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The Thanksgiving I’ll Always Remember
Your Publicity Firm
The event began with a great start: I got elected this year to have Thanksgiving at my house. I was overjoyed. What an honor for them to think of me. I am the one who works 60 hours a week, has small children to care for, and never cooks, so of course, my family thought it would be great for me to host it. Such a logical choice!
After getting up at 5am the day of the event to clean, my family and their guests started to arrive…EARLY! I had not even showered yet, had been cleaning for 5 hours, and here comes Hayley the perfect college girl, and her new boyfriend at the door. I ran to hide. I made my son answer the door, as I snuck up the stairs. I slowly tiptoed up on the edges of the steps so I could avoid the spot that creeks. But, as luck would have it, she appeared right behind me as I make it to the top step.
“Auntie! Hello! Come here, I want you to meet my new boyfriend.” She squeeled. She had a new one every time I saw her, so this wasn’t really “NEW”.
She would be sorry for wanting to introduce me now, to anyone. I turned around, brushed my hair out of my face, straightened my ratty cleaning t-shirt and sweat pants with bleach stains, came back down the stairs and held out my arms.
“Hello Honey. I wasn’t presentable yet. I was cleaning, and haven’t changed my clothes.” I said through my gritted teeth.
“Oh, don’t worry about it! We know you don’t always look THAT BAD!” She cheerfully said in reply. That was so nice of her to notice that.
After greeting her young, “Mr. Perfect” college boyfriend, I retreated back up that stairs to bathe and get presentable.
I returned after an hour to find ALL of my family had now shown up, and my two children were entertaining, and my husband was watching football on the sofa, blasting his new “surround sound” speaker system for Grandpa.
“What are you doing, honey? The tv is so loud that neighbors can hear it too!” I said, giving him the evil eye.
“Oh, yeah. Grandpa was checking out the sound. I wanted him to FEEL like he was at the game! I turned up the bass, a little.” The bass from the speakers was rattling the windows. It was more than a little turned up! He winked at me, trying to be cute, and I pictured myself hitting him over the head with his little TV remote.
I moved on, trying to ignore it, and shut the doors behind me. I went to the kitchen to check on my Thanksgiving “feast” that I was preparing. I looked over at the counter and everyone had placed their dishes all over the place. Food was everywhere. People had already been in here snacking, too, so there were already dirty dishes in the sink and spills on the floor that I had just mopped. Perfect.
The cats were meowing at the door, so I let them in to feed them. They scurried over to the spill, and started licking it up, so I let them finish. It was one less mess I had to clean. Good kitty.
After I got everything situated and organized (somewhat) it was time to eat. People I had not met were here, and then they brought people, so we had a full house of over 28. I didn’t know how we were going to seat everyone.
Seating ended up as a “rotation”. If you got up, you lost your seat, because someone else was going to get it. When grandpa got up, “Mr. Perfect” took his seat, then the cat stuck its head out from behind the chair and ate out of his plate. So, I directed him to a new chair at the table in the kitchen, and made him a new plate.
I never got to sit down, so I didn’t need a seat. My twin nieces who are three years old, were running around the table in circles, so they didn’t ever sit down. I wanted to chain their little fannies to a chair, and make them sit still, but that’s different.
Things were getting crazy with the loud tv blaring and shaking the windows, kids running in circles, people I didn’t know walking around my house, and babies crying. I was glad to be in the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator door to get more drinks, and I slung the door open too wide, trying to hurry. I accidentally hit my little nephew in the eye with the refrigerator handle. An hour later, it was turning blue. I had blackened his eye with the refrigerator door. I felt terrible. It was just that kind of day.
My brother, who is the family commedian, started calling me “Heavyweight Champ”, and as you can imagine, I really wanted to punch him, instead. I took a moment and imagined hitting my brother over the head with that bottle in his hand, but a new crisis was calling me. I had to go see what it was.
Someone had overflowed and stopped up the toilet. It could have been the crazy twins, or maybe Grandpa, but regardless. I had a floater to deal with. Now, everyone who had to use the bathroom got to use the messy one upstairs that was never cleaned. Just another thing to be thankful for, this Thanksgiving.
After cleaning the bathroom floor, again, Grandma was heard in the living room calling for me. “Have you seen my teeth? I don’t know where I put them. I can’t remember.” She said, looking at me.
Oh boy. I had already cleaned the kitchen, and I didn’t see any teeth. We all started combing around the house, looking for some pearly whites. The kids were more than happy to help look for “used teeth”. All the men still sat, unmoved, in front of the tv with the blaring bass. Someone got up and did a high-five over the football game and a “most perfect pass” and guess what was seen in the seat cushions. Teeth! They were very fuzzy now, and had to be disinfected, but they were located.
Grandma looked over her false teeth and inspected them. She then leaned over, and whispered in my ear (also spit in it, at the same time) “That boy that sat on my teeth probably bent them, and now I’m gonna need new ones!” She scolded.
I hugged her and consoled her while she picked couch fuzz and crumbs out of them, and I walked off to find a q-tip for my ear. I was a little overwhelmed, and so thankful for all this company, I wanted to cry. Toilet floaters, false teeth, crazy kids and blaring bass all got to me. I was losing it.
I went and found the remote to the booming bass and turned it off. My brother immediately complained and said out loud “Uh, oh the heavy -weight is on the rampage! Look out, she packs a punch!” Everyone snickered, but me. I was over it. I just turned around and walked out of the room.
I sent the kids outside to play, reminding them of our new swing set OUTSIDE. Grandma was still following me around the house, complaining about her teeth, so I found her a seat by my sister. She could listen to Grandma complain, now.
I went to the kitchen window, took a deep breath, and watched the kids playing on the swing set outside. Watching the kids play made me smile. I just watched the kids swing and slide and giggle. I actually was thankful for this crazy, unorganized day. All of the problems were small issues, and I was truly thankful that we could be together this Thanksgiving.
My brother came over to the window where I was standing and stood beside me. “Thanksgiving dinner was good. All the food was great. Thanks for having us over.” He smiled at me, knowing I was still mad at his “heavyweight” comments, and patted me on the back.
“Listen, I can just call you “Champ”, for short. Okay? That’s a better nickname for you.” That was his attempt at making peace, and I accepted it. I was thankful. Very thankful…..
LINKS to look at:
For great backyard swing sets: http://www.playnation.com/
http://www.gorillaplaysets.com/
For great holiday recipes: http://allrecipes.com/recipes/holidays-and-events/thanksgiving/
Article submitted Friday, November 18, 2011 & read 58 times.
Celeste Simmons is a published author of 2 books, and is a full time copywriter. To see her website: http://www.yourpublicityfirm.com/
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