Thanking done, gifting in progress

One last thought about the Thanksgiving this year, which was very very good, wonderful atmosphere, very homey, at the buffet place, lots of nationalities represented, big groups, small groups, single people, all looking cheerful and tucking in to an excellent setout, complete with whole turkey to carve at will, standing rare rib roast for meat people, which I'm not, whole baked salmon, and I dunamany other choices on all the eight steam tables. Country walk in the sunshine along the river afterwards to counteract the effect. Nice.

Then in the mail a card from a friend I haven't heard from in a long time, overjoyed to see her writing on the envelope, partly about Tgiving, partly condolence, but with a great insertion? accompaniment? inclusion? word escapes me, but anyway, there were included two pix she took in the summer of 2009, I think, when she visited, just very happy and a great present to me, so I took a pic, only moderately successful, but you get the gist. I'm rarely in pix, since I take them around here, so this was nice for me, too.




Tgivings I have known. We will draw a veil over the ghastly ones where we had to go to an employer's event, and the ones where insistent people sandbagged us into joining them even when we were pretty sure it wouldn't be a good thing, etc., and segue quickly to one terrific one many years ago. I was single, HS was not there on this occasion, and I invited two women friends, one whose grown children could not get home till the Friday, one who could not get to her mom's at all, not enough turnaround time off from her job.

I did the main part of the meal, turkey, all that, and laid the antique cherry pedestal table with the antique linen and lace cloth and candles, all very posh. The young, broke, friend brought a tiny box of very good chocolates, perfect choice, the best she could afford in the amount she could do, and the other, not a cook, brought ready cooked veggies. So all went happily, with the wine and the laughing and the total lack of traditions weighing us down.

We adjourned to the living room, which was through a big entryway, so you could see the dining room, and had coffee and maybe a bit of liqueur, who knows, when suddenly one of the guests said, Liz, your table's all on fire I think. Whereupon we all fell about laughing and she said, no I think it really is.

So we looked and the candle had burned down behind our backs, set light to the cloth, and everything was burning merrily! I slung a pitcher of water over it, shoveled the remnants out to the back yard and we went on with our party. The table now had a new scar to add to its two hundred year history, and that was known as the Thanksgiving Where We Burned Down Liz's House. What they call a barn burner, I guess.

This year, much more sedate, and this weekend with gifty knitting in progress, the fuzzy blue scarf to go to a friend who doesn't read in here, so I'm not spoiling the surprise, and the weird black object is the body of a penguin I'm making for a friend who is nuts about penguins and went to see Happy Feet as part of her Tday! She doesn't read in here either, so all is well.



Yeah, I'd say that all in all, all's well.