There’s really only one sure-fire way to ruin a Thanksgiving, and that is the stomach flu. You can get around bad weather, family arguments, and the zombie apocalypse, but there is no way to enjoy all of the delicious foods of Thanksgiving when someone has the stomach flu. And let’s face it, Thanksgiving is all about the food. Oh, I know, I know, it’s not very polite to come right out and say it. I should really say that Thanksgiving is all about being grateful for what we have and being with our loved ones. However, we really should be doing that every day. In fact, it would be a good and healthy thing for us to do on a daily basis. What would not be a good and healthy thing to do on a daily basis is to stuff our faces so full of foods, many of which are comprised of fifty percent butter, that we literally cannot move without detonating. There is only one day a year that we can reasonably do this, and that day is Thanksgiving.
So imagine our horror when our five year old daughter starting throwing up at 4:30 am, a short ten hours before the eating was to begin. And not only did she wake herself and her parents up with her sickness, but she awakened the dragon that is her two year old brother. And once he was up at 4:30, he was not planning on going back to sleep. I was the only one who got to go back to sleep, until my wife came to trade with me a few hours later. My turn to deal with life.
Unfortunately my wife could not go back to sleep, so she was exhausted, I was tired, the kids were sick and naughty, and things were not going well. And the puking continued any time we tried to introduce anything into my daughter’s system, like a sip of water. By noon-ish we realized that we had to pull the trigger. There was no way we could go to my sister-in-law’s house for Thanksgiving dinner with a violently ill child. I told my wife to just take the boy and go up themselves, but she didn’t want to do that, so there we sat, four miserable people feeling very, very ungrateful.
Well, I was clearly not going to let that stand. I had still had 30 minutes before the stores closed, and we needed gatorade and ginger ale anyway, so I headed out to buy emergency Thanksgiving supplies. Hey look, rolls were on super sale, 50% off! Ooooh, turkeys were on sale too. Hey, it turns out that all the stuff you need for Thanksgiving goes on sale at noon on Thanksgiving. Because what idiot would be out buying a turkey at 1 pm on Thanksgiving? THIS idiot, that’s who!
I made mashed potatoes, and green been casserole, and stuffing, and gravy, and a turkey, and a pumpkin pie, and it was all on the table by 5:30. And it was good. Now, I may have slightly miscalculated the amount of food I would need, since one of us was sick, and one of us was two and refused to eat anything except pie. Is a 15 pound turkey too much for 2 people? Apparently, it is. So my wife and I had a Thanksgiving dinner for 10, for 2. It wasn’t much, but it was way too much, and it was the least I could do to try and salvage some of the day. After all, we can always hang out with friends and family and be grateful tomorrow, but there wasn’t going to be any turkey.
super job!! poor ruby 🙁