Turkey Time!

Well this year the old gobbler crept up and smacked me when I was busy folding diapers. See, apparently tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It came without long drives! It came without hand-turkeys, without cards and without that Charlie Brown show! Maybe Thanksgiving isn't something that comes free after you spend $200 on regular groceries during a two-week period. Maybe, just maybe, Thanksgiving is just a date on the calendar.

Nothing against the old anti-Catholic Puritans, and their festive little interlude before they resumed the Indian-killing and wilderness-destroying. Turkey day just isn't a big holiday for me. I'm totally in favor of the turkey-eating, and I think we should pause and think thankful thoughts from time to time, but the official, government-sanctioned holiday doesn't always fit my busy lifestyle. And the whole Black Friday shopping rush really messes with my shopping in general.

I think its because we celebrate St. Nicholas Day, on the 6th. You can only cram so much festivity into a one-month period before the cynicism starts to leak out, or maybe it's just too early in the season and I haven't fully ,marinaded myself in cheer. I do tend to get all sentimental and actually listen to holiday music while sipping hot chocolate in front of my glittering tree, but that usually happens between the 3rd and the 22nd of December. Then my tolerance for all the music wears off and I get cranky, which makes everyone else seem more festive in comparison. Its a valuable service, because every really good holiday story features someone cranky. But in the spirit of holiday cheer, lets not focus on the shortcomings. Lets focus on the fact that a few of you blog-readers will gleefully gobble down mountains of pierogi that I helped make while you were off basking in the desert sun, or rebuilding artificial hearts so that they pick up HBO, or whatever it is you college kids do. Plus, I never, ever, shake the garbanzo beans.