Bodybags in the Bathtub and other fun Thanksgiving Stories

I'll post Thanksgiving pictures when I get off my butt and get Jason to upload them onto Flickr. Creating my own blog template is as far as I've gone to control my technological world. Pathetic, yes. I've been frustrated to tears over switching the TV from PlayStation to DVD mode. I can barely operate my digital camera, and I certainly can't do something useful like design a website or organize a database. I am aware that this makes me a less-attractive job candidate (which I will officially be in February), so I will do what I have always done...stretch what lousy skills I do possess (Excel bar charts...done and done!) into a seemingly-desireable package. I wonder if put "information capacity building" experience to mean knowing how to use Google?

So, Thanksgiving went well...as well as can be expected in a country that doesn't sell cream of mushroom soup or jellied cranberry sauce in a can. The turkeys were a little dry but had a rich flavor (I don't think these we're Butterball live-in-a-box turkeys...these we're muscular, old gamey birds). One of the turkeys got the boot for being skinny and sketchy-looking...I'm thinking this bird was a sickly-sort before it hit the chopping block. But cooking the turkeys involved two days of soaking in the bathtub, being brined in black plastic body bags, and taking turns in our pint-sized oven. They were a beautiful golden brown though...but all the work...I don't know, the Kosher chicken I made took 10 minutes, tasted like a dream, and created it's own rich, garlicy sauce. My mashed potatoes (made from starchy Neejzny Novogorad potatoes) were thick and dough-like, despite Jason's muscle-intense efforts to improve them. Margo of Grinnell '05 swept in with her own delicious mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes (!), and the rest of my dishes turned out well, especially the stuffing, thanks to bundles of fresh thyme and sage smuggled in from London by a friend of mine.

I wish I could say I loved the chaos of the day, with groups of people piling in around 6 o'clock with arms of champagne and wine, but I was too busy stirring and chopping and checking to enjoy the early evening festivities. And after a while, I didn't care...I ate and drank and ran around with Liz, playing cards. I missed my family though. Thanksgiving hasn't always been a bright spot in the Sloger family collective memory. I'm thinking of one year when my dad and stepmom were fighting, my mom and brothers working, so we called the holiday off. This sounds good in theory, but in practice it's rough to swallow...I'm enough of an turkey-hugging tradionalist to feel like calling the day off over family rows does NOT put the "fun" in dysfunctional. Dad and I celebrated the night in a Clinton county bar crawl that satisfyed my craving for Dad-time, but did little to soothe the pang of the day as we drank Bud Lights served by grizly but empathetic barmaids under cheap twinkling Christmas lights, surrounded by the other sappy drunks playing Hank Williams and Alabama Christmas covers.

I've gotten more into Thanksgiving and Christmas the last few years (Easter is still and will be forever a crap Hallmark holiday after the New Kids On the Block incident of Easter '91). I don't think all of my family shares the sentiment, but I get all misty-eyed and sentimental when all of three of us kids (my brothers being stout and working guys of 20 and 22) get together and drink Dad and Jamie's beer and listen to Frank Sinatra and make fun of our parents and each other. If we didn't have the ability to tease each other to tears and blows, I don't know how we would have resurrected these holidays from the bowels of divorce and teenage disenchantment. Honestly, I think it helps that I have skipped town, and the only chance my brothers have to call me "whore" and "dumb b**ch" are on these precious nights. I know, I know, these are "bad words" and if Jason ever called me these names in earnest I would threatened him with an involuntary lobotomy. But this is part of the unspoken code of affection my brothers and I have for each other. I may have gone off to private college and live in Russia, but to them, I'll always be their air-headed sister. Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it goes better with turkey than absinthe shooters and punching your face through a wall.

Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was merry and belt-busting. Tonight: Israeli hip-hop group called Dog Snake, or Snake Dog, or some other variation on that theme.