theladybailey's blog: "Rambling, It's What I Do"

I'm kind of big on family traditions. Thanksgiving is a goddamn EVENT in my family. See, first we have The Family Dinner.

It's like a redneck Normal Rockwell painting. Picture it: my whole family gathered around our hundred years old family table, table covered in so much food that it's groaning under the weight. Grandma and I look flushed and giddy from both lack of sleep and hunger; we've been up since three in the morning cooking. We have a turkey; not because we particularly love it, but because it's tradition, and you just don't fuck with tradition, alright?

The turkey gets shafted, though, unloved and unwanted until the day after; in the center of our table, where the turkey would be with every other family, is a giant fucking platter of fried chicken. Grandma makes it for every major event - and it's perfect. This is the fried chicken that can make grown men moan like they're being given a blowjob under the table, and women completely disregard the fact they've been dieting all month.

No - they've been dieting all month so they can eat AS MUCH of this fried chicken as possible. It is that good.

Then it's time for the desserts to shine. Robert Redford Cake, Turtle Cheesecake, Spice Punpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing, apple cobbler - all of this homemade. The crusts? I make the day before. It's my great-great Grandma's recipe. Yes. Yes. We are fucking serious about our holiday dinners.

Afterward it's bleching, unbottoning the pants, collapsing in the living room to curl up and wonder if you're actually going to die from over eating. (Maybe just one more cupcake, they aren't that big....) We talk, we watch movies; my younger cousins get energy before anyone else. Probably because they're teenagers and teenagers are bastards; they want to torture the rest of us. I somehow, every single year, get sweet-talked into dragging my stuffed, faintly greasy, exhausted ass out of my recliner to haul the Christmas tree upstairs.

We decorate it Thanksgiving night. Every Thanksgiving night. We have stories for each decoration, and we tell them.

"This ball is handblown glass, and hand painted. Great Uncle Teddy and Aunt Jeanie brought it back from Germany for Grandma when Uncle Ted was stationed there." Or perhaps, "This is two popcicle sticks, felt, a set of plastic eyes, and two little bells that I glued together in kindergarden. I think...I think it's supposed to be a reindeer, but honestly, it kind of looks like a sick bear."

This year, though, we have to break with tradition. A lot.

We can't have it at our house. Why, you ask? Why would you possibly destroy decades of family tradition?

Because the son of a bitch burnt three weeks before Thanksgiving, that's why. My kitchen - my kitchen, where I spend like forty percent of my day cooking three square meals (and yes, alright, baking bread and whatever, but that's just plain fun) for my grandmother is ruined. Gone! The fucking light fixture has been melted into the linolum floor, the ceiling is gone in places. The walls are black. The sunroom, behind the kitchen, is empty by now - I had wanted to clean it out for years. It became a catch all, junk room; the door we kept shut so no one could see it was packed full of shit Grandma couldn't bear to throw away for whatever God awful reason.

It's gone. Not just the junk -no, six hundred yards of fabric. Sewing patterns that are so old we literally cannot replace them. My great-grandma bought like half of them for my Grandma. (My Grandma who is a seamstress and kind of needs all of those things.  My other great-grandma's trundle sewing machine? Oh, fuck me, water damage, smoke damage, charred...all of my yarn. Over a hundred fucking rolls of yarn, gone, poof; I can't finish the afghan I was making for my friend for Christmas. The yarn I was using? It wasn't new. You can't buy it any more. It was some of great-grandma's, the prettiest shade of blue I've ever seen in my life, and it went up in fucking flames three weeks ago, and I can't finish the afgan and it may drive me fucking insane knowing it will remain unfished.

This year we are celebrating Christmas in a rental house. Which is awesome, because we have a roof over our heads and a place to lay our heads; and most importantly, no one was hurt in this fire. My Grandma got out, our three dogs, myself. No injuries aside from smoke inhaliation and the massive sinus/ear/lung infection it cause - thanks shitty immune system, glad to see you're still getting drunk and fucking whores on the job, you bastard.

Not to mention, you know, my mother is at war with the rest of our family, and refuses to come home for the second year running. Nothing says family love like, "I'd rather spend Thanksgiving alone in an apartment with two dogs eating cranberry sauce out of a can and not wearing pants then come see you bastards."

And see, here, this kind of started out as a rant. Because I haven't really got to rant about it yet. The fact that I lost dish towels my great-grandma embroidered, or my coffee mug that my uncle got me when I was like 3 that has a teddy bear holding a heart and says I Love My Niece! But it all trailed off and turned into exactly what it should be -

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time of thankfulness. (And abject groveling, given that it is a holiday celebrating the stealing of lands from an entirely peoples, which led into the descturtion of their culture and way of life. YAY FOR US, WE WIN.) And so this Thanksgiving I'm thankful -

That I'm still here to make new traditions with my family.

That I get another Thanksgiving with Grandma.

That Grandma has promised to make fried chicken anyway. ;D ;D ;D (Fat girls love food, alright?)

That my dogs are unharmed.

That I get to buy a new Christmas tree.

That I get to buy new orniments, each of which will one day be put on the tree with a story, "Well, I accidently burned part of Grandma's house down thanks to a greasefire that almost took off my eyebrows, and this is one of the ones I got to replace the ones we lost..."

That my aunt is doing the rest of the cooking, and I don't have to wake up until five to make hot rolls and a chocolate pie.

That I'm pretty sure I've sweet-talked my uncle into putting a double oven in my kitchen when it's rebuilt. YES. DOUBLE OVEN!