big marshmallow, cover it with mashed up canned sweet potatoes, roll the ball in crushed corn flakes, and bake! time was getting short, so rollie was helping me. "what are these?" he asked. "sweet potato balls! we have them every year at thanksgiving!" "are they good?" he asked. "i guess so," i answered. "i don't like sweet potatoes, so i never eat them." "then why are we having them if you don't like them?" he asked.
he sure was asking a lot of questions!
"because," i explained, "it's thanksgiving, and we always have them at thanksgiving. don't you like them?" "well," he said, "i don't know. i don't really like sweet potatoes either..." so there we were, our hands covered in sweet potato goo and crushed cornflakes, making something that neither one of us liked. "maybe larry or tracie will like them," i said. "let's hope so," rollie replied...
we took the turkey out of the oven and reset it for the sweet potato balls. we carefully cut the brown-in bag off, and i started to scoop out the stuffing. it was looking pretty good! and it smelled delicious!! maybe i was going to be able to pull off this thanksgiving dinner thing after all. rollie started slicing up the turkey while i finished up the other food.'
"uh, julie?" he said. "yes?" i answered. and then he said, "i think there is something wrong with the turkey."
these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving, especially when you have company arriving at any minute. these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving when you have pretty much spent your whole grocery budget on this one meal, hoping to live on the leftovers for a while. these are not the words you want to hear on your first thanksgiving, when all you wanted was for it to be memorable.
i was afraid to look. rollie kept poking around, and then he reached down into the bird and held something up. "what is that?!?!?!" i asked, horrified, looking at the brown, drippy mass in his hand. he said, "i think it is more of the giblet stuff..."
who knew that a turkey had TWO secret compartments where giblet stuff could be hidden...
i learned a lot our first thanksgiving. i learned that thanksgiving dinner isn't just a meal, it is a week long ordeal. i learned that if you have to get up at 4 a.m. it is easier if someone else gets up with you. i learned that you don't have to cook the same amount of food to feed four people that your mother cooked to fed thirty or forty!
and i learned that the most memorable things are sometimes the ones that don't go exactly according to plan...
oh, and when cooking a turkey, look out! there are giblets in both ends!!
so today . . . is thanksgiving eve. and i think the time has come to tell you about the first time i cooked thanksgiving dinner. all. by. myself...
when rollie and i got married, we were really young--probably too young to be making such huge life decisions. i had very little real life experience. i went from living with my mom and dad, to living in a dorm room, to living with rollie. and while i knew how to dust and vacuum and clean the bathroom (thank you for making me do chores, mom!) i didn't really know how to cook. when i lived at home, my dad always made oatmeal for our breakfast (sometimes chocolate oatmeal! thank you dad!) we all ate hot lunch at our respective schools, and my mom cooked dinner. and then i went away to college and discovered the joys of saga food services! choices, choices, choices, and none of them required me to get near a stove!! so basically, rollie married someone who could bake chocolate chip cookies and zucchini bread...
but when our first thanksgiving rolled around, i decided i wanted to cook a big thanksgiving dinner. mostly i decided this because our thanksgiving vacation was only four days long which really didn't leave us enough time to go home for thanksgiving. so even though my foray into providing meals for our new family had pretty much consisted of kraft macaroni and cheese and hamburger helpers, i was prepared to do whatever i had to do to make our first thanksgiving memorable...
... and it was. but not for the reasons you might think...
it started right after halloween. i got out the cookbooks people had thoughtfully given us for wedding gifts and started planning. i made a menu. i made a grocery list. i made a timeline. because as anyone who has ever cooked a thanksgiving dinner knows, you need a timeline. thanksgiving dinner does not just happen, people--it takes planning! i'm not so sure i realized this before... it seemed like all my previous thanksgiving dinners had just sort of appeared. i guess that's what happens when you aren't the grownup responsible for feeding the hungry hoard of family members. but this year, it was all up to me.
we were on an extremely tight budget when we were first married. extremely tight. i'm pretty sure that is why we ate so much kraft macaroni and cheese, because i could buy four boxes for a dollar. so going to the grocery store and buying whatever i needed all in one week was not an option. i had to divide the list so i could buy the non-perishable items early and watch for the best deal on a frozen turkey. it became clear to me, as i pushed my shopping cart up and down the grocery store aisles, that i was not going to be able to afford everything on my list. i was going to have to make choices...
