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The time is out of joint
Nov. 29th, 2011 03:00 pmFortunately, I am not born to set it right.
David's mother's birthday is in late November, so from time to time it falls on Thanksgiving. We've devised various expedients to deal with this over the years, including one year when we just had her usual birthday dinner instead of turkey. This year, we moved the family Thanksgiving celebration to Sunday. David's sister got three turkey dinners out of this, though she may have felt at least one was superfluous. She had lunch with Mary at the nursing home. Then David and I visited with her for a while and gave her some flowers and snackish treats, plus the present from my mom, which was a neck pillow in the shape of a cat000 (last three characters courtesy of Aristophanes, who is climbing around on me). David and I drove back from Northfield through a beautiful autumn landscape, all golden and brown and red and sunny. After that things felt very strange and blank. I cooked dinner for Raphael and me. David and Lydy had some leftovers.
On Friday I spent the entire day making dessert. There wasn't all that much dessert, really: I am just a slow worker, and both kitchens are pretty dismal. Also, both upstairs and downstairs for some considerable time there was a person sleeping. I made apple crisp with local Haralson apples; vegan pumpkin pie, which had to be put off til last because it requires a very noisy blender for the tofu; and mince pie. The mincemeat comes out of a jar. It was not a good piecrust day; I had to add extra water, which is always unfortunate. No major disasters occurred. I was so concerned about burning something that I slightly underbaked all three items. David suggested that I should make a pie a week so as not to fall out of practice again. I said rather crankily that it was NO PLEASURE MAKING PIES IN THESE AWFUL CONDITIONS, but it may not be a bad idea.
Friday's dinner was takeout from Fresh Wok, which Raphael and I have almost every week. On Saturday I did a bunch of laundry. Eric came over in the evening. Lydy's car had developed some serious wobbliness in the steering since we ran it over a curb during the snowstorm, so we took the bus to Pho Tau Bay, where I lost my head and ordered shrimp curry. It's the heavy coconut-milk kind. I took half of it home. Then we went back to Blaisdell Poly, and David and Lydy came home from their own dinner. It would have made more sense for all of us to eat together, but that takes advance planning because of my dietary limitations, and for Lydy it would be like having a decision demanded of her at four a.m. for somebody on a normal sleep schedule. In any case, after our separate dinners, David drove us all to a small birthday celebration at the Pumphouse Creamery. It was mostly the family of the celebrant, plus us, and I had a lovely time watching their interactions. It would have been more polite to make conversation, though.
Eric and I crammed our date into the rest of the evening, because on Sunday we had to get up at 8:30 in the morning. The horror. My mother can't eat a turkey if she has had to view and handle it in its raw state, and David is very fussy about the stuffing, so he is responsible for stuffing and baking the turkey. I had forgotten my camera and I forgot to tell Eric where I'd put half the greens for the salad he was making, but we got by. I borrowed my mother's camera to take photos of David making stuffing. He made a pan of vegan stuffing for me as usual, and then a gigantic heap of regular stuffing. The Dyer-Bennets are all about the stuffing, really, and his sister and her partner were coming for dinner.
My mom gave us sandwiches for lunch, the cat came out and lay on the carpet so that someone would brush her, and there was a particularly good set of bird sightings. My mother lives in a small preserve -- if raccoons eat your garden or steal your bird seed, that's too bad, you can't trap or poison them. She has bird feeders on her deck, but mostly I hear about the birds she's seen rather than getting to see them. There were chickadees, nuthatches, three pairs of cardinals, a lone goldfinch looking alien in its winter dress, and, at a distance, a pileated woodpecker. David took some photos of the nearer birds. Eric made the salad, and I went ahead and cooked my salmon in the microwave with a little olive oil and white wine. David had brought a Vouvray that was very nice with fish and I just poured some out of my glass into the dish.
The turkey was done early; it always is. Barbara and Mark arrived and we had dinner. Then most people went to groan on the sofa or stand on the deck and try to regain their equilibrium, and my mother and I parcelled out all the leftovers. I ended up carving the remaining meat off the turkey, which my mother felt was unfitting. But it was dead already.
We reconvened for dessert. I got very grumpy cutting the pies; the bottom crusts were underdone, so it was harder to lever a whole piece out intact. Once leftover dessert had been handed out, the apple crisp was gone. We have plenty of mince pie left, and since I made a second vegan pumpkin one for Raphael as a very late birthday treat, there's plenty of pumpkin, too.
I remember that part of the conversation had to do with whether fruit flies sleep and part was some anecdotes about my brother's endless supply of idiosyncratic friends and part was about cats and Barbara's dog and another part was about Mark's studies and part was about my mother's Unitarian church and her book group, but there was much more than that.
It had felt like Thursday all day, but when we had dropped Eric off at home and gone home ourselves and put the leftovers away, suddenly it was Sunday again and I had to do the grocery order for the coming week.
In other news, while I was at Eric's place on Wednesday, I finished my own book and picked up his copy of The Mirador. I had to continue reading it when I got home, and I had to finish it, and now I am reading Corambis. I am afraid I'll have to pick up the first two in the series and just read my way around. I love those books very much, but I'm particularly fond of Mehitabel.
I'm hoping to do a book post soon. Kind thoughts to you all.
Pamela
P.S. I thought I had failed to set up cross-posting between Dreamwidth and LJ, but my Dreamwidth post about Terri's auction did cross-post. I think what I failed at was figuring out the instructions for putting that little banner at the bottom of the page that says that the entry is crossposted and how many comments there are at Dreamwidth and where you can comment. Well, you can comment either place, assuming that this entry does put itself in both places. I still can't post to LJ directly; I just get an error message. I imagine this will sort itself out eventually.
