As in the last 11 Thanksgivings, I’ll be working at the animal ER. We get fed a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings, a whole giant bird delivered to carve ourselves. Then I take Friday off and stay home in protest of the retail crap, and cook a duck with traditional Thanksgiving trimmings. I like duck way better than turkey and it’s smaller. I’ll see all the family at Christmas.
Yup. And I’m fine with that. Although I’m working from home for a half day, I don’t mind it. It’s much better than being the 5th wheel by joining a friend’s meal.
Ah yes, the Germans do love an “American cafe”. Featuring dishes no American has ever before seen. I had a hamburger in Berlin once… I’m still not over it.
Thus the making of the turkey (chili) at home. It will be more chunky than ground meat, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. I do have actual habanero powder.
Me ---- until I go to work. And at that point I may wish I was still alone. 
(Not really. Tomorrow should be fairly easy. Saturday will be when all hell breaks loose for us. We’re a shipping center and that is when all the online stuff will hit us big.)
I came down with a cold earlier this week and decided to stay at home while my wife and father-in-law headed up to my brother-in-law’s house. They’ll pick me up on Friday as we head to my sister’s for a second Thanksgiving on Saturday. This is the first time I’ve been alone on Thanksgiving in two decades, and it’s not going to be the happiest day for me.
Alone and working. Family stuff Friday and Sunday, working Thursday and Saturday. Probably going to make beef stroganoff Thursday morning before work, y’know just like a traditional Thanksgiving ;).
Not this year, but I have greatly enjoyed them in years past. The very best years were when I volunteered at a local soup kitchen. Cooking for people is one of my favorite things. And seeing these folks who are homeless or just poverty-stricken and food insecure but nevertheless teaching their children to look for the positive and find something to be grateful for? that’ll put your life in perspective real fast!
Plus, turkey dinner.
I highly recommend it.
With just me and my brother around anymore we haven’t seen much point in celebrating Thanksgiving since the rest of our family died off or moved away.
My mother used to serve chicken that way. Usually over pasta, but occasionally over rice. Of course, we all bitched (not my Dad), because we wanted beef!
It occurs to me that being alone on a nominally family holiday isn’t necessarily measured by the presence of other people in the room with you.
I’m pretty sure many of us have sat in a room full of people, as alone as Michael Collins.
That’s what I have basically decided. This will be approximately my 9th straight T-day alone. There we’re 3 or 4 before that where I accepted a pity invite, but it was much worse. Very uncomfortable sitting with someone else family, and simply, most people really aren’t that good of cooks.
My food, my schedule, my couch, my TV alone, for me at least, is so much better than being with people, just to be with people.
I meant that, but even more, the table we’re “supposed” to be at, family and all.
It’s been SOP for me the past few years, as most of the family I’d normally spend Thanksgiving with have either moved out of state or died.
Then there’s my stepmother, who I used to be very close with, but we had a major falling out due to very complicated reasons, and since then she’s been too proud to admit her share of blame. Things started to change last year, when to my surprise, she invited me for Thanksgiving as well as some other holidays – turns out she had invited my recently widowed uncle (from a completely different branch of the family) and felt it was necessary, I guess, to invite me as well. I started to let myself wonder if her overtures were purely for appearance’s sake, or if this was actually a sign of the Cold War between us beginning to thaw.
This morning, I got notification that since Widowed Uncle had made other plans, I was summarily not invited this year. As suspected, her overtures last year were purely for appearance’s sake.
The turkey chili was a success!