Sort of. . .

It's Saturday morning and I'm sitting in the stairwell waiting for Julia to get up. From here I can intercept her as she beelines for our bedroom door. This will allow Deb a few extra minutes of sleep.

I can hear Allie snoring. It's not snoring, really. It's intense mouth breathing. As bad as that might sound, it's actually kind of sweet as it reminds me of when she was a baby.

Today I hope to get both girls out of the house. On Thursday many families in our neighborhood were pretending they were the Kennedys on Nantucket Sound playing touch football in the warmer than usual November air. Okay, they weren't playing football, but they were at the park on the swings or dribbling soccer balls. As for me and mine; we stayed inside and overfed ourselves like veal.

That's not entirely true either. Boiling a turkey in oil on Thursday meant a portion of our meal prep took us outside. Then there was a walk through the neighborhood in the hopes that some movement might prevent portions of our distended colons from rupturing.

Speaking of turkeys - ours got a little crispy. After brining it and employing the same kind of mechanization one might go through for a shuttle launch I decided to try to see if I could melt our turkey into a solid block of cinderized bird. You can see a movie of the actual frying by clicking the picture of the bird or right here.

As hard as I tried to screw it up, the bird still tasted pretty good. It didn't dry out. The brining process made the skin fairly salty, but otherwise the meat was tasty. As for the other dishes my scalloped corn wasn't a big hit and I don't think introducing baked bananas into the yams went over (although I liked it). But otherwise the food was good. Nothing to pee your pants over, but it was still a good excuse to gather eveyone together.

I really like Thanksgiving. The part where I had to watch my father-in-law put my cash into his wallet after losing it to him at cards was a little hard to take. But that was just a minor hiccup. Plus, I'll eventually win it back.

Julia's up now. We're on the couch looking at each other wondering what one of us is going to do. Now Deb's up. She made Julia some toast. I'm listening to her chew. It's not as endearing as Allie's deep breathing, but it still makes me smile.

I just farted.

Smells like turkey. Sort of. . .