To blog or not to blog...

Well, it's happened.  Apparently the "psycho-killer-mutant-zombie-viruses" (affectionately known as Twitter and Facebook) have reduced my blogging to a pale shadow of what it once was, and it wasn't even that prolific to begin with!  I have succumbed to the ease of the occasional tweet (which I still feel should be called twits... after the majority of the folks that inspire the posts in the first place,) as well as the lure of the quick Facebook status update.  It's far easier to log on to Facebook and throw a cow at my friends (thank the gods for Superpoke!) than it is to come here and actually think of something meaningful to say.  All of that aside, here is my quick and dirty (yeah, I said it... you know you LOVE it,) version of Thanksgiving 2008.

Readers of this blog (all two and a half of you) will remember my classic holiday cooking tales from bygone days (no, he's not going to link them again is he?  Oh crap, he is... here and here.)  Well, this past Thanksgiving brought a watered-down dose of my usual lunacy, but hey, it is what it is.  I was initially told that I was cooking for 20 people.  While that doesn't really sound all that daunting, let me add that the kitchen in which all of these holiday miracles get pulled off in is not all that large.  Additionally, the oven itself is a rather tiny unit, and once a turkey is in play there is hardly any room to get your hands in to take the darned thing back out again.  Trying to cook enough for 20 folks in that limited space would have been interesting.  I say "would have," because when I arrived in the wee hours of the morning to start things off, I was informed by my mother that the listing was now down to 15, as some folks had cancelled.  Prior to that morning I was aware of one and only one possible cancellation.  That would be my charming sister (Hi Lisa... as you're probably the "half" out of the "two and a half" folks that come here!)  She has a state job that finds her working the majority of the Holidays, so her presence at dinner was always in flux.    As to the other folks that bailed...this is where I found myself in a "have your cake and eat it too" situation.  While some of the folks that had cancelled were part of "the ingrates" (see historical posts... I know, there I go again.) The fact that enough prep work was done to ensure that there would be more than enough for everyone (outside of that miracle turkey stretch that I was expected to pull off) and having them cancel last minute without good reason was rather irritating.  As the morning went on, I was faced with repeated "gas attacks" from my mother (face it lady, something evil was going on inside your colon, and I was collateral damage.)  Then, when folks started to arrive, it became evident that a few more folks had simply decided to not show up.  While general excuse-making was done, there really was no good reason to cancel out that late.  While I am indeed happy that I didn't have to deal with a handful of folks, the timing of their decisions was, at best, suspect, and, at worst, downright rude.  I realize it looks like I'm never satisfied, and that I'm now complaining about the fact that the folks I can't stand WEREN'T THERE this year, but dear reader, look closer.   Historically you'll see that I complain about these folks because they take advantage of the services that my mother used to provide, and that I now provide on her behalf.  These are folks that more often than not never lift a finger to help out, and never give a genuine "thank-you" when things are done.  While not seeing them is nice, the fact that they didn't have the common decency to let us know ahead of time that they weren't coming once again lets their "me, me, me" mindset shine through.