Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving to all our American homeys out there. I can't believe it's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I am not furiously washing, peeling, chopping and baking away.

No last minute trips to the grocery store for forgotten items. No figuring and re-figuring how to fit everyone in comfortably. No Macy's parade while I get up early and start dressing the turkey. No stuffing. No alternately worrying there is either not enough or too much food. No Thanksgiving prayer, always funny & sincere, from my Uncle before we eat. No phone calls to family before the sh** hits the fan and I am too busy cooking to speak to anyone. No case of Beaujolais Nouveau. No cacophony of voices passing dishes to and fro around the table. No struggling with the infinite mystery that is making good gravy. No out of town guests (miss you K.K.) No crispy turkey skin. No forgetting the cranberry sauce till halfway through the meal. No dishes to clean. No girl friends, sisters and cousins to help make light of all the work. No smell of apple pie.

It's all a bit weird, I tell ya.

Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday. I loved it in New York when I had very little responsibility; I loved it just as much when I grew up and got to host as many people as I could cram into our house. A labor of love, in the truest sense. Whether my love was for the people I was feeding or the food itself, I'll leave you to figure out. (jk!)

I struggled a bit giving it up, but decided trying to recreate something akin to Thanksgiving here in Dublin this year was an enterprise destined to fall short of the mark. Perhaps our life in the States is still too recent a memory and we'll try it next year. So to distract and placate my delicate sensibilities I bought tickets to see Lucinda Williams, singer- songwriter extraordinaire, for tomorrow night. Woohooo!!!

So - eat up, folks and enjoy. Our hearts and minds will be with you, just, unfortunately, not our stomachs. But we love you just the same, and if we were having Thanksgiving and we went around the table announcing what we were thankful for....you'd be on our list.

p.s. Don't think for one second that I am trying to garner sympathy for missing out on Turkey Day, we are having a blast, as usual, and Dublin is in high-gear for Christmas already. It's really kind of magical. Like the t-shirt says: Life is good.

p.p.s. Okay, maybe just a teeny tiny bit of sympathy...NO LEFTOVERS

-k.