What do you do when you are in the middle of a public health pandemic and you won’t be able to see your family and friends for the holidays? Well, in my house, we decided that the only way to get through the holidays during this really awkward year was to laugh.
And yesterday, we did just that! My fun turkey party hats were a big hit (not with my husband, but he’s a crank, so I knew he wouldn’t wear one), unfortunately I only had four hats for 6 people because one set didn’t arrive on time. My sister-in-law, her two kids and I wore our hats proudly at the table! Sorry to my brother-in-law for not having a hat for him, hopefully he’ll come back for dinner next year.
And I got my dining room table back!! My husband packed up his home office for the day. He kept saying that I would have to set the table for Thanksgiving around his desktop computer and honestly, I wouldn’t put it past him…but he picked everything up (and stuck it in my office so now I have to walk around all his crap), and I got my table back:
Oh, how I have missed you dining room table!! I haven’t seen all this space since mid-March… And how adorable are those turkey hats??
My sister-in-law told me she’d bring a game for us to play after dinner. So after Thanksgiving dinner and before dessert, the six of us sat around my beautiful clutter-free table, some of us wearing turkey party hats, and played “Cards Against Humanity”…with my 13- and 14-year-old nephews. Now if you have never played this card game, I would describe it as a blend of the drinking card game “Asshole” and old school “Mad Libs” — you know the one where you take a random selection of words and use those words to fill in a story with blanks. “Cards Against Humanity” is like that and the words on the cards can be crass and downright filthy. My nephews were pretty embarrassed by some of the cards, there were a few times they were laughing so hard that they couldn’t even read the cards out loud.
But the laughter helped — we laughed for hours playing a silly, dirty game while wearing stuffed turkeys on our heads. Sure we missed our family and friends that couldn’t be with us on the holiday. But we made the best of it and actually had a damn good time. Laughter always helps.
My sister-in-law told her kids to leave the turkey hats at my house so we could use them again next year. And my 13-year-old nephew walked out my front door with his turkey hat sitting on his head. No one stopped him. I wonder if he wore it the whole way home — he’s pretty tall, his dad might not have been able to see out of the back window. Hopefully he’ll remember to bring it back next year…
And my pie turned out just fine.
Notes from a Self Quarantine 