[my thanksgiving]

aka. why my pants no longer fit.

-waking up thanksgiving morning with four inches of snow on the ground, the smell of bacon coming from the kitchen, and the parade on tv.

-eating twenty pounds of awesome homemade rolls that only your mother could make.

-your aunt offering you chocolate covered peanuts to help wash down the homemade peanut butter fudge and molasses cookies she just gave you.

-finding yourself waking up in a corner after passing out in a minor sugar coma.

-sleeping by a warm crackling fire, curled up in the softest blankets, drifting off to the sound of your nomad.

-dying when your aunt reads the bumper sticker on the car ahead, “i like lipstick on my dipstick.”

-crying as your cousin, her daughter, says, “i’m just glad she didn’t read the one that said liquor in the front poker in the back.”

-finding yourself tipsy at two in the afternoon, with your cousin, telling your sixteen-year-old cousin that you’ve been waiting her whole life for her to be old enough to be everyone else’s DD.

-wonder if you’re creating your very own Springer moment by having this conversation with her.

-deciding that you’re not as she just rolls her eyes at everyone.

-having to put a tree together and then decorating it, while you are tipsy, while you are in disguise as a sober person.

-trying to help your little cousin find a vintage t-shirt shop online, and inadvertently leading her to a hardcore porn site.

-laughing as she says, “what kind of sites do you surf?”

-broccoli, lots of broccoli.

-being told that the wal-mart that you were sent to was the ghetto wal-mart.

-believing the warning when you walk to the door and find some girl crouched down on the curb vomiting her brains out.

-watching the terminal. wondering how tom hanks is still allowed to make movies. wondering why you put yourself through the torture of it.

-drunk dials from pirate ninjas, and her crew clamoring in the background, that make you smile.

-trying not to laugh as your cousin is being scolded for using her emergency only credit card for a shoe purchase, as you think, “that’s my girl.”

-eating ice cream in thirty-five degree weather as you shop at an outdoor mall.

-alternating hands between holding the ice cream cone, and keeping warm in a coat pocket.

-being away from life for four whole days, and realizing that you only have to put in fifteen more days at work before vacation.

-----

“they don’t celebrate thanksgiving in hong kong?”
“no. the pilgrims didn’t make it quite that far.”
“oh, right.”