Rub a Dub Dub. Thanks for the Grub. Yay, God!

Amazing Grace: Remembering Grandpa Pierick

One Thanksgiving, now in the substantial past, I unwittingly made the faux pas of asking my former husband's grandfather to say grace on Thanksgiving. To my mother-in-law's horror, he offered the succinct sentiments of my headline. Grandpa Pierick's blessing is now a family favorite and kicked off the festivities at Chez Bogie's East on Thanksgiving Day 2009.

I'd been looking forward to Thanksgiving all fall. NIOSH was a graveyard on Monday, so I worked from home on Wednesday morning. Dr. Friedan, our supreme commander at CDC, sent an email out Wednesday a.m. telling us that we could leave an hour early to get a headstart on our holiday travel--which took me into the kitchen an hour early. In accordance with the wishes of my offspring, I began initiating my new kitchen with the rituals of making Mom's crescent rolls and pastry from scratch. I already had bread drying for dressing. Missed having Mary Buhrmann around to keep me company while I did dinner prep.

Can't say how wonderful it was to have the boys here. They got in late Wednesday night. After some angst as a result of holiday delays south of Chicago and unplanned detours in Indianapolis, the boys finally arrived somewhere around 11-11:30pm. Philip was annoyed by the fact that there seemed to be multiple roads named Wooster but got over that quickly when he realized that Grandma Van Bogaert's pot roast was waiting for him. As is our holiday tradition, we camped out in front of the television and one by one drifted off to bed.

I was positive that I moved thyme and sage from Wisconsin, but when I awoke Thanksgiving morning I could find none in the new spice drawer. I only had to make two trips to Kroger's that morning. The second was for gravy. I counted on a gravy bag in the turkey cavity like I do every year with the Pick 'n Save turkeys, but alas--don't count your gravy packets before you unload the turkey. In the end, big bird did not enter the oven until 9am. That's late for me. But I figured the boys would sleep in and we had nothing else to do that day.

We feasted around 2:30pm on turkey, dressing, "hundreds of pounds" of mashed potatoes (Thomas' request), Kroger cranberry relish, homemade rolls, green beans and asparagus.

Like Christmas, after hours of work we sat in our turkey induced stupor after 25 minutes of dedicated eating. This year, I enjoyed having a dishwasher to simplify the task of cleaning up. In our collective food coma, we adjourned to the studio to begin a marathon of watching "Band of Brothers." There is nothing like the warmth of a war drama to make you thankful. An hour of battle made us think we were hungry and so we trudged out the French apple pie with Aglamesis' cinnamon ice cream and settled in to finish the day in front of the tube playing cribbage and occasionally coasting to the counter for another piece of pie.

Yesterday we headed out late morning for a tour of the town. I showed the boys how to not to get lost leaving town and cruised by Newport on the Levee, the football and baseball stadiums, and gazed at the river valley from Mt. Adams. It was the coldest day in Cincy since my arrival, a brisk 39 degrees. The boys and I lunched at Skyline Chili to see if Cincy chili is all it is cracked up to be. If you're not familiar, Cincinnatians eat their chili over spagetti with boatloads of cheddar cheese shredded on top. Philip and I concluded that there is nutmeg in the sauce. Thomas ordered the chili fries which we all thought topped the chili itself. At any rate, with a bit more artery blockage than when we arrived, we headed to Kroger to restore supplies for the Friday night spaghetti feed with the neighbors.

From the halls of Montezuma to shores of Tripoly

My second dinner guests included the Thomas' from next door and the Tanen's (my realtor and his family). This was a "meet the boys" night and inauguration of the second leaf of my "new" (Snooty Fox $126 special) dining room table. It was also the first night my new house started to get that magical holiday feel that I loved in the McFarland house. It's mostly about candlelight and good food and music. Mom Van Bogaert's spaghetti sauce was a hit as was the hot crab dip in a bread bowl. Tanen's brought salad and Thomas' brought dessert. We introduced the group to Leinenkugel's Honeyweiss and a little Wolersheim wine--and Tripoly, the Van Bogaert holiday gaming tradition.

It's amazing how uninhibited bidding gets when you're doing it with someone else's money. I have an old candy tin of change that I've been adding to for years. It is beastly heavy but a great door stop and much more fun than poker chips. The Van Bogaert's will be amused to know that we had a dealer's hand go for 21 cents Friday night. That's a record by my recollection. What's wonderful about Tripoly is that it is very easy to learn and doesn't take much skill which means EVERYONE can play. Also, you learn a lot about your fellow players. For instance: Jarrod cheats, I always make the maximum 3 cent bet and, 3-year old Chloe doesn't care about cards but loves the money, and we learned that Ben Tanen is a Tripoly monster. About 10:00 we closed the game down with a "Put and Take" round where we divied up the money still on the board and the Philip dealt to see who would clean up. Victoria Tanen was the big winner for low/high cards and I think Ben took the poker hand. Jarrod got nothing— a karmic payback for creatively cherry picking both his hands the last time he had the deal. Regardless, he left in a laughing jag. It was a good group of people who took to each other and I was pleased that the boys would now know some of my first friends in Ohio and who to talk to if they ever couldn't reach me.

Saturday: frost this morning but the sun is shining. It's tree day. Wasn't in the spirit, but I didn't want to miss decorating with the boys. Wanting to save the boys from more road time, I asked them if they would be OK with buying a tree rather than cutting it down. No one was really enthusiastic about not cutting one, but everyone one said they didn't mind. That was fine for me until we actually got to Lowe's and started sorting through trees.

It just didn't seem right. They trimmed the bottom and webbed it which meant no trimming at the bottom for Philip and no yelling "timber" for Thomas. It felt very ordinary until we got to lashing it to the car which is always challenging.

Once it was finally secured, Philip brought to our attention that we'd roped closed 3 of the 5 car doors. He had to crawl in to drive. Thomas and I sat behind the holly tree in the passenger seat.

Wonderful! We finally had a good story to go with the vanilla tree purchase. We picked up two potted holly trees that will grace the front door and wind up in my yard eventually. Once home, I came up with the bright idea to reenact the tree hunt and simulate a cutting down ceremony. It was 70 degrees in my backyard and Philip sported my serated bread knife to "cut" down the tree. I videotaped it and now we have two good stories to go with the event.

In the end, we didn't do much that was extraordinary. We took a brief tour of town and tried the famous Skyline chili but otherwise we ate, played cribbage, and watched TV. Philip got Thomas to participate in his yoga exercise program and we plotted their way out of town, so no getting lost on the way back to Wisconsin.

I got up early Sunday to do some decorating and finish the tree before the boys left. They woke up to a holiday breakfast table and candlelight omelettes as well as their traditional tree ornament gifts. I led them out of town and got a good case of the blues after I waved goodbye--but I am so grateful that they were here and are now part of establishing new traditions here. I'm also grateful for a challenging professional opportunity, a lovely new home, the boys' success in school, and the stable health of those I love. I don't know where things are going, but life is good and much more....