One of the consequences of my spending Saturday in a confined space with several hundred other people is that I seem to have contracted a head cold. It’s been building all week, today was the worst so far. I’ve felt as if I have wet cotton balls stuffed up my sinuses all the way to behind my eyes, I’ve had a headache, difficulty in focusing my eyes, and I feel as if I could sleep for 12 hours. In fact, I plan to do just that once the weekend is here!
Thanksgiving approaches, since there’s no big family or group plans for the holiday I’ve planned to keep it simple. The evening before Thanksgiving I’ll put the turkey breast into the smoker outside, it will smoke until around midnight. While it’s in the smoker I’ll make a couple of pies, I plan to make a pumpkin pie and maybe an apple pie this year. At midnight I’ll take the turkey out of the smoker and if the temperature is still too low (it always is) I’ll pop it into the oven on about 250°F until it reaches temperature. On Thanksgiving morning I’ll make some yeast bread dough in the breadmaker then divide it for dinner rolls. An hour or so before the meal we’ll boil water for the potatoes to make mashed potatoes and to boil the Green Giant whole kernel corn in butter sauce. I’ll make the gravy for the mashed potatoes and turkey, Olivia will make some Stove-Top Stuffing, I’ll bake the rolls, and we’ll open a can of cranberry sauce. That’s how we manage a traditional Thanksgiving dinner without spending hours in the kitchen! I’ll also need to prepare a couple of pies for the Thanksgiving feast at work Wednesday before Thanksgiving, that will be done Tuesday night and shouldn’t take much more than a half hour.
I managed to only use four full days of vacation so far this year, so I’ll have six days left to take after Thanksgiving. I plan to use them so that I go home from work on Friday, December 18 and don’t return to work until Monday, January 4. I’m SO ready…
We don’t observe a traditional Christmas, usually. We are so accustomed to being away from home for Christmas that we never really got into the habit of decorating a tree or stocking it with presents. Besides, there really isn’t much that we can get for each other that we don’t just get for ourselves or that we would need the other person to be there to pick out. This year I proposed that we do something slightly different, I thought it would be fun if we each picked out two things that would be primarily used by the other person but that would be for the common good in the household. I have no idea what she might pick but I’ve already ordered my stuff for her. She watches a lot of television and she loves classic shows from the ‘60’s and ‘70’s so I bought her the first four seasons of “The Rockford Files” on DVD. I think she’ll enjoy it, I’ll watch too sometimes, and it fits the spirit of what we’re trying to do. The second thing I got her is an accessory for her new car. The car is a tall wagon/crossover SUV so it has the open area behind the rear seat. The model we bought doesn’t have a retractable cover for that area but they sell one as a factory accessory. I ordered her one of those for her car. I think I might also get a couple of Christmas stockings for the fireplace and put some small things in there. I’m not sure if we’ll pull the tree up this year or not, even though we’ll be home. We don’t have any really good places to put it! |
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