12.02.09

Thanksgiving 2009

Posted in My FAMILY at 10:22 pm by admin

Things ran very smoothly this Thanksgiving. The ONLY mistake was that we forgot my cousin is the manager of a big grocery chain, and we ordered our Thanksgiving dinner from a competing chain… oopsies! Let’s just say that we’ve learned our lesson and next year we’ll be blaming my father when we do this again.

So, onto my mother.. In addition to the 3 birds, 2 fish, 2 cats, and tortoise currently inside the house, now it appears that she’s converted the backyard into the garden of eden for all wayward creators. That means several quail, roadrunners, rabbits, geckos, the occasional hawk, and random little birds meet out back on a daily basis like it’s social hour at the water cooler. The newest member is a rat (living on the back porch) and she couldn’t be happier! So now in addition to swine flu, our family has to worry about rabies. I have to admit though, the rat turned out be SO cute! He looked just like Ratatouille! I bet I return at Christmas to find him wearing a little chef hat and cooking Christmas dinner with my mother.

The other amusing thing about my mother is that she’s all about the freak-show, always has been. If she hears a siren (ambulance, fire truck, etc.), she’s on it like a blood hound! And then it’s as if she uses ‘the force’ (star wars) to suck the rest of us into her dysfunctional curiosity… and next thing I know, we’re all genuinely interested in some random spectacle that has nothing to do with us. Example: The first night in town, we see a bunch of cop cars, a fire truck, and ambulance at the CVS next to the eating place we were at. That’s when my mother used her Jedi mind tricks to encourage us to check it out, and soon D1, D2, my sis, and I were practically skipping over to inspect the drama (which ended up being an intoxicated wino on the side of the building.. BOR-RING). It’s not until we’re walking back to the car that I found myself wondering why we wasted the time to do that in the first place?!

Anywho, we did our traditional Black Friday shopping and it was so much fun. But of course, no visit home would be complete without Family Chores Day. But I have no idea why my parents make the shortest member of the family dust the 10ft tall entertainment center!? I was on my tippy toes on the top step of a ladder (which btw had a sticker saying “do not sit or stand on the this step”) just to reach the back part of the deep shelves on the top row. Over the years though, I’ve learned that NO ONE escapes family chores day (poor D1 and D2)! I think my father lives by the code that “a family that suffers together, stays together!”

That said, it was a great visit filled with good food, good shopping, and good fun! Can’t wait to do it all over again next year!

Permalink