home again, home again

The past few days have been marvelous.

MP threw another of her marvelous feastie occasions last night as a pre-Thanksgiving celebration, complete with stuffing, an enormous picnic table dragged in from the backyard, and a twenty-pound fresh Farmer's Market turkey. She and her cousin Tom and I spent the weekend shopping, rearranging, and cooking to prepare for it. It was, of course, a smashing success. I had a moment of pure longing (in geek form) made real as all ten of us sat down to gabble and pass huge bowls of food around: At the end of a rather poignant Firefly episode all the characters, most of whom don't usually get along (but part of the poignancy was the episode's arrival at solidarity), sit down around their big, homey dining table (on a spaceship, of course) and begin to talk and laugh and pass things around, and when I saw it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I teared up, missing so badly having that sort of experience in good company. And last night the wish was fulfilled. I almost teared up again, but my mind was distracted by the turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoe pie, squash casserole, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Mmmmm.

Everyone should have Thanksgiving twice in a week.

And today more wonderfulness occurred. Because again, I have a wonderful boss. He called the day after his wife had knee replacement surgery to ask if I wanted Wednesday off to go home. So now I get a five day weekend to travel to the traditional Thanksgiving site at my maternal grandparents'!

I find myself looking forward to it. I haven't seen my parents since April, and with Christmas being a little different this year (I'm spending a couple of days prior to Christmas at home, and then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at my sister's), it's going to be really nice to see them for a little more time than I had expected. I'll get even more time because I'm driving home, then riding down to southwestern PA with my parents, driving back up with them, and coming home from there.

AND MP's teaching me to knit in the round tonight, so that I can work on my leg warmers in the car and all during Thanksgiving. (As I'll be the only "kid" there, and a lot of the conversation centers around people I don't know/don't care about, it'll be good to have something to do with my hands, and yet be able to participate peripherally in what's going on...or at least look like I am).

Maybe they'll even let me help with the cooking this year!! My grandmother makes the best stuffing EVER.

That whole side of the family is riotously dysfunctional, and I've been kind of sad the last couple of days, thinking I'd have to miss it. There's nothing like my cranky and slightly inebriated alcoholic grandfather yelling at my alcoholic uncle to PUTAWAYTHATBEER. And my grandmother is wonderful -- a no-stuff-and-nonsense woman full of humor and heart. This is the side of the family that argues and yells a lot, forgets about it five minutes later, and then yells about something new. Somehow it's warm and comforting, and makes me feel like I'm not actually a frigid northern European whose still icy waters run silent and deep, occasionally exploding like a geiser. Or makes me feel like my usual spirit of righteous indignation is in excellent company.

So my boss said, "It's a family holiday, and you haven't seen your parents for a long time, and I hate to keep families apart if I can do something about it."

That's what you get for having a former priest and a family man for a boss. It's the bestest thing ever.