Thursday is Thanksgiving in the US. We’ve already talked a little bit about the food. But what do you do after dinner, Deadsplinters? Do you play football in the yard like a sit-com family, watch an appropriate holiday movie? Or, God forbid, listen to your drunken, trump supporting family members rant about socialism? I like to read Truman Capotes’ The Thanksgiving Memory and watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. How do you entertain yourself while waiting until it’s socially acceptable to have more pie?
OT to coffee, but this seemed as good a place to post this as any….
I have an idea for a series of articles and wanted to throw this out there. Basically just photos of stuff I’ve taken on walks around my city, nothing too extreme.
I just messaged Myo — anything else I should cover? Days of the week I should think about scheduling? Bribes I should pay?
You should definitely Venmo me. I’ll pm you with my info.
I’m heading out of town again Dec 10-17, so if you wanted to use any of the Sun-Thurs days in there from NOTs for these, that would also work! I will put up my usual *please help me* post requests next week for these days, too.
Drink beer and try not to appear too unsociable.
But I don’t have to do that this year, because we’re staying home. Sometimes having an alcoholic SIL blow up the family can be a blessing in disguise.
As sorry as I am for all the deaths due to, and havoc wrought by Covid, I am thankful that it put a halt to my traveling to spend holidays with family. Now that it’s been established that the world will not end if I don’t have to spend a total of 14 hours in the car, hauling thousands of cookies, and gifts to unpack and repack at the various homes we were required to visit, I can put a permanent stop to the insanity. Cheers!
I’m on the fence about Thanksgiving. We’re Canadians raising American kids. We can’t avoid the holiday and the white-washed colonialist lore that it is founded on. Either we refuse to start a tradition or we come up with one that supports and teaches a Native American centric history of how the USA came to be. Or I guess we could go the middle route and make it a holiday about gratitude but that feels like a copout to me. Traditions in general is something I’m wrestling with as a parent.
I think the best thing a parent can do in retrospect is teach flexibility around holidays. A few tentpole traditions can be fine, but getting locked into a dozen things for the Thanksgiving dinner or always going to the Nutcracker and ten other events before Christmas is brutal. The more kids can understand why people make traditions and why they break them, the better.
This is excellent advice. There is so much pressure to have the perfect and magical holiday that a lot of times it’s disappointing at best, and often a total nightmare.
We don’t really celebrate it either way. For us it’s just an opportunity to have a week day meal together. But it’s hard when you have little ones, especially when they’re in school being taught colonizer propaganda.
after dinner?
snuggle into the comfy corner of the sofa and
Eat, drink, nap, eat, drink.
I’m just so happy not to be flying to NorCal this year! I don’t know what we will do, maybe watch a movie, probably go walk at the beach if it is not raining.
I hear you. As I said to Lemmy, I’m not traveling for any holidays any more. A walk on the beach sounds relaxing.
We are going to put up the Christmas tree. It lasts until New Year’s with copious watering. Friday we are meeting dear friends for lunch, venturing out into civilization. I stopped cooking for the regular 14-18 people on Thanksgiving after my father passed away; I still “own” Christmas and Easter and figure that is enough. We are going to open up for holiday entertaining for Easter, so this is my final chance for holidays which are relaxing.
Getting a jump on Christmas decorating is a good plan. And lunch with friends a wonderful way to kick off the season.
What I do on Thanksgiving in one image:
That’s what we should all be doing.
Normally I get out of my parents’ house after dinner and head home. I call friends who live out of state and check in with them to make sure we’re all still sane.
You have friends that are sane? Must be nice!
Well…relatively sane. We are all very lefty/liberal so it’s more a check in to make sure Trumpy parents don’t take what little sanity we have left.
Thanksgiving Day, up until last year for me, during my adulthood/since I moved away from my mom & Dad’s typically landed during my various workplaces’ “Busy Season(s)”
Sooooo that Thursday was just typically one day off, and I had to be right back at work at 6:30am (or if later, 7-8am🙃) Friday morning–having left work Weds at 3:30pm at the earliest…
I decided after the first year of trying to drive 120+ miles *each way,* through what amounted to about 60 miles of rush-hour/stop & go traffic (the normally 2-hour trip took closer to FOUR each way!😱😱😱) that i wasn’t EVER wasting most of the damn day driving, again….
Soooo the second year, I told mom & dad that we should celebrate over the weekend, and that’s what we’ve done ever since.
I get Chinese on Weds evening, sleep in on Thursday, shop a bit online, maybe run to 1-2 stores if they have a “Thursday ONLY” deal (most likely not, though), then sleep in and go shop a bit on Friday *after* midmorning/ in the early afternoon… once all the craziness has subsided.
Then I grab any of the additional items I need for the big meal–many on clearance!😉😁, annnd start my meal-prep on Friday evening.
I still don’t wake up *that early* on Saturday, because I’m lazy, and I put the Turkey in when I wake up…
Clean up the dishes, then go shower, then it’s back into the kitchen for the serious work.
I try to have the meal ready by mid/late afternoon (we’ve usually done a “brunch”-timed breakfast, not long before noon, so eating at 4 isn’t out of line), and then we feast.
Afterward, it’s getting the food put away, and cleanup–which STILL always seem to fall to me…
And then I veg out on the couch with some more dessert, or Splartichoke dip & bread, or *something* “munchable/snacky” but not “real food” and read/watch movies…
Ain’t no WAY i’ma cook a whole damn huge-ass meal ON MY DAY OFF, if I have to right back to work the next day!!!
I’m gonna be a lazy ass, as one does on a proper “day off,” and just wait a bit, until I have a day to cook and then a second day *afterward* to recover & eat the tasty leftovers, from that big cooking blowout!😉😁💖
That’s the way to do it. The Thursday thing is really weird. I have no idea why we have a National holiday on a Thursday.