but this was our first thanksgiving! i wanted it to be memorable! so i started looking for cheaper alternatives. as i was comparing prices, the first thing i noticed was that those bags of dried bread cubes that the stuffing recipe called for were kind of expensive. but i needed dried bread cubes if i was going to make stuffing. but i couldn't afford the dried bread cubes. so i decided to make my own. bread was cheap. i figured i could buy a couple of loaves of bread, cut the slices up into cubes, dry them, and ta-da! i would have bread cubes for my stuffing.
and that is exactly what i did. it took me one whole afternoon, but i cut up three loaves of bread (because i wanted to make sure i had enough) into tiny, half inch cubes. then i spread them out on every cookie sheet i had. i discovered that i didn't have enough cookie sheets, so i put aluminum foil on every horizontal surface i could find and covered it with soft bread cubes. and then i waited for them to dry...
i did all of this several days before thanksgiving, because i had no idea how long it was going to take bread cubes to dry. and i figured that once they were dry i could bag them up and save them until the big day. plus, i knew it was going to be a lot of work to cook thanksgiving dinner, and this was one thing i could do early...
and then there was the turkey. i was used to buying meat one pound of hamburger at a time--which i would then divide into thirds and use when making hamburger helper (i told you, our budget was TIGHT!) but i had decided we needed at least a 20 pound turkey! (yes, i know there were only two of us, but the bigger the bird, the more meat. right?) thankfully(?) our freezer was nearly empty. so once i found a grocery store where i could buy a turkey for about 10 cents a pound (if i bought $25 worth of other groceries, which is about all i had,) i rooted around in the frozen turkey bin until i found the biggest turkey they had--a 23 pound bird! i put that thing in my cart, feeling like i had hit the jackpot, and headed home to try to cram it into my freezer.
a 23 pound turkey is pretty big. especially when you live in a basement apartment and your refrigerator has a small freezer...
i finally got the bird tucked away, lined up the rest of my cans and boxes of food, smiled at my drying bread cubes, and waited for thanksgiving...
i say waited, but i was busy! i was still going to classes, doing homework, trying to figure out what i could make for dinner each night with a can of tuna fish, and turning my bread cubes over so that they would dry evenly and quickly.
the weekend before thanksgiving i was talking to my mom on the phone, and i was telling her about my plans for our thanksgiving meal. my biggest worry was how i was going to get everything ready to eat at the same time! i had quite a menu planned and only one oven, which i was pretty sure was going to be filled up with turkey. "well," my mom said, "whatever you do, don't make your own stuffing! just use the stove top stuffing."
just use the stove top stuffing? what was stove top stuffing, and why didn't i know about it?!?! i didn't know about it, because i was never in the kitchen when the actual cooking was happening. "you know, stove top stuffing," my mom continued. "you buy it in a box at the grocery store. then you just boil water, empty the package into the boiling water, cover it and wait a few minutes, and you have stuffing!"
this would have been good to know. it would have been especially good to know before i had spent the last several days cubing bread slices and babysitting them so that they would dry evenly. i looked around my kitchen at my 5, 386 nearly dry bread cubes and said, "i think it might be too late for stove top stuffing..." i quickly recovered. "besides," i continued, "i want to make real stuffing, the kind that goes inside the turkey. this is our first thanksgiving, and i want it to be memorable."
there was that word again...
when i finished up my classes on the day before thanksgiving, i decided i should get out my menu for the next day and get organized. and, i thought, it was probably time to take the turkey out of the freezer so it could thaw...
yep, my 23 pound turkey was still in the freezer, frozen as solid as a rock! blissfully ignorant, i took it out of the freezer and plopped in into the kitchen sink to thaw. hmmm, i thought, i should probably get out the cookbook and find out how long it was going to take to cook the turkey. we had invited company over for thanksgiving dinner, and i wanted to make sure everything was done at the same time. i flipped through the cookbook, and that's when i saw it. that's when i saw how long it takes to thaw a 23 pound frozen turkey!
we were in biiiig trouble!
i spent the rest of the afternoon and evening thawing that big hunk of meat! that turkey had more warm baths than a messy toddler! i dunked it in warm water. i ran water inside it. and that's when i found the bag of giblets. "what's this?" i said to rollie. (it should be noted here that rollie knew exactly what it was, while i didn't have a clue. in hindsight, perhaps he should have been the one cooking thanksgiving dinner...) he removed the bag of giblets, (because there was no way i was touching that!) and i continued pouring water inside the thawing turkey. finally, around midnight, i decided the bird was thawed enough, because i needed to go to bed! i had a lot of cooking to do the next day, and according the the cookbook, a 23 pound stuffed turkey was going to take several hours to cook, which meant i was going to have to get up about 4 a.m.
