Friendsgiving

I'm very excited about my good friend & neighbor "T" co-hosting with me an event we've dubbed Friendsgiving. It all started one drunken evening when my little boarder, K, [who's a sweet doll that can put away A LOT of freaking beer] observed that we all have much more fun as a group of friends then we ever do at a family gathering. We seem to feel a lot more love for each other through beer goggles for some reason. Anyway, she was saying something about dreading Thanksgiving with her dreary family and the inconvenience of being expected to show up at each of the divorced parent's houses, etc. And then, ding-ding-ding! she suddenly proposed that we have our own friend's Thanksgiving.

I had been thinking I wanted to have my daughter & the kids over to my house for a mini-version of Thanksgiving because I'm craving that warm fuzzy Charlie Brown holiday feeling and we're having Thanksgiving at my sister's house this year & I doubt she and the kids are coming. My daughter gets pulled very unfairly in several directions on holidays between her biological father, his family, and my X husband and his family, and to make it more complicated, there's always a fight with her X over the kids. So Memere [me] is the lowest man on the totem pole, of course. Bitter, party of one!

Anyway, my friend T lives in the apartment next door and our decks are connected, so we all sit around on our decks from Spring through Fall, it's really nice and we've gotten as close as sisters. T, after consulting her husband Y, kind of reluctantly agreed and then I also agreed to Friendsgiving, stupidly not double checking first to see if my daughter had the kids that weekend. Yet another ethanol-related incident, as Horhay loves to say. And no, she doesn't have the kids & can't get them, the Sperm Donor always refuses to trade his weekends, and she's got to work her 2 jobs on Saturday anyway. duh.

We're up to 17 mouths to feed at this point, and this thing is this Saturday. I'm getting anxious since my house is a total mess and I'm running out of time to clean the house, clean out & make room in my fridge, do the grocery shopping at 4 different stores to get the best deals, do A LOT of cooking, find all the bowls & utensils I will need [a giant feat since I have so much crap stored in my little computer room piled high with boxes and bags of stuff I seldom use] on top of trying to spend time with my good friend who is visiting from out of state. Yikes!

Here's what we're having, I'm KK: Spinach artichoke dip & chips [KM], Turkey w/gravy [KK],
Cranberry sauce [KM], Sausage cranberry parmesan stuffing [KK], Candied carrots [KK], Pampered Chef Garlic bread knots [KK], Mashed potatoes [T], Green bean casserole [T]
Sweet potato casserole [TR], 2 apple pies [T], Hot Fudge Pudding Cake [KK]

Since it's just our good friends, I don't know why I'm suddenly nervous. Mike is supposedly making the turkey gravy, IF he shows up. And if he does, I know that's why I'm a little nervous. He doesn't mean to be mean, but he loves to poke fun at me. I never really know how to take it, does he honestly find me stupid? One of my previous BFs, "J", told me after I broke up with him that he was sorry we couldn't work it out and he admired me a lot since I am the smartest woman he's ever met [this coming from a chauvinist was a very great compliment.] I consider myself pretty smart, I have a high IQ, maybe I don't always make the smartest choices but I'm no slouch. Hey, how did this come back around to M anyway! Anyway, I'm a damn fine cook so I'll just have to ignore his snide comments.

So, tonight I'm going to Grand Union to use my $1 off coupon for Half & Half. Then Ocean State for tin foil, an electric carving knife, & a gravy separator [I own both of the latter items, but they along with most of my stuff and my life are piled with thousands of items in boxes in my storage at a storage facility... another very sore spot in my psyche.] Then Big Y for the buy 1 get 2 free sale. Then if Big Y can't beat .48/lb. for generic frozen turkey, I'm going to get one for that price at Price Chopper.

Remind me to stop drinking and promising. sheesh. I'll need a drink or 12 tonight when I finally get home. Oh yeah, better stop at the Packie, too, I'll be needing an appointment with my Doctor Smirnoff...