Early start for Thanksgiving, Friday spending, Saturday surprise

All of us got an early start to our Thanksgiving. I was up at 2 am, dressed and ready to take Victoria to the airport. I got her up a few minutes after I was ready, and we left the farm at 2:20. The roads were pretty clear that time of day, so we made exceptionally good time in our drive to the airport. Once we parked and offloaded the suitcases, we went into the terminal to find that there was no one at the counter and all the kiosks were inactive. I waited for a short time with Victoria as other passengers began to gather to begin the check-in process, but I left before the kiosks were turned on. Victoria tells me that happened at 3:30. Her flight was to begin boarding at 5 am so she had plenty of time to complete the process, get through security and get to her gate. Even with a three-hour layover in Houston, she arrived in Honduras before we sat down to dinner.

Once I got back home, I fired up the grill and put a huge turkey (24 pounds) on to smoke. That was about 5 am. I tried to lay down and sleep an hour or so but was not able to relax, so I got up and started getting things ready for the day. Mama was up soon after and we spent the entire morning and well into the afternoon baking, cooking and setting up the living room for Thanksgiving dinner. I worried over the turkey some but concentrated on helping Mama get all her backing done. Ultimately, I should have worried over the turkey more because when I took it off the smoker and began to carve it, it was not quite done. It was put in the oven for some high temperature cooking, and we focused on the appetizers, macaroni salad, and tamales. We were all careful to not eat too much because the mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn, cranberries and other thanksgiving staples were being kept warm for the additional hour we cooked the turkey.

An hour in the oven at 350 degrees was all it took to finish the turkey. It turned out quite well – smokey and very tender. We elected to save the ham I was given by my work for a later meal since it was just us and Trace, Krystal and the boys. Mama’s pumpkin pies and a Sam’s pecan pie made up the finishing touches for the meal. Since there were copious amounts of leftovers, we sent the Thomason’s home with a large portion of the total. Mama and I have since eaten our way through the leftovers we kept but I am not wishing for any more right away. Mama tired new recipes for this Thanksgiving for her pumpkin pies and cranberry sauce. Both turned out to be great recipes. Hopefully we will remember them next year, but that is a longshot.

We did participate Black Friday spending but that was somewhat disappointing overall. Most, if not all, of the items we were looking for were not on sale. We did buy some winter clothing at Sam’s and some insulated coveralls at Academy but most of my attention was focused on getting a printer. While Mama looked at Target and Michael’s, I compared printers at Best Buy finally deciding on a mid-level HP Envy 6455e. It had all the features I needed and the cheapest ink. Once we got all our shopping done and got back home, I tried to set up the printer.

For all the effort I put into that chore over the succeeding three hours I was unsuccessful. I struggled to find and clear a persistent error with the printer. Several online tutorials led me to the path of discovery in troubleshooting the error but did not solve the issue. Finally, I began going screen by screen through the printer tutorials and eventually saw that the sensor for the color ink cartridge was not showing the printer that the cartridge had been installed. That was the holdup, and it was not going to be something I could set right. The printer would need to be returned and exchanged. So, after Mama and I met with Red and Joanne to reapply her nail sets for the coming weekend, we headed back to Best Buy to make the exchange, which was surprisingly easy to accomplish. The next attempt to get the printer working was successful. Praise the Lord!

Saturday morning as Mama was getting the coops opened up, she discovered a huge opossum in one of the nesting boxes. I had to improvise a way to extract the brute from the nesting box and dispatch it without the aid of any lethal means to do so, but I quickly got that figured out. Fortunately, as fatal as opossums are to our flock, they are not overly aggressive, but this fat beast did not play dead, baring his teeth and hissing at me the whole time I struggled with it. The methods I used to get rid of the opossum were probably not lethal, but it will not be too quick to approach the coop again. That makes the second opossum I have had to remove from our coop. The first one will never return. The second one is not a sure bet, but I am confident it will stay away for a long time.

We are enjoying a series of services at church right now with Chuck Harding, a missionary to Congress. Sunday services and last night’s service were a great encouragement to me and Mama. A firm reassurance that all things do really work together for good for those who love the Lord. God is still in control. It is reassuring to hear this message from someone who walks the halls of Congress and has remarkable insight to the inner workings of the Lord in that dark place. His take on the recent stolen election is that we may have been saved from a far worse fate than what we are currently enduring and that there is a clear path forward to take back our government in the next election.

We will see how this plays out, but his message is uplifting and confident in the Lord.