Gobble Gobble

Going to try to get into The Friday Five habit:

1. On what day do you celebrate Thanksgiving?

The fourth Thursday of November.

2. How do you traditionally celebrate this food filled holiday?

Spending the day with either my family or my boyfriend’s family eating the traditional foods – turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, butternut squash, corn, apple pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate cream pie; playing board games; watching football; reminiscing about Thanksgivings past. Zee, do you remember the pie fight in the mid to late 70’s? My memory of it was sketchy so Mom refreshed my memory – she started it!!

3. How do you like your stuffing cooked (in the bird, separately in a dish, store bought, etc.)?

My mother makes the best sausage stuffing in the world. She stuffs the bird just before she puts it into the oven. That’s the way I like it. :-)

4. What is your favorite dessert to eat on Thanksgiving and who makes it?

Mmmmm… my mother’s pumpkin pie. It’s also traditionally our Thanksgiving morning breakfast appetizer.

5. Can you name five things you are thankful for?

My family
The Man and his family (especially his parents)
Our cats (and the fact that Babs is still with us and back to her old crazy self)
Our home (in spite of our noisy, a-hole neighbors)
Employment

Belated Thanksgiving Greetings! Hope everyone had a wonderful day yesterday. We spent the day at The Man’s grandmother’s house. Had to drive through a little snow and ice to get there, but fortunately that was for only the last 10-15 miles of the trip. And thankfully I had snow tires put on the car last Saturday. Once we got to his grandmother’s house the weather cleared out within an hour, and we had decent travel for the ride home. The gathering at his grandmother’s was unusually small. The Man’s mother is one of 15 children, so typically the place is a zoo on holidays, but there were only about 20 people there yesterday, including The Man’s parents. It was nice. Neither of us needed to take any Advil by the time we left. Spent the rest of the evening trying to watch TV (namely the Dallas/Denver game and then A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving) and hating my neighbors more than usual. Their music was so loud (“How loud was it?!”), if we knew how to speak Spanish, we could’ve easily sung along with each song. The walls and floor were vibrating. It was ridiculous. The Man, in an effort to calm me, reminded me that soon, every time they play their music loudly, they’re going to get slapped with a fine. I emailed with our new butt-kicking condo manager last week about noise pollution in our building and she’s sending out a warning letter to everyone about it. If it continues after the letter, the fines will commence! Woohoo!

My incision is healing nicely, but man does my boob ache! Know it’s going to take a while to completely heal, but, OW! But it’s better than the alternative. :-) Went to see the surgeon last week and he told me that there was absolutely no sign of malignancy. YAY!!! He said I might develop more in the future and that I could have those removed as well which, to me, goes without saying.

Babs is doing incredibly well. She’s on only ¼ tablet of Salix per day now, and is taking her Enalapril like a trouper. Well, most of the time. She’s probably going to be on the Enalapril for the rest of her life. We were able to bring her back to our regular vet’s office earlier this week for her blood work and the vet we saw was the one who gave her the steroid shot. She told us she was horrified by what happened and felt like it was her fault. We both told her it was nobody’s fault. None of us had any way of knowing about her condition. The kitty cardiologist in Boston told us that cats hide heart disease very, very well and he wasn’t surprised at all by the chain of events. Think we had her feeling better by the time we left.

Here’s a recent picture of Babs and her brother, Buster. You'll notice the fur on Babs' left leg is still growing back in. That's where her IV was when she was in the hospital. She's got another shaved area on her chest. Anyway, don’t think I’ve posted any pictures of Buster here. This picture cracks us both up. Buster looks like he’s doing an old-time gangster impression – “I dumped the body in the river, see? But first I chewed his arm off so’s I could get the turkey leg away from him. Yeah, see?”



Goofy boy.

We’re hosting poker tomorrow evening. That’ll be fun. I’m making a kielbasa recipe in the slow-cooker that’s a combination of, well, kielbasa, whole berry cranberry sauce, chili sauce, brown sugar, garlic powder and I can’t remember what else right now. It’s reallllly yummy. Also going to make some of the awesome Knorr’s vegetable dip that Zee gave me the recipe for (thank you Zee!). It varies a little from what’s on the back of the box. Oh, and I’m going to make those yummy Stella D’Oro cookie thingies too.

Okay, gotta stop with the food talk. I’m drooling.

Lots more to say because I haven't really been around (and I have a TON of catching up to do on Valerie's blog and Fred's blog) but need to get some sleep. Happy day after Thanksgiving!