i felt like overall, things were progressing nicely. my jello salad was made. the bread cubes were hard as rocks (which i hoped was a good thing!) i had a bag of frozen corn and a bag of frozen peas ready to be microwaved. my pumpkin and peach pies were done (i told you i could bake--it's cooking that gives me grief!) and delicious squishy dinner rolls were ready to be warmed and served. i was pretty sure the only thing that had the potential to ruin my memorable first thanksgiving was that turkey...
i got up at 4 a.m. so did rollie. actually, rollie is probably the one who woke up first and had to drag me into the kitchen. i pulled out the biggest bowl i had and mixed up the stuffing. (it may surprise you to learn that i had waaaay more dried bread cubes than i needed. clearly i did not have an accurate picture of the size of the inside of a turkey... even a 23 pound turkey.) when i got out the roasting pan and the brown-in bag, i saw that there were instructions with the brown-in bag... and those instructions said that if i cooked my stuffed turkey in the brown-in bag, it would only take 4-5 hours...
did i mention it was 4 a.m.?
our company wasn't coming until early afternoon, so i put the stupid turkey in the stupid brown-in bag, put the whole stupid thing back in the stupid refrigerator and went back to bed...
around noon, it looked like things were finally coming together. the turkey was smelling really good. i had disposed of the extra bread cubes. the table was set. it was time to make the sweet potato balls.
sweet potato balls are a family tradition. we had had sweet potato balls at every thanksgiving i could remember, although again, i had never actually been involved in making them. but how hard could it be? take a big marshmallow, cover it with mashed up canned sweet potatoes, roll the ball in crushed corn flakes, and bake! time was getting short, so rollie was helping me. "what are these?" he asked. "sweet potato balls! we have them every year at thanksgiving!" "are they good?" he asked. "i guess so," i answered. "i don't like sweet potatoes, so i never eat them." "then why are we having them if you don't like them?" he asked.
he sure was asking a lot of questions!
"because," i explained, "it's thanksgiving, and we always have them at thanksgiving. don't you like them?" "well," he said, "i don't know. i don't really like sweet potatoes either..." so there we were, our hands covered in sweet potato goo and crushed cornflakes, making something that neither one of us liked. "maybe larry or tracie will like them," i said. "let's hope so," rollie replied...
we took the turkey out of the oven and reset it for the sweet potato balls. we carefully cut the brown-in bag off, and i started to scoop out the stuffing. it was looking pretty good! and it smelled delicious!! maybe i was going to be able to pull off this thanksgiving dinner thing after all. rollie started slicing up the turkey while i finished up the other food.'
"uh, julie?" he said. "yes?" i answered. and then he said, "i think there is something wrong with the turkey."
these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving, especially when you have company arriving at any minute. these are not the words you want to hear on thanksgiving when you have pretty much spent your whole grocery budget on this one meal, hoping to live on the leftovers for a while. these are not the words you want to hear on your first thanksgiving, when all you wanted was for it to be memorable.
i was afraid to look. rollie kept poking around, and then he reached down into the bird and held something up. "what is that?!?!?!" i asked, horrified, looking at the brown, drippy mass in his hand. he said, "i think it is more of the giblet stuff..."
who knew that a turkey had TWO secret compartments where giblet stuff could be hidden...
i learned a lot our first thanksgiving. i learned that thanksgiving dinner isn't just a meal, it is a week long ordeal. i learned that if you have to get up at 4 a.m. it is easier if someone else gets up with you. i learned that you don't have to cook the same amount of food to feed four people that your mother cooked to fed thirty or forty!
and i learned that the most memorable things are sometimes the ones that don't go exactly according to plan...
oh, and when cooking a turkey, look out! there are giblets in both ends!!
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
a blog... motivated by threats!
so today . . . i got this message on facebook--"i'm going to quit looking at your blog."
ok, it has been a while since i blogged. in fact, my blogging has been kind of hit and miss for the last several months. we've house hunted. we've married off our daughter. we've moved. we've unpacked... mostly. we've gone on vacation. we've had company. i've thought bloggy thoughts, but just couldn't seem to get them written down. as i've said before, i have to be in a certain frame of mind to blog, and i just haven't been there.
here's where i've been. smack the snooze alarm twice and then get up--go to my new, close, neighborhood 7-11 for a diet lemon cokesi on my way to work--spend the day trying to work with 10 pre-k kids, 5 kindergarteners, 2 curriculums, and 1 brain saying, "quit and go home!"--go home and change clothes--walk the dogs--make dinner, eat dinner, clean up after dinner--take a shower--do miscellaneous household stuff--catch up on facebook and email--go to bed.
do you see blogging anywhere in that list? me either. but i'm not ready to give it up. not yet. here's why...
