Thanksgiving

What's everyone doing for Thanksgiving?

Nothing We lost my grandma last year and my mom always said that when she dies (she was the matriarch) the family wouldn't get together as often and it looks like it is true. I have a few family members who have moved out of state in the last couple of months, a couple others are on vacation, a few are living far away and don’t want to come home (too expensive). Plus my aunt who usually puts on Thanksgiving said that if her husband was going hunting on Thanksgiving, she didn't want to do a get together this year. Well he decided to go hunting, so it was just canceled and she is going out of state to visit a family member. This sucks. I know that had my grandma still been alive this year, even with people gone and her husband going, my aunt would have done Thanksgiving. So this is hard, the first holiday we’ve canceled and done our own things.

I hate getting older and seeing everyone either die off or get married and go to the family side of their significant other’s.

So this year, it’s just me and my mom, which isn’t good because I’m not liking my mother right now. I think I’ll be spending Thanksgiving, being depressed.

Hopefully Christmas won't disappoint. I like cooking and getting together with my family and trying to persuade them to play board games

Aw, I'm sorry about your Grandma. I understand what you're going through. When my Grandma died it stirred up a loooooot of drama in the family and basically, our big family sort've split down the middle. Which I've gotten over and accepted as fact. I can't be sad about people who won't give me the time of day, especially if the're family.
Luckily we were split with my favorite aunt and her family. Love them crazy fools. We see each other all the time.
Even though our family is drastically smaller, it's the people that we love to spend time with. So everything worked out nicely.

This Thanksgiving it was my parents, my 2 foster sisters, my aunt, uncle, and two cousins (and one of their girlfriend's). During the morning/afternoon, my parents drove my sista's more than an hour away so they can see their parents. That left me at home all alone so I cooked the ENTIRE thanksgiving meal. I cooked last year but I wasn't home alone and I had help. I was VERY exciting about cooking by myself. That meant my mother would be off my back about cooking this and that. Ugh, she irritates me in the kitchen.
Here's what I cooked (everything homemade and from scratch):
apple sauce
cranberry sauce
cream spinach
sauteed carrots
sauteed green beans
my famous catfish soup
a 17 pound turkey
key lime pie
chocolate espresso cheesecake with ganache

I've never cooked an entire turkey before so I was anxious as to how it would come out. Luckily I had a recipe from my favorite chef (Ina Garten) and it didn't burn or anything! It was cooked to perfection! And I did thank the turkey's soul for its sacrifice (even though it wasn't by choice).

I was freaken exhausted and starving when everything was finished cooking. I needed a deep body massage!! All we needed was good food and good conversation and we were set for an awesome dinner. It helped that my family is loud and crazy - makes it more fun. The few, the funnier.

I love cooking but cooking a holiday meal is hell! I did that once and not on my own free will mind you In our family, we never really go to one specific house for all the holidays, we'd go back and forth between my grandma and my two aunts. Well in '01, it was decided that Thanksgiving would be at my grandma's house, but my mom didn't want my grandma to cook (we lived with my grandparent's for a long time) because of health reasons so she said she'd cook everything. Yeah, my mom doesn't cook so she came to me and said "Guess what? You are doing Thanksgiving!" Thanks mom. So I was the big honcho for the holiday, thinking up what we'd have, having to cook a lot and then also calling everyone up and demanding that they bring this or that. We had a large family back then, between 20-25 people, so I had a lot to cook.

My aunt always gave money for the turkey, unless she hosted Thanksgiving, so I said to her that I wanted two turkey's because we usually cut the turkey all up and put it in a roaster to keep warm during the whole day and I wanted a whole turkey to have on a platter. So she gave me the money for the two turkey's but silly young me didn't realize that you had to buy them more than 2 days in advance if you want them to unthaw. So I spent the day before Thanksgiving putting both turkey's in a large cooler and putting that in the tub and filling it with cold water then dumping it and filling the cooler up again. Did that about every 30 minutes, for about 8 hours to get them thawed.

But you know, in the end, it was fun and worth it. I spent the night before Thanksgiving with my grandma at the kitchen table, telling me to do this or that, but I refused to let her help me. All she could do was give instructions.

I miss that kind of stuff. I lost my grandma last year, after taking care of her by myself for almost 7 months (long story) and I lost my aunt, who was the one who gave money for the turkeys (she was like a second mother to me) to cancer in '04. So I miss family get togethers now, even though we had a massive fight like what you probably had. It divided us for a couple years and I'm still not fully over what some of the people did to me (but those people have now since passed in the last couple years).