Black Friday

Is there anything better than a turkey & cranberry sauce sandwich on the day after Thanksgiving? If there is, please tell me about it, for I have reached Nirvana with my lunch.

Since it was just Miss Peanut, the WCM, and me for Thanksgiving dinner, I bought only a turkey breast to roast - none of us care for the dark meat - and roasted the bejeezus out of it. It was a little dry, but since that's how we all like it (no joke! It makes better sandwiches that way!), it was perfect. Green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, peas, stuffing/dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and cornbread finished off the meal. The cornbread was Miss Peanut's idea. She said that since there was lots of corn at the first Thanksgiving, we should have cornbread. I gave her two boxes of Jiffy mix, two eggs, and 2/3 cup of milk and let her go to town. She made excellent cornbread. The WCM likes to toast it lightly and smear it with peanut butter for breakfast. It's pretty good that way, I have to admit.

We loaded up our plates, carried them into the dining room, and began to chow down. The WCM remarked about 5 minutes into our meal that "We forgot Grace." Miss Peanut, channeling Gracie Allen, asked quite innocently "Who's Grace?" After a pause, I muttered "We are such heathens." and the WCM and I busted up with laughter. Because we are heathens, really. What other family would forget to Give Thanks on Thanksgiving? Oh well.

Later that night, I drove Miss Peanut and me down to my Mom's house, anticipating a banner day of shopping at the local mall. They were opening up at 3 am, yes you read that right, 3 am to stimulate the shoppers on Black Friday. We were plenty stimulated, thank you very much. So fucking stimulated that we could hardly move for the crush of humanity on all sides. I don't think they anticipated the enormous crowds that would flock to the mall that early in the morning. At times, I felt like the proverbial salmon, trying to fight my way upstream to spawn shop. I take my shopping that seriously.

Turns out, I found some relatives when I was shopping - two of my sisters-in-law, my adult nieces, and a niece by marriage and her mother. They saved me quite a bit of waiting in line by yanking me out of my place and up into theirs. For that, I will be forever grateful - who would have thought we'd wait 30 minutes in the Baby Gap? Damn! I waited in line at Gymboree for 30 minutes, too, but the discount was 30%, which for what I spent averaged out to $30. To save a dollar a minute, I'll gladly wait. It got to be all a bit too much for me though, as the urge to punch out the assholes who would stop to chat in the middle of the walkway and block up pedestrian traffic was becoming overwhelming. I had to leave.

I shopped some more at other stores closer to home until lunchtime, when I returned home and reached the aforementioned state of Nirvana with an extremely delicious turkey and cranberry sauce sandwich on whole wheat bread. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.