Gobble gobble.

The two days that I worked after J’s birthday party were all about cleaning this place up and making it livable again. 30 kids can do a lot of damage in three hours. Someone spilled cranberry salad in the playroom, but right on the gate so that it also bounced into the hallway. The playroom is wood floor and the hallway is tiled, so I got to mop all kinds of different things. The night of the party R had the BIGGEST pee accident in the universe and T put baby powder on it to keep the smell to a minimum until the washing machine was free. So of course then there was baby powder all over that floor, the bathrooms had been trashed during the party and then there was the tiring after-party chore of popping all the balloons that haven’t already popped and finding ALL the pieces to those that exploded and throwing them all away. I hate balloons. They’re loud, annoying choking hazards that have no place in my household.

I was going to take the day off on Wednesday because my mother was coming into the city for a good old Snobby Thanksgiving. She planned to arrive around 1, so naturally I was expecting her around 3. When I saw the weather prediction for Wednesday, I told T I would work Wednesday morning rather than go out to town in the downpour. I told her my mother was due in around 4 and made dinner reservations for 5.

At 3 o’clock I changed our res to 6 and while Mom, after leaving over 2 hours later than planned, was sitting in traffic, T got home and I went down to the basement to pack.

At 5 Susie McQ (that’s my mother’s REAL name, despite what she says) arrived with some boxes of mine from the Perez storage unit and I put them in my room, showed Suze the changes that had been made around here since I moved in, introduced her to T’s mom who had dropped by and we ran out of there to escape R and J, who were swatting my mother on the rear end and being otherwise bratty. The baby cried and tried to come with me. I love him.

I had spent the morning browsing coupons and dinner deals in the Great Neck area but didn’t find anything I wanted to take advantage of. Buy one get one hamburgers just didn’t seem like a festive enough pre-Thanksgiving dinner dinner, especially because I don’t eat beef. All my regular haunts are pretty regular so I thought I’d take Mom to a place that I have wanted to try since I got here but didn’t have a big enough occasion to do so.

Simply Fondue.

Fondue is among the top ten best foods ever invented. Nay. Top five.

Our waiter was bored, so he gave us all the extra help and attention we needed to order from the complicated menu and after we chose all our fondues and meats and sauces and salads we were served the best meal I have had in a really long time. And I eat a lot of good food.

We got to dip all our own food in one of the two fondues we had chosen and we had veggies and meats and pasta and shrimp. The waiter showed us how to stuff mushrooms and bread them and dip them. For dessert we had white chocolate amaretto fondue and I’m telling you this to make you jealous (Brianne). Our waiter lit a layer of alcohol on fire and we roasted marshmallows and then stirred in amaretto and dipped fruits and cookies until we ran out. We were offered more but there was no room left in the waist of my pants and it was getting late so we headed out.

To sum up, it was the most fantastic pre-Thanksgiving dinner dinner I have ever had. And everyone should eat at Simply Fondue.

Everyone.

We went on from there in our fancy dinner clothes to visit my Aunt and cousin on Staten Island and drop off Susie’s car. We made a pit stop at the place we were staying in Manhattan to first drop off three pies. Three.

Mom made three pies. For six people.

We were late to my aunt’s house but we hadn’t seen her in a while so we had to gab and then we missed the ferry back to the city. By the time we got on the next ferry we were tired. When we disembarked from the ferry and began looking for the subway we were pooped. As we walked the 8,432 miles (I clocked it) underground to the train we needed my poor feet succumbed to the pain of walking in fancy boots for 8,432 miles and my mood plummeted.

I started to ask if we were there yet.

And then when we finally were, Mom was so tired she second-guessed herself and we let a train pass that would have taken us where we needed to go. So we sat down. And we waited. And I cursed my feet for not being better sports about wearing such pretty boots.

We got our train. We got to uptown Manhattan within blocks of our destination.

