Tag Archives: family

A Brief, Inadvisable Guide to Hosting Thanksgiving

Cooking, Creative non-fiction, Humor, Life and Other Existential Problems, , , , , , ,

You too can be set up for the kind of failure that builds character.

A simple illustrated Thanksgiving graphic with an orange border. The center shows the title "A Brief, Inadvisable Guide to Hosting Thanksgiving" in burgundy text. Below the title is a cartoon-style roasted turkey on a platter with oranges and leafy greens. The byline "by Jackie Pick" appears in the bottom right.

Thanksgiving is, as far as I can tell, a commemorative feast built on the American impulse to confidently do too much and go too far. Also, carbohydrates.

This is the holiday of American Overreach, and if you are hosting, you’ll need to be prepared.

Hosting is not for the faint of heart. Or faint of stomach.

So, if you are like me, a person whose baseline is “Faint of Everything,” here is an extremely helpful and entirely reliable guide to hosting.

1. BEGIN WITH A PLAN.

Start weeks before Thanksgiving (or the morning of, you sexy daredevil) by writing a list with times and tasks. Something like:

  • 7:45 a.m.: Preheat oven
  • 7:46 a.m.: Find salad spinner and measuring cups.
  • 7:49 a.m.: Clean entire house (get family to help).

Heck, write two lists, because all you are doing now is lying to yourself. Your oven will politely opt out, and your family will help by saying “just tell me what you need me to do,” as if tumbleweeds aren’t currently swooshing across the living room.

You must lie to yourself more effectively. Color-code your list. Add exclamation points for motivation. Put on your apron with foolhardy optimism.

Then watch in real time as your plan disintegrates.

Still, this color-coded, exclamation-point-riddled, absurdly unrealistic plan is essential because its collapse will teach you about the limits of narrative control.

Speaking of limits, this is a good time to mention the turkey. In short, you will spend the day being held hostage by a Butterball.

A quick primer on turkeys: The turkey is a large, ungainly bird that in life was known for (1) its ability to freak out in any direction and (2) its ability to treat flying as an opportunity to fail. This is why Americans choose them for feasts: we like an underdog, especially when the opponent is gravity.

The bird should be roughly the size of an ottoman. Experts claim it needs three to five days to thaw, which is a lie. Even in death, turkeys have excellent survival instincts and will, if given a chance, remain frozen in the center until the heat death of the universe.

Which is to say, if you haven’t started defrosting your turkey by Thanksgiving morning, you are omg-someone-check-if-the-grocery-store-is-open-today screwed.

At this point, it is wisest to delegate all turkey-related tasks to someone more responsible than you.

2. MAKE AN IMPOSSIBLE AMOUNT OF FOOD.

The turkey is delegated. Enjoy that moment of liberation, for in accordance with Thanksgiving Law, you must cook enough other dishes to provision a wagon train. Think appetizers, side dishes, side-side dishes, and multiple potato varieties (mashed, sweet, roasted, and whatever the hell happened in that fourth pan).

Make desserts. Plural. Twelve is my usual number. I’m not entirely sure why I do this; no one has ever said, “We just consumed 6,000 calories. You know what we need? Twelve different sweet things.”

Butter is your verb of the day. Butter the turkey. Butter under the skin. Butter the cavity. Butter the pans. Butter the potatoes. Butter the rolls. Butter the twelve desserts. Butter the tumbleweeds. Butter yourself. It’s a holiday.

3. GREET YOUR GUESTS LIKE THIS HAS BEEN GOING WELL.

Your guests are lovely. They will arrive smiling, carrying something delicious and structurally sound. They will ask how they can help. They will pretend not to notice you frantically rearranging furniture. They don’t need to know you’re trying to stack the side table over the living room tumbleweeds.

Even if they don’t like you, trust that they’re at least committed to the bit.

4. EXPECT SEVERAL SOMETHINGS WILL GO WRONG.

Things will be great, then you will burn something, forget something, drop something, and your apron will catch on a drawer pull and take you down like you’re the dramatic midpoint of a Ken Burns documentary. At the same time, at least one dish will appear to be boiling despite containing no liquid whatsoever.

You will sweat gravy.

It is now time to commence the traditional Host’s Panic: Excuse yourself to breathe dramatically in the bathroom. Tell your guests you are checking on the gravy. Your guests may wonder if (and why) you have gravy in the bathroom, or if you merely employed a horrible euphemism.

