Squeezing Thanksgiving

Am stuffed with Thanksgiving feasting. I love Thanksgiving. Love that FOOD is main way of celebrating, but also that we take time to think about many blessings in our lives. Feel like all America are kindred spirits on this day, cooking and eating and ignoring muted football games (okay, maybe that's just me.) I love the American-ness of it. I feel like waving flags in manner of 4th of July celebrant. Am welling up with patriotic fervor. Must be lesser known side effect of tryptophan.

Wouldn't it be nice if retailers left me unmolested through Thanksgiving? Must they hang Halloween decor next to Christmas trees? I boycott early Christmas! Actually I don't boycott. I'm too lazy for such extreme political activism. I just try to avert my eyes from gaudy displays of green and red, and hum loudly when Barnes and Noble plays Christmas muzak two weeks before Turkey Day.

So Thanksgiving got squeezed. I am feeling squeezed, too. Don't sit down, Kelly. No time to rest and digest your candied yams and reflect on your many blessings. You can sit and relax when your Christmas tree is up and you've spent and saved a pluzillion bucks at the shops tomorrow at 4 a.m.!

So before it all starts (Melanie and I just spent fruitless hour on phone, finally deciding sleep worth more than dollars potentially saved on $5 Barbies at Mervyn's at 4 am), I'll take a moment to review some Thanksgiving highlights:

1. Thanks to Mom and Gini for great dinners. I did not shirk my duty to eat both of those delicious dinners.

2. Thanks for my family-in-law. I was thinking today what great people those Beesons are! But if only Jake's brothers had married a little less attractive, intelligent, and athletic girls, or if his sisters weren't just as great, I could let myself go a little more (than already have.) But instead must vigilantly keep my stuff tight ( at very least wear girdle), or will not be able to keep up with Jones's.

3. Thanks for my Taylor family. I'm thankful that Grandma Taylor, who will be 97 in January, was there today in good health (only she doesn't think so), looking fine and fashionable as always. My matriarchal family is comfortable like a velour sweatsuit. All the ladies in Mom's kitchen today were raised by mothers who were raised by the same mother (Verna). So we cook and clean and think similarly. Melanie and I used to gang up on our college roommates and berate them for having different tastes, habits, and recipes. (Not sure why we had any friends.)That pie crust today is a perfect ten because it tastes exactly like it has for generations (would be unsurprised to find recipe inherited as part of mitochondrial DNA). It is also a perfect ten because, goodness, it is tasty. I thought of Aunt Ardy tonight while doing dishes (and yesterday while making rolls). She always stayed to do dishes. Perhaps she was there doing dishes in spirit, and that's why I was thinking of her.

4. Thanks for my Layton family. Historically, most of my Thanksgivings were spent on the farm in Willcox, or in Central. I remember one Thanksgiving I got bucked off a horse, and once I got chased around a roping arena by a very sick (covered in its own vomit and feces) calf. My uncle Chuck thought it was hilarious. It was not hilarious. Another year all the kids went for a ride in the horse trailer and cousin Ben (I think) snuck in a cattle prod, using it on all his relatives. All these things were very exotic for this city girl(I grew up in LA), and gave me many stories to tell my city girl friends back home, who did not have such interesting, exotic Thanksgivings.

5. Thanks for Jake, Ross, Jane, Sam, Tom. At the Beeson's today, as Sammy sat down to his dinner of corn and jello, he looked at me and said: "Mom, you are the best jello-maker in the whole world!" (And I totally believe him.) At my parent's house, Tommy and Claire found the remnants of other kids' discarded pumpkin pie, and ate it all. Every bit. They gorged themselves on pie. It will be cute until I have to change the pumpkin pie diapers, probably at 6 am tomorrow.

Oh yeah. I'm thankful that Sam squeezed Desitin all over the floor in the office just now, instead of the living room. Not super thankful, though. He got sent to bed with no more jello.