Sunday, November 25, 2012

Thanksgiving—The Aftermath


Turkey Day, as Thanksgiving is sometimes called in homage to the traditional meal, has come and gone for another year. So…what now? Am I the only one suddenly feeling a little disoriented (for lack of a better word)?

It's almost like a let down from a high. Holiday preparations centering around a large meal with the turkey as the centerpiece. All the family members, relatives both local and from out of town, and even friends and their family members. Who is hosting the large group of family and friends…who has a house large enough to accommodate everyone? And all the preparations. Making sure people coming from out of town and even out of state have a place to stay. Delegating everyone's contribution to the meal—someone brings the dessert (how many pumpkin pies will we need), someone else brings the sweet potatoes, someone else another vegetable, and there's the cranberries in some form, and so on.

And then there is all the work the hostess has to do in preparing a meal for that many people even before guests arrive bringing their assigned dishes. There's the turkey which necessitates that the same person also prepare the dressing and gravy since those items are intertwined which says that the same person also prepare the mashed potatoes.

And all that preparation requires a massive kitchen clean up and running a full load in the dishwasher before dinner so everyone can sit down to the table (or tables depending on how many) and gorge themselves. Then kitchen clean up phase two takes place with running two full loads of dishes in the dishwasher following dinner. And at this point, we haven't had dessert yet because everyone is too full to eat anything else. So, we wait a couple of hours then serve dessert (and enjoy phase three of the kitchen clean up).

And the next day (or maybe even later that night) there's the Black Friday shopping madness for those with the strength and determination to actually hit the stores. Personally, I'm not fond of shopping under the best of conditions so for me Christmas shopping is more of a Cyber Monday online type of thing.

Then we say goodbye to out of town relatives who are now hitting the highways or tackling the airports to return home.

And suddenly we're looking around and feeling at a loss because the frantic activity of Thanksgiving is now in the past. And what's worse, with a Thursday holiday which incorporates Friday into the activities followed by a weekend…well, we end up not sure what day of the week it is.  :)

And that brings us to Monday—the day we try to get back on our regular schedule. And along with that, we now need to turn our attention to the next round of holidays. Getting out the decorations, trying to get our holiday card list together…

And the beat goes on. Hope everyone in the U.S. had a great Thanksgiving and everyone else enjoyed a terrific weekend.

6 comments:

Harlie Williams said...

Happy Thanksgiving! For us, it was a day trip to Dallas with my family and then back home. I don't go near a store Thanksgiving weekend. Not my cuppa!

Monday is going to be hard getting a 2nd grader off to school when he's been off for 5 days. Ugh!

Marika

LisaRayns said...

I had a wonderful, stress-free Thanksgiving. Good luck with your recovery!

Samantha Gentry said...

Marika: Only necessity would get me near a store before Monday, certainly not choice! :) Good luck with your 2nd grader. And before you know it, it will be the Christmas/New Year school holiday.

Samantha Gentry said...

Lisa: Those stress-free holidays are sometimes a rare thing and always to be cherished and enjoyed. I'd say recovery was complete and tomorrow morning is back to normal again. :)

Unknown said...

Monday was a rough one and it leaves me wondering if the four day holiday was worth it. Of course it was but today was tough. I made it though. I hope everyone else did too.

Samantha Gentry said...

Susan: I know what you mean. Trying to get back into a normal routine after a 4 day holiday weekend is tough.

Thanks for your comment.