Thanksgiving

I woke up at noon because my mom woke me up. I was still sleep-deprived and I had that feeling that my limbs were full of cement, and I wriggled around in the bed and thought about how much I hate merriment because I can never sleep during it.

But as I ran to the grocery store two times, driving around alone in my mom's car, I felt a city-girl romantic-comedy kind of giddiness. The sentiment of like the brunette girl from Sex and the City driving around singing with the radio cranked up because she just had a successful date with some great guy. Nothing like that had happened, so I can't really say why I was in such a good mood.

There were a lot of points where I forgot it was Thanksgiving. I feel bad that I didn't stop and have more grateful thoughts throughout the day. I do remember, just before dinner, as we got our food and prepared to sit down at the table, hoping my mom wasn't about to propose we say grace, because that seemed like something she might do. Because I would've made some snappy comment like, "I think we should be thanking you." She didn't end up saying anything about grace. So I just kind of felt like an ass.

It turned out to be the best food I've ever eaten at Thanksgiving: wheat bread you make by putting a packet of wheat-bread mix into a bread-maker, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, really good stuffing, this cinnamon pecan yam shit (I usually hate sweet potatoes but it was like the season of autumn in my mouth), steamed broccoli and cauliflower, a Tofurkey (which was store-bought but whatever). There was also turkey, which I didn't eat, but I assume it was good. It's not that any of this, except the yam shit and the Tofurkey, isn't eaten in like every American household at Thanksgiving. It's that she's a badass at making food, even when she's been sipping at a pool of red wine for hours. Now that I think of it, we probably didn't say grace because she was proud of her work.

She was the only biological family member there, actually. There was her, then some guy-friend she invited over because he just went through a divorce and didn't have anywhere to go, then Mitch and Lexie. Before dinner Mitch and I sat in the living room with the game on, him pointing at metal bands on a list and telling me which ones to download while my mom banged around in the kitchen with a wine-glass in her hand talking to that guy about how her ex-boyfriend's dog went with him to Florida this year. These interactions would not have happened if the day were not a holiday.