Appropriately there is snow but the Canadian Christmas shopping season does not begin until the first weekend of December and their shopping orgy is actually the day after Christmas – Boxing Day.  Therefore, Thanksgiving is about food, family and whatever winter sport floats one’s boat.

Fare’s birthday fell on the holiday this year. She was born on the day too, 27 years ago.  Rob celebrated by eating lukewarm turkey at Shelley’s sister’s home while wife and baby did what new mothers and their less than patient newborns do in those first hours – wonder what the hell they have gotten themselves into.

Because the older girls are at the mercy of their jobs, we celebrated birthday and Thanksgiving Sunday evening. I spent most of the day Saturday and nearly all of Sunday in food preparation. Saturday was peeling, shredding and baking four mutant zucchini into bread. Fourteen loaves of it. Excuse me now while I pause to bask in my own awesomeness. (Pause) Truthfully, bread baking is far less time consuming than it sounds because a lot of the time is spent waiting for loaves to bake. Sunday I made the rolls, pumpkin pies and cooked the spaghetti squash in advance due to the fact that the turkey breast was going to tie up the oven for most of the afternoon.

Thanksgiving Menu

turkey breast and dressing

mashed taters and gravy

flakey rolls

zucchini and pumpkin bread

green beans

spaghetti squash

pumpkin pie

angel food cake and strawberries

I know. The essence of my awesomeness is blinding even in cyberspace. For someone late in life to the whole housewifey thing, I have adapted and conquered nicely.

In addition to whipping up a fab family meal, Rob and I also planned a vacation. A real one. One with just the merest hint of family as we will stop over at Rob’s mom’s place in the Okanagan on the way back

“Are you sure?” I asked. “This is supposed to be a vacation with no obligations to anyone.”

“Family is always an obligation,” he said. “You don’t want to stop, do you?

He had me there. I love my mother-in-law, but she stayed with us two weekends in a row in September and always has a job list for Rob whether we visit her or she stops here.

“We barely get there and she has chores for you. I end up cooking dinner, and there is the small matter of sometimes she is so happy to see us, she tipples a bit much.”

The drinking thing, I confess, is entirely a personal issue. I am uneasy around drinkers. A glass of wine with dinner now and again, I get. The need to drink daily or past the point of seeing straight? I am baffled and put off a bit. Some of this goes back to my dad and some of it is residual from the early days of Will’s illness when he leaned on alcohol as a way to cope with the symptoms the doctors dismissed. My personal preference is to never be in close quarters with the inebriated. That’s just me.

But we are heading to Victoria in November over Dee’s fall break week. The trip includes a stop in Jasper, one of my favorite mountain towns, a ferry ride from Vancouver to the island, days in a row of vacationing with the possibility of meeting Sally and her family, and the tantalizing lure of warmer than where we live.

A most happy day of thanks.