David's mother's birthday is in late November, so from time to time it falls on Thanksgiving. We've devised various expedients to deal with this over the years, including one year when we just had her usual birthday dinner instead of turkey. This year, we moved the family Thanksgiving celebration to Sunday. David's sister got three turkey dinners out of this, though she may have felt at least one was superfluous. She had lunch with Mary at the nursing home. Then David and I visited with her for a while and gave her some flowers and snackish treats, plus the present from my mom, which was a neck pillow in the shape of a cat000 (last three characters courtesy of Aristophanes, who is climbing around on me). David and I drove back from Northfield through a beautiful autumn landscape, all golden and brown and red and sunny. After that things felt very strange and blank. I cooked dinner for Raphael and me. David and Lydy had some leftovers.
On Friday I spent the entire day making dessert. There wasn't all that much dessert, really: I am just a slow worker, and both kitchens are pretty dismal. Also, both upstairs and downstairs for some considerable time there was a person sleeping. I made apple crisp with local Haralson apples; vegan pumpkin pie, which had to be put off til last because it requires a very noisy blender for the tofu; and mince pie. The mincemeat comes out of a jar. It was not a good piecrust day; I had to add extra water, which is always unfortunate. No major disasters occurred. I was so concerned about burning something that I slightly underbaked all three items. David suggested that I should make a pie a week so as not to fall out of practice again. I said rather crankily that it was NO PLEASURE MAKING PIES IN THESE AWFUL CONDITIONS, but it may not be a bad idea.
Friday's dinner was takeout from Fresh Wok, which Raphael and I have almost every week. On Saturday I did a bunch of laundry. Eric came over in the evening. Lydy's car had developed some serious wobbliness in the steering since we ran it over a curb during the snowstorm, so we took the bus to Pho Tau Bay, where I lost my head and ordered shrimp curry. It's the heavy coconut-milk kind. I took half of it home. Then we went back to Blaisdell Poly, and David and Lydy came home from their own dinner. It would have made more sense for all of us to eat together, but that takes advance planning because of my dietary limitations, and for Lydy it would be like having a decision demanded of her at four a.m. for somebody on a normal sleep schedule. In any case, after our separate dinners, David drove us all to a small birthday celebration at the Pumphouse Creamery. It was mostly the family of the celebrant, plus us, and I had a lovely time watching their interactions. It would have been more polite to make conversation, though.
Eric and I crammed our date into the rest of the evening, because on Sunday we had to get up at 8:30 in the morning. The horror. My mother can't eat a turkey if she has had to view and handle it in its raw state, and David is very fussy about the stuffing, so he is responsible for stuffing and baking the turkey. I had forgotten my camera and I forgot to tell Eric where I'd put half the greens for the salad he was making, but we got by. I borrowed my mother's camera to take photos of David making stuffing. He made a pan of vegan stuffing for me as usual, and then a gigantic heap of regular stuffing. The Dyer-Bennets are all about the stuffing, really, and his sister and her partner were coming for dinner.
My mom gave us sandwiches for lunch, the cat came out and lay on the carpet so that someone would brush her, and there was a particularly good set of bird sightings. My mother lives in a small preserve -- if raccoons eat your garden or steal your bird seed, that's too bad, you can't trap or poison them. She has bird feeders on her deck, but mostly I hear about the birds she's seen rather than getting to see them. There were chickadees, nuthatches, three pairs of cardinals, a lone goldfinch looking alien in its winter dress, and, at a distance, a pileated woodpecker. David took some photos of the nearer birds. Eric made the salad, and I went ahead and cooked my salmon in the microwave with a little olive oil and white wine. David had brought a Vouvray that was very nice with fish and I just poured some out of my glass into the dish.
The turkey was done early; it always is. Barbara and Mark arrived and we had dinner. Then most people went to groan on the sofa or stand on the deck and try to regain their equilibrium, and my mother and I parcelled out all the leftovers. I ended up carving the remaining meat off the turkey, which my mother felt was unfitting. But it was dead already.
We reconvened for dessert. I got very grumpy cutting the pies; the bottom crusts were underdone, so it was harder to lever a whole piece out intact. Once leftover dessert had been handed out, the apple crisp was gone. We have plenty of mince pie left, and since I made a second vegan pumpkin one for Raphael as a very late birthday treat, there's plenty of pumpkin, too.
I remember that part of the conversation had to do with whether fruit flies sleep and part was some anecdotes about my brother's endless supply of idiosyncratic friends and part was about cats and Barbara's dog and another part was about Mark's studies and part was about my mother's Unitarian church and her book group, but there was much more than that.
It had felt like Thursday all day, but when we had dropped Eric off at home and gone home ourselves and put the leftovers away, suddenly it was Sunday again and I had to do the grocery order for the coming week.
In other news, while I was at Eric's place on Wednesday, I finished my own book and picked up his copy of The Mirador. I had to continue reading it when I got home, and I had to finish it, and now I am reading Corambis. I am afraid I'll have to pick up the first two in the series and just read my way around. I love those books very much, but I'm particularly fond of Mehitabel.
I'm hoping to do a book post soon. Kind thoughts to you all.
Pamela
P.S. I thought I had failed to set up cross-posting between Dreamwidth and LJ, but my Dreamwidth post about Terri's auction did cross-post. I think what I failed at was figuring out the instructions for putting that little banner at the bottom of the page that says that the entry is crossposted and how many comments there are at Dreamwidth and where you can comment. Well, you can comment either place, assuming that this entry does put itself in both places. I still can't post to LJ directly; I just get an error message. I imagine this will sort itself out eventually.