I took off my boots and walked in my brand new white socks on the New York City sidewalk. I could feel blisters that had formed and they were on fire and I just wanted to go to bed.

I threw my socks away immediately.

We were staying with a family friend from the Poconos (Poke to the oh to the nose) who now lives in Manhattan and whom we call Mare. It had been a while since we visited with her and we were going to spend Thanksgiving with her and her two grown children. We even had an ambitious plan to get up and go see the Macy’s Parade at the hiney crack of dawn.

Since it was nearly 2 am when we dropped into bed I let Mom out of getting up at 5 am and we slept in a bit.

Until 7. Mom got up and got ready and I missed my alarm and got up after 7. We left before 8 and hurried out to get good spots. We had seen the setting up going on the night before on our pass through the city. The giant balloons were blown up and waiting under nets on side streets and bleachers had been set up along Central Park. My plan was to climb over whomever I had to in order to get on the bleachers.

But the cops wouldn’t let us through. We walked and walked and walked and were told several different things by several different cops about where we should go. We went up a side street and my little mother tried to muscle her way through a crowd to get back up to the park and get a good spot. Instead we got stuck in a crowd with no view at all.

We backtracked and tried again with no better results. We stood back in the middle of the side street, directly in front of a police car. We had a view of the balloons, the tops of the floats, and all the children’s backs in front of us.

I started to make small talk with the nice looking policeman at my side. I smiled and made jokes and he laughed and I tried to convince him to let us climb on top of his car. It didn’t work. We stayed there until we were nearly frozen and then gave up and started home. But on the way we were beckoned by curiosity and driven by determination to walk up a pathway that we had previously been shooed back down. This time when we reached the street where the parade was taking off there were no cops to stop us. The crowd was thin and we walked along the street until we had a front row spot. We were face-to-face with some men dressed as fairies and some performers dancing. We were standing before the start of the parade line and we had the best view of everything.

Best parade I’ve ever been to.

Back at Mare’s house we began the blessed American tradition of stuffing our faces.

It was so fun to just sit and talk and laugh and eat that we decided to do just that all day.

I checked in with T around 7 to tell her I would start home soon. She and the family had gone to E’s aunt’s for Thanksgiving and T was jealous of my dinner because it would include a turkey while hers would be largely Persian food that she eats all the time. She was headed home as well so I stayed until nearly 8 and then said my goodbyes and headed for the subway while slightly under the influence.

Merlot.

I found my subway, entered on the wrong side, went back up to the street, entered on the right side and boarded a train that was already in the station.

I was back in Penn Station with five minutes to get to a Great Neck train that I hadn’t expected to even see. I got home an hour earlier than planned.

Slightly under the influence.

Merlot.

Turkey.

Pie. Pie. Pie.

E and T were home and all the kids in bed. They were so tired they had left the garage door open and the door unlocked and gone to bed. This is not like them.

I texted T to ask if I should close the garage because the merlot had eaten away at my brain cells and made me think that there could possibly be a reason they would leave the house open on purpose. T confirmed that there wasn’t, congratulated me on having a good time with my family and I went downstairs giggling.

I discovered on my bed a pile of clothes and beside my bed the stacks of things my mother had delivered from Pennsylvania and I realized that a small part of me hates my future self. Whenever I am going out and I know full well that I will come back late and want nothing more than to just crawl into bed, I leave junk all over my bed and all over my room and I don’t know where anything is. I stood there for a good five minutes trying to decide whether or not I had to deal with the mess.

In the end, I did, because I couldn’t even get to my bed without doing something.

It was awful.

Have you ever tried to move boxes and make decisions with a turkey dinner, dessert enough for three people and too much merlot all in your belly after walking over 8,000 miles the night and day before and laughing all day?

It’s hard.

Don’t do it.

I stacked everything quite precariously in front of my dresser, posing a problem for my future self in the morning, but I don’t care about her anyway. All I know is right now I am going to crash and it’s going to be wonderful.

Merlot.