What's Turkey Day to a Vegetarian?

I walk into the kitchen at the house where my mother-in-law lives with her second husband (a white guy my age), her youngest son and his wife, her son who's my age and his girlfriend/common-law wife. In addition to the people who live there, there are also: two other brothers (two didn't show up this year), one with his wife and two grown daughters, the other with his girlfriend and her son, plus his own son and that son's wife and son. Are you following this so far? Then there are a handful of other nieces and nephews and our friend/brother/son Isaac, who's there from Lubbock with two of his daughters. There's no place to sit, so I kind of perch around the edges. I do try to hold the baby--the last baby I held? Was his father, lo! these many years ago. He looks exactly like his dad (this is Clay, from the wedding photos this summer) and will play with me as long as his mother's holding him. But the minute she hands him to me? Ha. It's kind of a toss-up which of us will begin to cry first. He won and got to go back to his mother, sparing us both further trauma.

So it's time to eat, and we all crowd into the kitchen for the blessing, and I see, what? On the stove? Can it be? Vegetables! A whole skillet full of stir-fried vegetables! I can't believe it: this is not a family of vegetarians. This is not, frankly, a family that really eats a lot of vegetables of any kind, as far as I know. But there it is: a whole skillet full of broccoli and snow peas and carrots and mushrooms. Ahhh! Something I can eat! I get a big scoop, and to that I add some of my own beans-and-cheese, and some of the broccoli casserole (now here's a story: years ago, after one of the brothers was divorced from the woman who had alwaysalwaysalways made the rice broccoli casserole, we were all appalled to find ourselves at Thanksgiving without said casserole. Horrors! So, for the Christmas meal, I decided to make things right. I bought tons of fresh broccoli and steamed it beautifully. And lots of brown rice, the kind that takes over an hour to steam. And so, making enough for all these people, I steamed stuff for hours and hours. And make the most beautiful--and very healthy, except for the canned cheese--casserole. And took the huge baking pan of it to my brother-in-law's house to find that three other people had made rice broccoli casserole. Yes, indeed. And they'd made theirs out of white rice and frozen broccoli, just the way everyone was used to, and so, needless to say, I brought home (and threw out, because you know I don't eat food that's been sitting out on a counter for hours and hours--re: why picky eaters with OCD don't get food poisoning) a ton of it and so never tried to cook it again. But this year? People have gotten more adventurous, and one of the sisters-in-law made the casserole with wild rice and jalapenos. Yum! I was just ahead of the curve there) and some of my mother-in-law's to-die-for dressing and gravy, carefully scooping around the giblets.

And find a place to sit at the dining room table, which is never used--everyone crowds into the den, around the television, balancing their Styrofoam plates on their laps and yelling at the Cowboys. And I begin to eat the vegetables, so happy to have something I can eat. But what's this? This is not a mushroom! Aieeeee! It's PORK! He's fried bacon and put it in the vegetables! Jesus. So I carefully pick out all the bacon and eat the rest of the vegetables, liking them much less and knowing that I'll have to drink an ocean full of water to make up for the salt in the bacon juice. And I try to eat the dressing, never mind that I know there's meat stuff in there somewhere--Zacherys believe in eating meat three times a day, and in every dish where you can possibly insert either bits of it or its juice or the leavings from the last time you fried some. It's all meat, all the time.

But I'm actually saved from eating much of anything, as one of the girlfriends has a special son, a child with multiple issues of unknown kinds and who is, in addition, spoiled rotten. So rather than making him sit down and eat like a human being, she lets him walk around, pick food off her plate, shuffle around the room making odd noises and grunting and sneezing and doing things with his nose. Now, this sounds harsh, but my brother-in-law can make the child behave perfectly well when he's left alone with him. When he's with his mother, though? Huh.

So, with the odd noises and sort of chewing lurkingness, well. I'm not the good person I should be, all understanding of differences in the ways people eat. Or, rather, I can understand: I just can't eat around them. So I gave up, threw everything in the trash, and went in the den to visit. Except one of the babies smelled funny and then started walking around, trying to stick her hands down the back of her diaper (this was a very big baby, linebacker-sized, who had previously been carrying a slab of cake in one hand and a chocolate peanut cluster in the other. Or at least what I hoped was a chocolate peanut cluster. . . .)

That's when I left. What with the snow (yes, it snowed all day yesterday. No, I do not want to talk about it) and the cold and the whole holiday-memory-sadness thing, I came home and got busy. This is what I did:

These were some Birkenstocks I got last year during the Shoe-Buying Phase I went through after my mother died (she bought tons of shoes; it took me a while to figure out why I was suddenly doing the same thing). I liked the purple flowers on the toes, and they're VERY warm, but they're pretty boring. Yesterday, in the shower, I realized--and I have no idea why I was thinking about these shoes, as I had completely forgotten I had them--that they are FELT. So of course you know what happened next:

That was fun! Then, also yesterday, I ripped out the lace you see on this lovely velvet duster given to me by Robin, of Magnolia Pearl, when we visited her studio this summer. I love the fabric, I love the color. But lace? Never mind that it's hand dyed and very lovely. It's lace. I am not a lace woman. Lace just looks silly on me. I feel about lace the way I feel about bows: cute up until you're about 12, and then you should ditch them.Sorry for the bad photo--the fabric is too close to the color of the door, and the light isn't that great in the Voodoo Lounge. And oh, face it: I was too lazy to set it up somewhere else.

Anyway, so that's the next thing I'm giving away: the lace. I'm pretty sure Robin dyed it herself, and there're over 7 yards of it. I'll post photos here in a little bit--I'm having some SD slot issues and need to go figure out what's going on.