Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, my sister Jackie makes Lisa and me our own HUGE pans of chocolate fudge.  She puts walnuts in Lisa’s and none in mine, just the way we like it. I buy the ingredients and she cooks it all up. Lasts months.

 

I bought the ingredients last week and now I’m eagerly waiting for the big day (soon) when she delivers it. I salivate just thinking about it.  She makes the best fudge in existence.

 

THANKSGIVING DAY FOR US WAS THE DAY AFTER

 

Lisa, Doug, Jim and I had Thanksgiving on Friday because Lisa worked a 12-hour shift on Thursday.

 

OMG,what a feast!

 

Lisa baked two big turkeys, thinking we were going to have more guests than ended up coming, so we have fruit salad, turkey, stuffing etc coming out the ears.  I’m loving it!  I plan to get more turkey from her on Monday if not sooner. I’m down to a sandwich full of it left. Having withdrawal symptoms just thinking about running out of it tomorrow sometime during the day…

 

Lisa is an excellent cook. I’m an excellent soda bringer and fruit cutter-upper  — and thumb-slicer, as it turns out

 

I bought Lisa a slicer/dicer gizmo with very sharp blades last Christmas and managed to slice the pad of my right thumb atop one of the blade fields while I was “helping” her in the kitchen. (HA!) Didn’t even feel it. I quickly noticed something was wrong, though, because the plastic along the edge of the slicer/dicer started to turn crimson.

 

So, Lisa put a bandaid on my injured thumb — and eventually another, and then still another — and I was able to continue my job of dicing apples for the fruit salad — and picking the stems off maraschino cherries — without polluting the food. It wasn’t easy.  It’s good that I’m ambidextrous.

 

We laughed our heads off.  Macabre humor.  “There will be a little extra protein in tonight’s meal” (NOT!) 

 

EVENING FIRST AID

 

When I got home that evening, I put a hulking bandaid on it and really sealed it up so it would stay immobile and start to seal and heal.  The cut is at a place on my thumb that gets stretched when I do anything, so it kept opening up and leaking. That’s why I finally decided to apply a massive bandaid. It finally stopped bleeding. (It was never a torrent, just a brand new trickle every time I did anything with it.)

 

We ate dinner at about 3:45.  There wasn’t a missed beat. Everything tasted like heaven, and I brought several plastic cartons of leftovers home. I didn’t bring home enough turkey but we’ll correct that tomorrow or Monday. (Lisa works 12-hour shifts both days this weekend.) She is stopping by on the way home tonight because I bought her two loaves of Safeway farm style bread (since she’s working and out of bread completely). She says that following Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches are her favorite part, and I knew she wouldn’t have time to go get bread, so I got her some and then went to Franz outlet store and bought myself some sourdough bread for the same reason. Turkey sandwiches are the best!

 

FIRST COMMUNAL THANKSGIVING FOR LISA AND HER BROTHER DOUG IN 40 YEARS

 

This was Lisa and her brother Doug’s first Thanksgiving together in forty years, so it was very special.  While Lisa was peeling potatoes at Doug’s (turkey baking and basting and other food prep took place at her place and at Doug’s several apartments down from hers) I cut apart the empty boxes that Doug has emptied since he moved in about three weeks ago. It took three trips to the recycle bin to dispose of the boxes and wrapping papers.  Doing that opened his living room a lot more so he will have an easier time getting around, emptying the remaining boxes, and finding what’s still in the unboxed boxes. He is just several weeks post-surgery (gall bladder) so he has been slowly and carefully doing what he can to empty boxes. Lisa is helping him lift heavy stuff when she’s available.  I’d say he’s about half finished unpacking and he’s looking and acting better every day.

 

The move has done wonders for Doug and for Lisa. She’s glad to have her brother back in her life. Both of their parents are dead so they are all remains of their nuclear family.

 

LITTLE OLD BOX CUTTER ME

 

I figured tearing down emptied boxes for Doug was better than “helping” Lisa (HA!) more in his tiny kitchen. Doing so kept my injured thumb well away from the food prep, too. Always a good thing!  Doug loaned me his buck knife to slit open the sealed edges of the boxes. I’m surprised Lisa didn’t say, “Watch out with that knife, Ace. You seem to have a problem with sharp things.”  But she’s diplomatic and didn’t say anything, so I said it to myself!

 

All in all, we had a good time. I wish someone had captured an image of Jim with Cool Whip covering his mustache and fingers when he had pumpkin pie. That was hysterical! Alas…