Happy Thanksgiving!!!

As many of you are stuck spending time with family you'd rather not spend time with, I am enjoying my Thanksgiving immensely. And it's not because I get along so much with my family. We are part of a tradition among friends we call "anti-family Thanksgiving". It's exactly what the name implies - a Thanksgiving with no family.

It started about 6 years ago. Medicine Man has a friend out of state. (I call her Pretty Woman.) She was complaining about having to spend the holiday with family she did not want to spend time with. He told her to ditch the family and come visit here. So she did. She and her family told their families to stuff it, they piled the four of them into the minivan, and drove 1000 miles to spend Turkey Day here in the great white north. Others in our circle of friends had to work various parts of Thanksgiving and couldn't travel for the holiday weekend, and thus began anti-family Thanksgiving. Since that one, the rest of us who live here get together every year. We keep trying to have Pretty Woman and family join us again, but it's a long trip for them, so they haven't made the trip again.

For anti family Thanksgiving, it is comprised of my family of three, Frodo's "sister" and her parents, and Aunt Jen. This year, we've added Medicine Man's sister (she's a friend of mine and Aunt Jen's, and she's cool, so she doesn't count as being banned as family) and her two teenage daughters who are very neat gals. We ate Wednesday this year since every single one of us was off work on Wednesday. I provided reasonably clean house space since my home is the only one that would fit that many people. Aunt Jen provided the cooking. She made her WONDERFUL grilled turkey. Yum yum yum! We all stuffed ourselves silly with food and drink yesterday. It was a wonderful day. I strongly recommend anti-family holidays. There is a lot less stress involved.

I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving, with family or without family.