it's all about the togetherness

OK look. In defense of what I am about to do, I started this blog to keep in touch with family and friends who live far away from me. So I put these two videos out there for them - my two sweeties at their piano recital last week. Feel free to skip over this blatent bit of mommy largess.
Q (Music Box Dancer)
E (La Cinquantaine)

Well it looks like Thanksgiving will once again be held at my house, which is great. Really. It's wonderful. It really is. Really. Except for the sinking feeling I get when I look at my very small, untidy house and especially my very small untidy kitchen. Remember, we had to add on to this house in order to allow us to expand our chests when we breathe. That, plus I am raising a couple of children that are going for the guiness book of world records for creating flooring made of unmatched socks that have been flung from their feet (sans hands - they're very talented) every time they enter the house. It's a good thing Santa keeps them well supplied with socks because I'm not gonna buy them any ever again.

But back to Thanksgiving... wait- there's more! To further strengthen that very slight sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, the number of people that will be here is unknown. Ahhh, toss a coin! Make a wild guess! Your guess is as good as mine. At the minimum, we will have 11 (including my family of 4) but that number has the potential to go up to 25. (Friends know families who know families who will be alone over the holidays so how can I NOT say absolutely invite them along!!?? Isn't that what Thanksgiving is actually for??) So any good planning on my part for the dinner itself has been...well, what planning? I got a smallish (10 pound) turkey and will add ham or roast as these additional people make their decisions. The rest will fall into place, surely. ?? And for as to how I will actually seat 25 people in my very small house? Um. This could be interesting. This is one of those times I can understand the appeal of a very large house. Must be why Thanksgiving is an American holiday. We're all about big and excess here anyway.

It's all good. This is just the obligatory freak out beforehand and then I'll get all excited about the food and cooking and wine and once I actually start to smell the turkey and ham and onions and garlic and such, I'll be in nirvana, and then when my friends get here I'll just be delirious and drunk enough on wine that I won't notice that the nice German family is having to balance their plates on their knees as they sit on the steps of the garage.

I just hope I'm better at last-minute planning of large dinner parties than I am at buying area rugs. In the midst of my pre-thanksgiving freak out, I decided the area rug in our living room was just too dirty, too old, and too "busy" to have anymore, particularly for Thanksgiving dinners, so I proclaimed to my poor DH that our house sucked and would continue to suck until I got us a new rug. So he wisely said "Yes, ok, whatever you think honey," and I rolled it up and tossed it in the garage and went to Lowe's on the spur of the moment to purchase a new rug. I found the perfect one. I searched and searched so I wouldn't feel guilty about not exploring all my options, but kept coming back to the same one because I just knew it was meant to be. I took it upon myself to snatch a large cart (after ditching the window that was on it. I swear I stood there for a good 10 minutes waiting for someone to come claim it first. It was only a very small window anyway. They could easily make do with duct tape if they needed to). I pulled the largest rug they had out of the bins (by myself) and wrestled it onto the cart by myself. I painstakingly pulled it through the store, taking out unsuspecting small children and elderly grandmothers at the knees with the over sized roll. I managed to get it into my van all by myself (customer service wasn't the best today). I note here that I was still wearing high heels from church this morning.

I got the silly thing home and unrolled it, and well. Can I say here that I doubt I could have done a worse job? It was hideous. Atrocious. Laughable. Ugly as hell. It looked like I'd pulled a quilt off of my bed and tossed it on the floor. So with all my deflated pride, I was unable to muster the strength to return it on my own so I bribed DH to help. As we were schleping the ugly-as-hell rug back up tot he store, I realized with a heavy dose of deja-vu that this is the THIRD time I have done this (buy a rug from Lowes only to return it within hours because of my horrid visualization skills). The third time. I am officially struck out. How pathetic is THAT?

So we're back to the ugly, old, dirty, "too busy" rug that will likely stay there through Thanksgiving. Oh well. My guests will be too busy trying to figure out how to step over each other on the garage steps to notice.