The thing about hosting Thanksgiving is that you don't remember details of the event as clearly as the guests do, and the recovery period is longer than you'd think. I'm just going to share some moments that stand out in my post-vacation memory more clearly than others, in no particular order:
1) Olive finding the box that contained the turkey roasting bags and pointing emphatically at the picture of the turkey on it, then doing the sign for I want.
2) Giving Rachel and Seth a tour of Ashraf's house, then descending the back stairs and seeing the pan of foodge Rachel had brought in without my noticing. My first thought was that the Foodge Fairy had been here.
3) LB's terrible...dyspepsia on Friday, which culminated in my being sent out at 7pm to purchase an instrument of dyspepsia relief. My reluctance to drive at night was only heightened by my inability to get out of the garage without scraping the passenger door of the car and clipping off what remained of the side-view mirror.
4) Arriving at the pharmacy section of the grocery store and being ignored by a clerk on the telephone for about five minutes. Then he slammed down the receiver, glared at me and said, "I QUIT. I can't answer another question."
5) LB telephoning me on my drive home to tell me that the dyspepsia had resolved itself.
6) Seeing Changeling on television last night.
I do so love to hate Clint Eastwood movies, and this one does not disappoint. The thrill of describing its badness to LB almost makes up for the 2 hours and 5 minutes of my life lost. In several places it reminded me of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Picard is held captive by the Cardassians (not the Kardashians--that's a much different episode). The interrogator tries to get Picard to say he sees three lights in the room when there are, in fact, four. Not a new story premise when TNG used it, but well-written and well-acted.
If you're entertaining fleeting desires to see Changeling, desist at once and watch that episode of TNG instead. See any episode of TNG instead. In fact, see any Clint Eastwood movie instead.
When you read this it sounds like watching a bad movie on HBO was the most memorable part of the Thanksgiving holiday, but it wasn't--it's just the most recent.
In fact, I'd say my feeling of being on sedation vacation didn't end until early this afternoon, when I got a call from the Judaics teacher at Keshet saying that the school's Siddur ceremony was coming up and did Olive have a Hebrew name? When I told her no, she offered to come up with one based on the possible ways to say Olive Pearl in Hebrew and Olive's personality. I appreciated this and asked her what Siddur was, but her explanation assumed a lot more prior knowledge than I have and I didn't want to admit the depth of my ignorance take up more of her time. So it's off to Google for me.
It makes sense, doesn't it? The holiday isn't really over until you've got homework.