5. WATCH IT ALL COME TOGETHER ANYWAY.

And then, because this is how stories work, the whole mess settles. People talk and laugh and eat because they are polite and kind and hungry, and also because you put out enough food to feed a European principality.

The whole day is somehow almost insultingly lovely. You have improbably created ridiculous abundance in this luminous act of gathering.

And you’ll look around and think, “Oh. This is nice. I should do this again next year.”

For you, a blessing:

May your turkey behave, your desserts multiply beyond reason, your plans unravel gracefully, your potatoes be fluffy, your baster stay findable, and your gratitude arrive when you need it. May you be surrounded by people who put up with your nonsense, and may someone else do the dishes.

Happy Thanksgiving. And remember: too much is just enough.

Strange Geese, Space Force’s Lost and Found, and Good ol’ Whatshisname

Creative non-fiction, Humor, Month in Review, Parenting, Surviving Summer Funtimes, Under 750, Writing, , , ,

…Or I Could’ve Just Taken the Week Off

A few weeks ago, I picked up my daughter from sports practice at a neighboring town’s park, which is very much like our town’s park, except with different geese. This is a public park, which means the public is allowed in. That is the problem with public parks.

I had to intervene when a pack tween twerps cheered on as one kid had another kid in a headlock. The second boy’s face was red, his eyes were streaming, and he was silent, which, if you know children, is a sure sign that something isn’t fun. Oh, hello, Trouble. There you are.

It was an easy read.

My “Hey!” stopped almost all of them.

One prepubescent Cobra Kai decided to test his standing with the gods and said to me, “Bro, this is none of your business.”

“Bro” is apparently a word that activates me like some sort of verbose sleeper agent. You can imagine how things went for all of them after that.

It was over quickly, but the kid in the headlock had enough time to walk away, which was really the main thing here.

No tween twerps were harmed in this interaction.

Joke’s on me, though (when isn’t it?) because little did I know that August was warming up in the corner, waiting to see if it could take my household two falls out of three.

All of that was once a Facebook post I left up for an hour before deleting, presumably to protect national security or because I pressed the wrong button. I tried to find it later (deleted posts, archived posts, etc.) but couldn’t. Alas, it’s gone, filed somewhere in the Cloud, or the shelf in Space Force’s Lost and Found where they store embarrassing mom anecdotes. I recreated it here, with slightly more effort than the 0.2 seconds I give most Facebook posts.

I had planned a proper post this week as I’ve been trying to post weekly, but then everyone in the house got sick. Like really sick, where after a few days you think you’re okay-ish then you lie down and wake up 5 hours later feeling groggy and not much better, if not a little worse.

Then I got sick. Which was technically covered under “everyone,” but I tend to assume “everyone” means “everyone else.” I usually avoid household contagion, possibly because I move through life in the equivalent of John Travolta’s bubble in that film. Except my bubble is made of grumpiness.

Here’s how I’m doing: for 5 minutes just now, I was trying to remember that actor’s name. Couldn’t retrieve “John Travolta” but pulled up “Vinnie Babarino” like a coin from behind your ear. I had to Google “Who played Vinnie Barbarino?” to complete a joke that, in retrospect, did not warrant the effort.

Everything’s fine.

Now we’re digging out, staggering toward the end of summer with what feels like 100% potential energy, in the physics sense, like we’re all little balls in a slingshot (Google Search: “What is that v-shaped thing made with sticks you pull back and shoot a ball out of?”)

Big Moves are on my to-do list, meaning working on building community and also giving myself ample space and big chunks of time to work on my novel.

I am mildly loath to get back to it all — the hustle and/or the bustle — because “big chunks of time to work on my writing” is an idea the universe finds particularly hilarious.

Also, can one be mildly loath? MAYBE. You know who could probably pull off being “mildly loath?” John Travolta, but only in his role in Pulp Fiction (Google Search: “What was that movie where the dude who played Vinnie Barbarino played a gangster” — which, incidentally, first pulled up Gotti, and that dude was not mildly anything.)

*EXTREME CARRIE BRADSHAW VOICEOVER* And just like that, this August was much like that tween headlock situation: too hot, too loud, the geese are unfamiliar, somebody’s turning red, and the only thing you can do is yell ‘Hey!’ and hope everyone walks away in one piece with a modicum of dignity.

Bro.

Hopefully, a new piece next week.

Anyway, please accept this in lieu of structural integrity this week: