[nfbwatlk] belated Happy Thanksgiving

[Mary Ellen]

Thanks for thinking of us.

We do two Thanksgiving dinners here, plus a turkey dinner for Christmas.  By
January we are all heartily sick of turkey!

Canadian Thanksgiving is a much smaller and more sedate celebration than the
American version.  There's a big dinner, but it can happen any time during
the second weekend in October.  Canadian Thanksgiving always falls on the
same Monday as Columbus Day.  Though Monday is the official legal holiday,
people really don't much care whether they eat their feast on that day or
not.  In fact, most people dine on either Saturday or Sunday evening.

Because American Thanksgiving is just another Thursday here, it's almost
impossible to get the family together for an afternoon meal.  Paul generally
doesn't teach on Thursdays, but Philip and Elliott have school and Joanne
and Jeff usually are assigned to work.  In fact, all three employed kids
worked until 8:00 last evening, so we ended up eating at 9:00 in the
evening.  I didn't like it at all!  We considered having the meal on the
weekend, but the work problem would have been similar, so we stuck with
tradition as closely as we could.

Unfortunately, by 9:00 in the evening, I wanted nothing more than to sit
down, have somebody bring me my meal, and then go straight to bed.  Because
everybody else was busy all day, I prepared everything myself.  I got help
setting the table and carrying the food from the downstairs kitchen to the
upstairs kitchen.  Paul carved the turkey, which is always a great help.  We
had four extra young people there as well as our driver, Paul Cummings.
Paul Cummings got overloaded by all the kids clowning around and walked out
without eating anything.  I felt a bit sad for him, since I know he's like
that.  At the same time, I didn't want to forbid the kids from inviting
their friends.  Then my Paul tried to get me some help putting away the food
but began by asking Joanne to help me.  She went off on him about how he
always asks her because she's a woman.  The boys thought the whole thing was
extremely funny and started making wildly sexist jokes.  I snapped at Paul
for creating an unnecessary ruccus.

The food was good, though.  Even though things were far from perfect,
everybody did appreciate the effort and is enjoying leftovers today.

Next year I'm going to ask the kids to try to arrange their schedules so
that they're home by 6:00.  The fuss happened because we were all too tired.



-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lauren
Merryfield
Sent: November 23, 2012 5:18 PM
To: NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List
Subject: [nfbwatlk] belated Happy Thanksgiving

Hi,
I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving.  Mine was okay though I missed
family and others.  I worked, which was fine, and then went to Dennys for
turkey dinner.  It wasn't like homemade, but it wasn't the worst meal I ever
had either.  This evening some of us from work are going to the Outback
Steakhouse in Vacaville, so that will be fun.  

Thanks
Lauren

advice from my cats: "meow when you feel like it."
The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be
understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.
-- Ralph Nichols
Visit us at catliness.com
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