|
|
|
Thanksgiving 2016
Thursday, November 24 2016
This morning we had a Thanksgiving french press of real coffee, and later I took a bath, which did much to fix a chill in my body that the fire in the woodstove hadn't been able to chase away.
Normally Gretchen and I either host Thanksgiving at our house or drive down to her parents' place in Silver Spring. But her parents don't live in Silver Spring any more (they live at the Watergate in Washington DC itself), and our friends Eva & Sandor would be hosting a small Thanksgiving gathering, so we opted to join them. Gretchen made some dips and a big pot of roasted brussel sprouts and broccoli and I didn't do anything except get dressed. That's the great thing about these things happening at other peoples' houses.
Usually Eva and Sandor are overprotective of their cats, but this time they said we could bring our dogs. Initially Ramona and Neville were well behaved, but then Dawn showed up with her neurotic dog Polypore, whom Ramona seemed intent on attacking. We tried making introductions outside (a cold rain was falling), but that didn't seem to work; Ramona was still growling, raising her hackles, and baring her teeth. I sat her down in the corner and gave her a stern talking-to, a strategy that works surprisingly well (at least with Ramona). She went and lay down on the couch and had herself a good pout. Ramona seemed to think that if she got anywhere near Polypore she wouldn't be able to help herself and would attack, so moping on the couch would be her best strategy for obeying me.
Ramona eventually did leave the couch to investigate the various cats, most of whom stood their ground, arched their backs, and hissed. Ramona is pretty good with strange cats, though her curiosity is obsessive until she's put in a few days of intense interest.
Neville initially seemed like the well-behaved of our kids, but then later it turned out that he'd pissed on the brand new couch. Sandor and Eva had put down absorbant blankets in anticipation of normal dog stuff (hair, saliva, buttholes, and scratching claws), and this had absorbed most of the urine. But a little had leaked through that I sponged up as best I could.
Early in the evening, we snacked heavily on Polish perogies Eva fried up in a pan. I ate these with hot sauce, as they needed either a dipping sauce or a litle zing (and the hot sauces available were both rather mild; the one Eva raved about didn't seem too different from catsup). Conversation mostly dwelled on the horror of the Trump transition, with a fair amount of Melania slut-shaming from Dawn's friend Mark.
The meal itself seemed to be built around a big tray of purple mashed potatoes and a big tray of stuffing. Most of the food colors were shade of brown, which is what one expects from even a vegan Thanksgiving. [REDACTED]
As always, the teevee was on constantly; when it wasn't providing a oversized user interface to Apple Music it was showing the same repeated drone footage of London, New York, San Francisco, and some tropical island. I think Sandor would've been cool to watch an episode of Black Mirror on that massive flatscreen, but we couldn't get anyone else excited about it. Instead someone suggested we watch the Tracey Ullman Show revival on HBO. Not unexpectedly, the humor really wasn't my thing (it seemed a little dated and slapstick), and I fell asleep during the viewing of a second episode.
I woke up just before dessert, my least favorite part of any meal. I had a slice of pumpkin pie, and it was a bit sweeter than the kind of pumpkin pie Gretchen and I prefer. But as with cheese, it seems our taste for sweet food has gradually strayed far from the conventional. (Gretchen still bakes a lot of desserts, but she adds much less sugar than most bakers. Perhaps people are disappointed when they bite into her cakes or cookies, though they never say so.)
I have to say that socially tonight I really didn't do much more than phone it in. The only witty remark I made was a terrible dad joke based on the punning similarity between Pole (as in Eva's ethnicity) and poll (as in the things that misled us into thinking Hillary Clinton would win the recent presidential election). But at least I was alert enough to recognize "medva" as "bear" when Sandor's mother (who mixes Magyar and also apparently a little of some Slavic language in with her English) was describing her fears about the local fauna.
We were back home at our place before 9:00pm, having driven well out of our way on the way home to feed (and empty the litter box of) Sarah the Vegan's unremarkable elderly toothless cat Effie.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?161124 feedback
previous | next |
