With the Irish clan and the Germanic horde again descending on our home this Thanksgiving, the week preceding their arrival threatens more action than the following week’s three-day, four-night holiday cruise on the SS Club Guebert.
I’m not complaining because, lucky for me, I adore most of my family, am partial to more than half of the lovely Catherine’s family and even enjoy one or two of the several castoffs from other peoples’ families that end up breaking bread and Waterford at our Thanksgiving feeds.
More planning. This year’s Wednesday-through-Sunday fete, however, requires more, shall we say, family planning than past holidays.
Since we moved from the big, white house’s five bathrooms, four bedrooms, two futons, a sleeper sofa in the second (!) living room and the overflow room that was my office to our newer, smaller, three-bedroom home, only one visiting couple can spend the weekend on our tab and in our sheets.
Who will the lucky, semi-permanent residents be?
I haven’t a clue: The raffle for that honor – with its required $50 per person tickets – will be held shortly after the turkey hits the table.
Other preparations. Before that blessed event, though, other preparations must be completed.
For example, the week prior the invasion I must prepare a hideaway in the backyard outbuilding (which means I need to get electricity and a recliner into it and the raccoons and ladybugs out of it), hide the 15-year-old single malt (the outbuilding?), and remove the yard’s many birdhouses so nephew Machine Gun Matt doesn’t paintball them all into colorful toothpicks.
In between, I must drain the downstairs refrigerator of precious Guinness so it can be restocked with delicious Schlitz for the in-laws, catch some fish – 3,000 or so should do – for the usual bust-a-gut-Friday-after-Thanksgiving fish fry and build the yet-to-be built bar in basement.
