ahh.. Thanksgiving morning..8 a.m. and already tired. We had to work last night..all night. you would think for a holiday we might get an early out, wouldn't you? but it was the usual bear creek fiasco. it all began 2 weeks ago when we made some new cookies for an experimental project. it seems the merchandising folks had the idea for a "create your own cookie book". so we made like 6 or 7 or 8 different kinds of cookies ...ALL HAND FROSTED!!! there is pumpkin, chocolate with frosting and sprinkles, peppermint (also with sprinkles) peanut butter (with..you guessed it, sprinkles)..the list is endless, or so it seems when you are frosting them. but a funny thing happened between the planning and the carrying out of the plan. it clearly said in the procedure "DO NOT FLIP COOKIES"...well, someone on our crew said "flip the cookies", so we frosted 1000's of cookies on the bottom. we therefore had 1000's of cookies that sort of rocked around like weebles. merchandising didn't find this to amusing so it was a total do over, at what i hear was a cost of $13,000. (and that isn't counting the labor). i tell you this, in order to explain the rest of this story. mike wanted a really big turkey so he had the butcher at winco find us a 29.8 pounder. i have never cooked one this big, so when i calculated 20 minutes per pound it was 600 minutes!!! isn't that like 10 hours?? so, i figured i would put it in at 2 a.m. when i got home from work. well, all went according to plan..except for trying to put the turkey in my roasting pan was like trying to stuff a pterydactyl into a crockpot. no matter which way i put the thing, it just wasn't going to fit. tim was up and watching me (kind of with the same look he had once when i got the lawnmower stuck inside my windmill). so, i finally just left the legs sticking out the end of the pan and shoved the thing in the oven (i swear the things was hanging on to the oven sides with its big old pterydactyl wings..it was quite the struggle). then i went to bed, but didn't sleep much, worried about the turkey, you know. got up at 6 with a headache, walked into the kitchen all smokey from drippings falling in the oven..opened door and windows (friggin cold outside), then got dressed (with no shower ..eeww), and went to the store to buy a disposable roasting pan, plus a cheese ball and crackers that i forgot when i went grocery shopping. i got back home at 6:30, cleaned the oven bottom and changed pans and now the turkey is all happy and warm again.
other than all this, life is boring. tim has been raking a few leaves a day, which i greatly appreciate. today is cold and foggy so probably none will get raked. emily is still upset over her old boyfriend, even though she appears to be interested in a new one (who lives in florida). she doesn't seem to think anyone around here is nice enough. why she would believe someone in florida that she never met is nice is beyond me. i have a vision of some nasty old (50) guy sitting around playing on xbox live and luring young girls into his lair. maybe it's just that with age ( a lot of age) comes an incredible amount of cynicism. and michael..well, he ran out of vicadins and seemed to be doing fine, much to my amazement. but, just yesterday he hurt his back moving one of the ez shoppers. you know, the shopping wheelchairs that seem to be almost exclusively used by fat people at winco. whenever the batteries die people just leave them in the aisle, and they are really hard to push. anyway, they sent him to the urgent care and he got 20 more vics. will that be all? one can only hope he won't start building it back up again.
now, i suppose i had better get back to the kitchen, still have some rolls to cook, (store bought this year since my bread maker went kablooey), and stuffing (from a box) mashed potatoes (instant) and gravy (canned), corn (frozen)...damn, maybe next year i will just buy a can of spam and shape it like a turkey for all the work i put into this anymore. i also have a small ham to cook and i did the pies yesterday (all sara lee or marie callender).