![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Thanksgiving Dinner
May. 10th, 2002 01:41 pmThanksgiving has always enjoyed a somewhat mixed reception in my family. Only three of us were ever big football fans, and two of those are dead. None of us are particularly fond of dressing, or stuffing, or cranberry sauce; generally, we forego everything except the pie. (Lots of pie. We're very fond of the pie. Some call us pieists. Others are too busy eating pie to complete a sentence. And we do like the turkey leftovers, because they are good for making sandwiches with.) When it comes right down to it, the only major difference between Thanksgiving and any other day is that we eat our big meal at lunch instead of dinner, and then we go see a sci-fi movie.
On Wednesday, Stretch decided she was tired of that nonsense and we were having Thanksgiving Dinner goddamnit!
The fact that we're six months away from November in either direction left her undeterred.
I received the following phone call at 1:30:
Stretch: You're coming over for dinner, right?
Romie: Sure, I guess. I mean, I need to do laundry.
Stretch: Well, the turkey's in the oven.
Romie: (long pause) Is that a euphemism?
Stretch: No; there's a really huge turkey in the oven.
Romie: (another long pause) Is Max going to be there?
Stretch: No.
Romie: Scarlett?
Stretch: No.
Romie: So basically, there are just three of us and a fucking gigantic turkey?
Stretch: Also dressing and stuffing and cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes and any number of other things.
Romie: Pie?
Stretch: No.
Romie: Damn. (pause) You're going to be eating turkey for weeks.
Stretch: Yeah, I'm kind of concerned about that. Please bring Valancy.
Romie: Can't. Paper.
Stretch: Patrick?
Romie: Paper.
Stretch: (desperate) I suppose I'll just start inviting random people off the street.
Romie: (inspiring, standing in front of a flag a la Patton) Look, we're going to get through this mess together. Give me five hours.
Stretch: Godspeed.
Immediately, I got back on the phone to call Chad, who I'd been looking for an excuse to phone anyway. Five hours later, I was putting knife to turkey in the company of Uncle Rex, Stretch, Chad, and Ciro, whom I had never actually met before.
(Ciro is the outcast of The Richardson Boys. They all believe that he was banished because of a fight over a girl, but I know that it was really because of the non-standard nature of his name. By that token, it is only a matter of time before I too am cast out, which I think forms an automatic camaraderie between Ciro and me. Also, every time I've driven my car since Wednesday, I've seen Ciro on the highway. Way to be suddenly omnipresent.)
It was a lovely Thanksgiving.
Dee always says that certain friends are "sparkly" -- especially new friends. They're the people you obsess over; you hang out in certain places where you know they'll be, and you troll for excuses to bump into them. It's starry-eyed infatuation on a strictly platonic level; you know that, and yet it doesn't dull the rush every time you read a certain name, or hear a certain song.
Combined with my already detailed stalkerish tendencies, the upshot of this is that I pretty much want to hang out with Chad all the time. I've been trying to curtail myself at least a little bit because I know that he values time spent alone. Of course, me curtailing myself is about the same as anyone else being remarkably immoderate. Patrick explains it best:
"When I get obsessed with a video game, there is a week when I devote all of my spare time to trying to beat it. When you get obsessed with a video game you stop eating and sleeping."
So pretty much what happens is my conversations go "Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad, and then Chad said, and then I wondered what Chad thought, and then we drank some Dr. Pepper."
He's mad sparkly.
[Incidentally, I really enjoyed the "Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad" paragraph of a few seconds ago, because it gave me the excuse to say "Chad" several times.]
This is the only time I've ever really regretted not carting my music competition trophies with me throughout all of my moves, because if I had them here I could rip the faceplate off of one and turn it into a "Chad is cool" trophy with the aid of a Sharpie. Because, see, Chad deserves a trophy, both for being remarkably amazing in his own right, and because I am incredibly happy whenever I'm around him. I'm incredibly happy just thinking about him. And I haven't been incredibly happy in a long time.
Maybe I could make some kind of trophy out of origami.
On Wednesday, Stretch decided she was tired of that nonsense and we were having Thanksgiving Dinner goddamnit!
The fact that we're six months away from November in either direction left her undeterred.
I received the following phone call at 1:30:
Stretch: You're coming over for dinner, right?
Romie: Sure, I guess. I mean, I need to do laundry.
Stretch: Well, the turkey's in the oven.
Romie: (long pause) Is that a euphemism?
Stretch: No; there's a really huge turkey in the oven.
Romie: (another long pause) Is Max going to be there?
Stretch: No.
Romie: Scarlett?
Stretch: No.
Romie: So basically, there are just three of us and a fucking gigantic turkey?
Stretch: Also dressing and stuffing and cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes and any number of other things.
Romie: Pie?
Stretch: No.
Romie: Damn. (pause) You're going to be eating turkey for weeks.
Stretch: Yeah, I'm kind of concerned about that. Please bring Valancy.
Romie: Can't. Paper.
Stretch: Patrick?
Romie: Paper.
Stretch: (desperate) I suppose I'll just start inviting random people off the street.
Romie: (inspiring, standing in front of a flag a la Patton) Look, we're going to get through this mess together. Give me five hours.
Stretch: Godspeed.
Immediately, I got back on the phone to call Chad, who I'd been looking for an excuse to phone anyway. Five hours later, I was putting knife to turkey in the company of Uncle Rex, Stretch, Chad, and Ciro, whom I had never actually met before.
(Ciro is the outcast of The Richardson Boys. They all believe that he was banished because of a fight over a girl, but I know that it was really because of the non-standard nature of his name. By that token, it is only a matter of time before I too am cast out, which I think forms an automatic camaraderie between Ciro and me. Also, every time I've driven my car since Wednesday, I've seen Ciro on the highway. Way to be suddenly omnipresent.)
It was a lovely Thanksgiving.
Dee always says that certain friends are "sparkly" -- especially new friends. They're the people you obsess over; you hang out in certain places where you know they'll be, and you troll for excuses to bump into them. It's starry-eyed infatuation on a strictly platonic level; you know that, and yet it doesn't dull the rush every time you read a certain name, or hear a certain song.
Combined with my already detailed stalkerish tendencies, the upshot of this is that I pretty much want to hang out with Chad all the time. I've been trying to curtail myself at least a little bit because I know that he values time spent alone. Of course, me curtailing myself is about the same as anyone else being remarkably immoderate. Patrick explains it best:
"When I get obsessed with a video game, there is a week when I devote all of my spare time to trying to beat it. When you get obsessed with a video game you stop eating and sleeping."
So pretty much what happens is my conversations go "Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad, and then Chad said, and then I wondered what Chad thought, and then we drank some Dr. Pepper."
He's mad sparkly.
[Incidentally, I really enjoyed the "Chad, Chad, Chad, Chad" paragraph of a few seconds ago, because it gave me the excuse to say "Chad" several times.]
This is the only time I've ever really regretted not carting my music competition trophies with me throughout all of my moves, because if I had them here I could rip the faceplate off of one and turn it into a "Chad is cool" trophy with the aid of a Sharpie. Because, see, Chad deserves a trophy, both for being remarkably amazing in his own right, and because I am incredibly happy whenever I'm around him. I'm incredibly happy just thinking about him. And I haven't been incredibly happy in a long time.
Maybe I could make some kind of trophy out of origami.