TOP TEN REASONS I'M NOT READY TO STOP BLOGGING
10. it makes me think. my friend wendy says i think too much. sometimes i probably do. i wake up thinking about stuff. i go to sleep thinking about stuff. my brain never rests. this can be a problem, but blogging makes me think in funny ways. one of my favorite things to do is take an ordinary situation and make it funny. but that takes brain power, because i can't lie--everything i write has to be true... or at least as true as my memory is acurate :-) lately my brain has been sadly underpowered. i think i need an auxiliary brain...
9. i've invested too much to quit. i've written 684 blog posts! that is a lot of hours of thinking and writing and editing. it is too much to just write it off as something i did for a while and walk away. i want to reach 1000! maybe 2000! maybe 10,000!!
8. it helps me remember my life. i am shocked at how much i forget. sometimes i go back and read my old blogs and can't believe how many things would be lost forever if i hadn't blogged.
7. it reminds me of my friends and family who don't see me every day but read my blog. i think about you when i am writing, and i think about what i think you will think about what i am writing, and i think about if i should i write what i am writing because of what you might think about it...
(...maybe wendy is right...)
6. it makes me think (there i go again,) positively--mostly. i have come to realize that i am not really the optimist i like to think that i am. even though i want to be tigger, i am really a lot more eeyore. but who wants to read a whiny blog every day? who wants to write a whiny blog every day?? so while once in a while eeyore shoves tigger out of the way and gets to write a whiny blog, i try to get tigger to do most of them.
5. it makes me feel like a writer. i never knew i might want to be a writer until i started blogging. and then i started seeing ebooks that were really just a compilation of someone's blogs. i'll probably never write a real book, but now that ebooks are an option, who knows... considering some of the stuff that is out there in ebookland, maybe i will! my ebook might not be the best one, but it would certainly not be the worst one either!
4. it worries some people when i don't blog--namely, my mother-in-law :-) when i don't blog, she thinks something is wrong, and she worries about me. and she isn't completely wrong... there usually is a reason when i don't blog, and it isn't always a lack of time. but it also isn't usually as bad as she might think it is. some days are just ordinary and offer me no blogworthy material.
3. it keeps me from quitting my day job. this seems counter-intuitive to me, but it is true. it seems as though if i didn't work, then i would have more time to do all the other stuff i do--like blogging. but, i think to myself, what if i stopped working and then didn't have anything to blog about? what if i stopped working and never left the house? what if i stopped working and my blogs were reduced to "so today . . . i watched shopping tv and ate a tuna fish sandwich. of course, i only ate a tuna fish sandwich, because i burned the toasted cheese. it's nearly impossible to burn a tuna fish sandwich..." hmmm. ok, maybe that would work... maybe i should think about quitting my day job, because that sort of sounded like the beginning of a pretty good blog...
2. it lets people see who i wish i was. actually, my blog is who i am on good days... on those days when everything is right side up and all sunshiny. all of my days are not like that. i wish they were, but they are not. but writing the blog helps me be that person i want to be. it helps me find the humor in sometimes not so funny situations. it forces my brain to live in the land of unicorns and rainbows instead of gloom and doom--(ok, maybe not unicorns and rainbows. that is a little too sweet for me. maybe puppies and daisies...) it is a risk-free way to share myself with whoever wants to spend five minutes on my blog. it's who i wish i was, all the time, every day. even when i'm not...
and the #1 reason i don't want to stop blogging?
1. because my dad is threatening to quit looking at my blog!
yes, that facebook comment came from my dad. my dad! my dad, who can barely type, left me that message. i love my dad. and for him to take 20 minutes to type those few words (ok, i might be exaggerating that just a little bit,) made me realize that i needed to get back to it! i needed to stop putting it off, put pen to paper (so to speak,) and blog something.
so here it is, dad. a blog. not my best one, but at least when you click on that icon we put on your computer desktop that takes you directly to my blog (did you all know you could do that?!?!) there will be something new to read. at least for today.
i'm not making any promises about tomorrow...
ok, it has been a while since i blogged. in fact, my blogging has been kind of hit and miss for the last several months. we've house hunted. we've married off our daughter. we've moved. we've unpacked... mostly. we've gone on vacation. we've had company. i've thought bloggy thoughts, but just couldn't seem to get them written down. as i've said before, i have to be in a certain frame of mind to blog, and i just haven't been there.
here's where i've been. smack the snooze alarm twice and then get up--go to my new, close, neighborhood 7-11 for a diet lemon cokesi on my way to work--spend the day trying to work with 10 pre-k kids, 5 kindergarteners, 2 curriculums, and 1 brain saying, "quit and go home!"--go home and change clothes--walk the dogs--make dinner, eat dinner, clean up after dinner--take a shower--do miscellaneous household stuff--catch up on facebook and email--go to bed.
do you see blogging anywhere in that list? me either. but i'm not ready to give it up. not yet. here's why...
