thanksgiving trimmings

went with my sister to her LTR bf's family Thanksgiving....

- Get a ride from grandpa and grandma. Am glad as I haven't been on this road for at least a dozen years and would have gotten lost with the new construction. It's also raining cats and dogs, hamsters and an occasional muskrat.

- The grandma told me that they are looking forward to my sister's wedding. Though they've been going out for 8 years (high school sweethearts), there hasn't been a wedding planned. The grandma also said that she feels my sister is like her own granddaughter already, and that M (the BF's mother) said she's "The One" even before they had began dating.

- The host got up at 3am to start cooking the turkey.

- A curious hodgepodge of New England WASP and New York Bohemian. The house is on one of the continent's most precious divides - one could sit the Red Sox fans on one side of the table and the Yankees fans on the other. We need mediation just to translate across accents.

- Everyone's buying or building a house on the Cape.

- The 22-year old is on speed or crack (or high on love) and peevishly demands cranberry sauce from a can (must have the correct can impressions to be considered authentic). She's wearing a too short sweater dress and knee high pompom moccasins.

- I'm still not used to the phrase "your mommies." As in "Jenny, where your mommies at?" - "They're watching TV."

- Though there are four sisters (and a few sisters-in-law even), the Thanksgiving dinner has been held in the same sister's household for 27 years. I calculate .. M&H have been hosting their parents and siblings since their mid-twenties. I'm impressed. They have even accumulated specialized tools for the task - turkey plates, pumpkin linens, cranberry silverware.

- Overheard ... "Though I'm a New York liberal but even I believe tenants should be kicked out of their apartments once in awhile."

- The black, cross-eyed, nervously energetic schnoodle dropped a tootsie roll on the carpet. A veritably Proustian analysis ensues ... "you need to clean it up ... it's hard so it didn't leave a mark ... use a wet paper towel ... no, water will smudge it in...."

- After dinner, half the people fall asleep on sofas throughout the house. the 14-year old walks around her iBook in hand, video-conferencing her snoring relatives with her friends.

- Grandma does some toothy Bush-bashing ("we could have paid for ten years of healthcare with that war").

- Watching Grey's Anatomy with a vascular surgeon is very insightful - "Hey, it's that girl from Silence of the Lambs .. 'Come here Precious. Precious, here's a bone, that's a good girl, Precious'." I think the dog in that movie may have been a schnoodle, too.

- Watching the Ali G show with people ranging from 14 to 79 is embarassing. including when Borat shows a beaver shot Polaroid of his wife. "I hope you never did that to me," says grandma's look to grandpa.

- New medical condition discovered ... Munchausen by proxy by proxy. It's when one feigns being healthy in order to make others believe one's caretaker has Munchausen by proxy. Hopefully it will be in the DSM-V or VI.

- At one point, after washing the dishes and putting the food away, all the women get into a circle and start braiding each others' hair. It's obvious to me then that the women - four sisters, two sisters-in-law, daughters and cousins, my sister even - are the focal point of this family. The men are ancilliary, on the periphary, mere satellites circling daintly around the center of power.