"Where's the turkey, Chuck?"

We haven't really been celebrating Thanksgiving.

The kids are in school until it's nearly dark, so T-day is just me preparing an overly large meal to clean up on a regular day.
Last year in our house with the non-existent kitchen, I couldn't pony up and cook anything.

You think I'm exaggerating.
Our kitchen consisted of one wall with cabinets (5 total) and a tiny work space consumed by a microwave and stovetop. The adjoining wall was the sink and refrigerator.
The other side? There was no other side. The stairs went up where the other half of the kitchen should've been. My friend is still making fun of me for thinking we could ever be happy in a house with no kitchen.

The thought of starting three days early to manage all of the things that had to go in our toaster-sized oven really overwhelmed me, and that's quite a feat because I LOVE cooking, so I didn't. Ok, I did attempt it, but last year our friends went home having had a dinner of side dishes. The oven gave up the ghost mid-turkey.

Do you own a jelly roll pan? Could you hold it up please? The width of that pan was too large for my oven. All of my 13X9 pans were too wide for my oven. The smallest turkey available would sit on the bottom rack and take the entire space. Only one pie could be cooked at a time. Then the thing didn't even cook the little turkey I put in it. To top the whole holiday off, our dorm-sized refrigerator died the Monday before and the landlord had warned us that when it did, she wasn't replacing it. Fun times.

In the past, this time of year would make me a little melancholy.

Twice since moving overseas, I was mentally crippled by the thought that my two youngest would never attend a school T-day lunch wearing Pilgrim hats or big, colorful construction paper turkeys on their little noggins. It's not a true childhood if you haven't made spice drop turkeys or been a little disappointed that you couldn't play the Indians in the pageant.
Who cares if my children have traipsed through castles galore and stood in the rain for a photo next to Stonehenge? No, "Gobble Gobble Gobble" coming from our TV, no "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving", no cold rubbery stuffing in their cafeteria lunch? Where's the justice?


Then there's Black Friday.

I hate crowds. I hate being jostled and elbowed and tackled over a $20.00 dvd player, but I hate missing that energy more.
There's no black Friday in a country that doesn't celebrate Over-eating Thursday.




It's a new year. This year I have


the Aga.
And the convection oven.
And the workspace of a restaurant.
I am a happy little cooker.

I have invited the entire county of Norfolk at this point and I am the proud owner of several bags of spice drops (we will begin Pilgrim and or turkey hats this week).
The kids have filled out holiday forms and will miss a day of school.
The Hubby is home and not deployed.
Warm, fuzzy blessings abound.

I'll still miss that early shopping when sane people
are in bed, but you can do that for me, right?
Put things in your cart you don't need only because they're on sale, and then turn to wave in the general direction of England.
It'll be like we're up at 4.45 am together!

In the famous words of Charlie Brown's Marcie (with my adaptation , of course), "But Thanksgiving is more than eating, [peeps] ... Those early Pilgrims were thankful for what had happened to them, and we should be thankful, too. We should just be thankful for being together [in cyberspace]. I think that's what they mean by 'Thanksgiving,' Charlie Brown."