Holiday

It's Thanksgiving weekend; Friday to be exact. I didn't have to cook dinner this year, other than mashed potatoes, so yesterday was a pretty easy day, but of course, now I don't have a refrigerator full of Thanksgiving leftovers, either. There's always a price to pay.

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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I like the food, I like the thin sunlight streaming through the nearly bare trees on Thanksgiving morning, and I like seeing the happy mothers reunited with their college children for a weekend. I like the overstocked grocery stores and the busy restaurants on the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, as people rush around collecting their groceries and avoiding their kitchens until Thanksgiving day. I like the simplicity. No one expects more than to eat a little bit too much, and then to lounge with their families around the fireplace or the TV, waiting for the food coma to set in.

I usually watch AMC's Thanksgiving Godfather marathon as I cook. My husband teases me. "This again?" he says. "Haven't you seen this movie like a hundred times?" This is a ridiculous exaggeration. I've seen The Godfather and The Godfather II no more than twenty-five times each. Thirty at MOST. My husband, however, watches football nearly every Sunday, and for a good part of Thanksgiving weekend every year. If anyone wishes to explain to me how every single football telecast is not EXACTLY like every other football telecast, I'll listen with polite interest. Only after you're no longer in the room will I roll my eyes and say "whatever" as I reach for the remote to turn the Corleones back on.

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We host a neighborhood get-together on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, so I shopped for food today. It's much colder than usual this Thanksgiving weekend, but that only enhances the cozy atmosphere. Other than potatoes, I didn't cook yesterday. And other than breakfast eggs, I'm not cooking today, either. I'll finish readying the house for the party, and we'll eat some takeout, and then we'll go to the movies. I have to work a bit on Sunday because proposal deadlines wait for no one. I don't know why government contracting officers set proposal deadlines for the Monday following a holiday weekend, but I know better than to ask people about their business. But it's OK. A little work will make me feel a little less spoiled and over-privileged, a little less embarrassed by this embarrassment of riches. Happy Thanksgiving. Leave the gun, but take the cannoli.