First of all, minus the mashed potatoes, it's my least favorite food of the year. The turkey is usually dry, the stuffing is over-salted and the yams are syrupy and donned with burnt marshmallow fragments.
You gather with family, but it's the only time of year that you also gather with "that" family member that you attempt to avoid all year long. It's a hodgepodge of white sheep, black sheep and the enablers.
Also, when you get finished eating, this guilt sets in...Should I gather the dishes? Load the dishwasher? Wipe the counter tops? Can I just sit and visit with my sisters? Ugh.
I made Thanksgiving dinner twice in the last 3 years. It's 3 days and 6 hours of preparation and baking for 20 minutes of eating around a dinner table, using the fall-themed table cloth and the turkey-shaped salt and pepper shakers. Then it's another 6 hours of clean up, 3 loads of dishes and sweeping the floor beneath the trough.
And am I thankful? No. I'm irritated as I scrub the pots and pans while others watch football and peruse the Black Friday ads. Or I succumb to my guilt and clean up after others - still irritable - while my grandma is still finishing her plate...(she eats slower than Lucille Ball did in the I Love Lucy episode where she is dieting and needs to chew each bite 25 times).
Not to mention, every year I get the Facebook posts and news items about cruelty to Turkeys. It's food. You kill it and eat it. But I don't, cause it's too damn dry.
