Preznit Giv Us Turkee

Internet, I am, at this very moment, baking a pumpkin pie. This pumpkin pie is no ordinary pie. Multiply this pie by the square of its radius and all you will have is a full belly area the size of Rhode Island. I was going to say Texas, but it isn't that big.

It's the first pumpkin pie I've ever baked, in fact. I even made the crust from scratch. I'd express my pride, but since the baking of the pie is still in progress, and the true test of its mystical properties will not come until sometime tomorrow evening, I will refrain. Anyway, I cheated on the crust by not going so far as to make the kind that requires the carefull rolling.

Mr. Thel and I are staying in Seattle for Thanksgiving this year. We spent Veteran's Day weekend with family in exchange for staying home and relaxing this weekend. Veteran's Day just happened to fall on the first Friday after we bought a new car! Well, not a brand new car, but a year-old car with barely 14,000 miles on it is new enough for me. Since its mileage was so nice and low, we quickly drove it to Oregon to click up another thousand miles on it. That way the car knows right from the start exactly the kind of hard work it's in for during our term of ownership. Although, as long as I'm anthropomorphizing the car, it probably took one terrified look at the old yet-to-be-sold car in our driveway and had a good idea how much we travel by car.

But not this weekend, thank all the gods. I have no love for Thanksgiving travel, and I'm delighted to just have a four-day weekend without the large travel brackets surrounding it. I get the impression that people doubt the sincerity of my pleasure to have a nice quiet Thanksgiving weekend, just me and Mr. Thel; a couple of friends from work sort of made sad faces when I burbled about how the two of us are just going to have some traditional Thanksgiving food and spend the weekend being lazy, and invited us to come spend tomorrow with at their respective family events. Um, thanks? --but no.

Thanksgiving isn't a holiday I have any great love for, anyway. At least since leaving home nine years ago, [--oh my god, I've been on my own for nine years already? Like, a third of my life? Holy shamoly....] bad things have tended to happen to me around this holiday. In 1996 I was in a minor car accident while carpooling down the freeway. In 1997 I was diagnosed with cancer the day before Thanksgiving; it's hard to top that when trying to find a real holiday buzzkill. Two Thanksgivings in a row found me going through relationship breakups. After that I started dreading the whole damn month of November. Although nothing awful has happened for the last couple of years, I still find myself wanting to hibernate through the month.

This year, though, I'm optimistic. Perhaps the curse of November has been broken. I have a pie in the oven, and tomorrow for the first time I'll be preparing a Thanksgiving dinner of my own. (Mr. Thel is in charge of the turkey, however. My kitchen skills skew more toward the baking side of things, not so much the meat side.) Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, green bean casserole (OF COURSE), and le pie, which is now cooling and to which I am going to give a tentative, pre-tasting thumbs up. It isn't burned, or runny, so it looks promising.

May tomorrow bring you a stomach full of good food (and unburnt pies), a house full of exactly as much activity with family and friends as you desire, and a heart full of joy.