Thanksgiving

Due to various family members’ schedules and circumstances, we celebrated our Thanksgiving yesterday.  At my house.  Quite an interesting proposition, considering I don’t cook and there are presently a lot of remodeling projects going on in my house…

I am happy to report that despite it being very cold and windy, the day was a success.  It was a really wonderful day…it was so nice to have all the family together at my house for a good meal and fun.

There was plenty of room and everyone chipped in with dishes to serve, but the Pièce de Résistance was the Garbage Can Turkey  

If you remember, we tried this over the summer at my sister’s house and it turned out great… but there is a little more pressure to have a good turkey on Thanksgiving… 

The first hurdle was the fact that my fire pit was filled with water from all the rain we’ve had lately, so I had to come up with an alternate location for the event.  I chose the entrance of a three-sided shed I have on my property.  It was very cold and windy with a peppering of snow yesterday, which added to the challenge, but I used a piece of plywood for a windbreak which helped a lot…

 

 

 

 

 

 

It turned out perfect!  There wasn’t much left at all at the end of the night. 

That’s bad for people who like leftover turkey 

Scare

I am normally not a fan of Holiday Creep, but today I didn’t mind it – Thanksgiving stuff is half price already!  Thanksgiving dinner is at my house this year, so I saved a bunch of money today 

 

I felt so bad for my chickens yesterday…  when I went outside to lock up the coop for the night, I was surprised to hear the ‘coo’  of one of my Ladies when I walked out the door.  It was already dark out and normally they are all tucked in for the night just after the sun goes down, so I wasn’t sure what was going on…

I picked up my wayward Lady , who was nestled under my back stairs and carried her back to the coop  - the whole way, wondering/worried if a fox or raccoon had gotten into the coop and got to the ‘flock’.  When I got to the coop, I saw that the wind had blown the door to the pen shut (and it was windy yesterday!).  Poor Granola had gotten locked out before she got inside for the night      When I put her in the coop, I only saw three other Ladies inside…  Pumpkin got locked out too.

In a way, this totally make sense – Pumpkin and Granola, my Red Stars, are the two rugged chickens out of the group… they will milk every last second of daylight before heading in for the night, so it makes sense that if the door closed at the end of the day, they would be ones locked out.

So next was the task of locating Pumpkin in the dark.  I was kind of surprised that both displaced chickens didn’t stick together if they thought that they were going to be stuck outside for the night.  I checked every place in the yard that I thought a chicken would roost for the night – I had my flashlight and called and called my normal “Heeeeey - my chick-chick-chick-chick-chickens!” call, listening hard for an answer.  As time went on and I was running out of places to look, I was starting to panic.  What if something had gotten her?  So I did a second sweep of likely places and lo and behold – I found her sound asleep on my lawnmower     

I was very happy to reunite her with her coop-mates.

I am now being much more careful to make sure the door to their pen is propped open very securely when I let them out.

Thanksgiving

So on an every day basis, are people more thankful when things are going well or when they are going terrible? Do people forget or don't think about being thankful when everything is going their way? Or are people so angry when life stinks that they refuse to be thankful for the good things that they *do* have?

Thanksgiving is a good holiday, because most people think about being thankful, no matter what is going on in their lives.

Yay for Thanksgiving!

Shopping

I hate shopping. I hate people being in my way. I hate rude people. I hate little kids running wild, unsupervised, through the store. I hate not finding what I want right away. I hate the way people drive in the parking lot. I hate the time that I waste when I have to shop. And it's all compounded during the holidays. Ugh. I try to avoid shopping as much as possible, but it's just one of those things that we can't escape. Today I had to go to three stores to finally find a(n overpriced) vacuum cleaner filter. And naturally that last store had all the vacuum cleaner stuff was in a really stupid part of the store, so it took forever to find. Honestly - why would the vacuum cleaners be in the electronics section of the store??? And I don't mean near the electronics section - I mean in the electronics section. Right between the stereos and the computer stuff. I'd love to know what they were thinking when they made out that plan-o-gram. Anyway, I really don't want to even think about Christmas shopping. If I was smart, I'd start now and order everything online. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to procrastinate and usually don't leave myself enough time for the shipping...

A couple of days ago, I changed tables that I have my computer on. The old one was white. This one is brown. Evidently cordless mouses don't like brown table tops. I hate using a mouse pad, but I think I'm going to have to get one. This stupid mouse is driving me crazy by not moving 75% of the time. And yes, I did put fresh batteries in it. As I said, I hate using a mouse pad, but I'm not switching tables again. Moving everything was a pain. I refuse to do it twice in a week's time :)

On a lighter note, I can't believe that next week is Thanksgiving already. This year is going to be the first year I can remember that I will actually have Thanksgiving Day off from work. It's still going to be a busy - and maybe nerve wracking - day, but I won't be working, and that's all that matters :)