TOP TEN REASONS I'M NOT READY TO STOP BLOGGING
10. it makes me think. my friend wendy says i think too much. sometimes i probably do. i wake up thinking about stuff. i go to sleep thinking about stuff. my brain never rests. this can be a problem, but blogging makes me think in funny ways. one of my favorite things to do is take an ordinary situation and make it funny. but that takes brain power, because i can't lie--everything i write has to be true... or at least as true as my memory is acurate :-) lately my brain has been sadly underpowered. i think i need an auxiliary brain...
9. i've invested too much to quit. i've written 684 blog posts! that is a lot of hours of thinking and writing and editing. it is too much to just write it off as something i did for a while and walk away. i want to reach 1000! maybe 2000! maybe 10,000!!
8. it helps me remember my life. i am shocked at how much i forget. sometimes i go back and read my old blogs and can't believe how many things would be lost forever if i hadn't blogged.
7. it reminds me of my friends and family who don't see me every day but read my blog. i think about you when i am writing, and i think about what i think you will think about what i am writing, and i think about if i should i write what i am writing because of what you might think about it...
(...maybe wendy is right...)
6. it makes me think (there i go again,) positively--mostly. i have come to realize that i am not really the optimist i like to think that i am. even though i want to be tigger, i am really a lot more eeyore. but who wants to read a whiny blog every day? who wants to write a whiny blog every day?? so while once in a while eeyore shoves tigger out of the way and gets to write a whiny blog, i try to get tigger to do most of them.
5. it makes me feel like a writer. i never knew i might want to be a writer until i started blogging. and then i started seeing ebooks that were really just a compilation of someone's blogs. i'll probably never write a real book, but now that ebooks are an option, who knows... considering some of the stuff that is out there in ebookland, maybe i will! my ebook might not be the best one, but it would certainly not be the worst one either!
4. it worries some people when i don't blog--namely, my mother-in-law :-) when i don't blog, she thinks something is wrong, and she worries about me. and she isn't completely wrong... there usually is a reason when i don't blog, and it isn't always a lack of time. but it also isn't usually as bad as she might think it is. some days are just ordinary and offer me no blogworthy material.
3. it keeps me from quitting my day job. this seems counter-intuitive to me, but it is true. it seems as though if i didn't work, then i would have more time to do all the other stuff i do--like blogging. but, i think to myself, what if i stopped working and then didn't have anything to blog about? what if i stopped working and never left the house? what if i stopped working and my blogs were reduced to "so today . . . i watched shopping tv and ate a tuna fish sandwich. of course, i only ate a tuna fish sandwich, because i burned the toasted cheese. it's nearly impossible to burn a tuna fish sandwich..." hmmm. ok, maybe that would work... maybe i should think about quitting my day job, because that sort of sounded like the beginning of a pretty good blog...
2. it lets people see who i wish i was. actually, my blog is who i am on good days... on those days when everything is right side up and all sunshiny. all of my days are not like that. i wish they were, but they are not. but writing the blog helps me be that person i want to be. it helps me find the humor in sometimes not so funny situations. it forces my brain to live in the land of unicorns and rainbows instead of gloom and doom--(ok, maybe not unicorns and rainbows. that is a little too sweet for me. maybe puppies and daisies...) it is a risk-free way to share myself with whoever wants to spend five minutes on my blog. it's who i wish i was, all the time, every day. even when i'm not...
and the #1 reason i don't want to stop blogging?
1. because my dad is threatening to quit looking at my blog!
yes, that facebook comment came from my dad. my dad! my dad, who can barely type, left me that message. i love my dad. and for him to take 20 minutes to type those few words (ok, i might be exaggerating that just a little bit,) made me realize that i needed to get back to it! i needed to stop putting it off, put pen to paper (so to speak,) and blog something.
so here it is, dad. a blog. not my best one, but at least when you click on that icon we put on your computer desktop that takes you directly to my blog (did you all know you could do that?!?!) there will be something new to read. at least for today.
i'm not making any promises about tomorrow...
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