Thanksgiving Was Great

                               (Top: The Bird)

            (Bottom: Seven out of the eleven side dishes)

Thanksgiving was great.

After my near-endless “Thanksgiving Comes First” talk, wouldn’t it have been a kick in the pants if it turned out to be a miserable day? Well, it didn’t – thank God. As always, it was swell.

Of course, it took a bit of work to make it as wonderful as it was. As usual, I took the week off. I did that in order to clean the house, do some shopping, prep some food, and all of the other stuff that a good wife does.

(MY WIFE will read that and take a nutty. She says she is sick to death of people at work telling her she’s lucky to be married to me. When she tells them that I do all of the cooking, they say, “Huh? What do you do? Just set the table?”

They’re Neanderthals, of course. If the situations were reversed, nobody in MY office would bat an eye. This is because I’m a man. Well, I don’t consider it that big a deal. It’s my side of the family that comes over, I like to cook, and she works more hours a week than me to begin with, so it’s not only a labor of love for me, it makes sense, too.

However, I am a peach.)

                        (Dining Room Table, Before and After)

                       (Our fireplace, old screen/new screen)

Anyway, before the clean-up and the shopping and whatever else, we got my vacation off to a great start by having breakfast.

You may remember me mentioning a place called Donohue’s. It’s a sports bar and restaurant in our hometown of Watertown, Massachusetts. Last time I talked about it, I said that it was a great place to have a weekend breakfast. I also said that I was amazed at how empty the place was. Well, my opinion hasn’t changed, and neither has the population. It’s still a great place to have breakfast, and it was pretty much as empty as the last time we went there.

This disheartens me. It means one of three things:

1) Not enough people are reading me for my opinion to make a difference.

2) People are reading me, but they think I’m a liar.

3) People are reading me, but they’re thick as a brick and would rather spend more money at other places down the road, for less food, than come out to Donohue’s for the amazing Full Irish Breakfast of Sausage, Irish Bacon, Black Pudding, White Pudding, Eggs, Fried Tomatoes, Home Fries, Beans, and Toast, piled to the point of overflowing your plate, all for the amazing price of less than ten dollars.

Or, in my case, FREE.

J. D. Donohue, the owner, came over to talk to us while we were eating. Our waitress had recognized us from our previous visits, and she had informed him that the guy who wrote the excellent blog about his place was here again. We chatted for a while, and I expressed my wish that I could have put more asses into his seats via my writing. After he left, we resumed eating. When it came time for the waitress to give us the check, she informed us that J. D. said it was on the house.

How nice! I wish I had done something to truly deserve it, though, so if you’d like to make Mr. Donohue’s investment in me pay off, stop by for breakfast some Saturday or Sunday. If the Full Irish isn’t everything I’ve said it is, I’ll personally give you a refund.

(If J. D. is reading this, I’m NOT lobbying for another freebie. As a matter of fact, I’ll refuse it, if offered. My journalistic integrity… nah, that’s a crock. I don’t have any journalistic integrity. I’d just be embarrassed, is all, and if I thought I’d be getting comped every time I went there, I’d start ordering less expensive dishes. I like the Full Irish way too much to do that, so I want to pay.)

Now that the commercial is out of the way, I’ll get to why I came here. Here are some more photos I took of Thanksgiving.

                        (Desserts, as prepared by bears)

Actually, my Mom made all the desserts. She made four different pies, plus a concoction that MY WIFE has never understood the point of, but which the rest of us know is integral to the enjoyment of the pumpkin pie - hard sauce. It is butter, confectioner’s sugar, and a few drops of vanilla flavoring, mushed together - basically, a soft uncooked candy. You take a wee bit of it onto your fork along with your mouthful of pumpkin pie. Or, after Thanksgiving is over and the pumpkin pie is gone and everybody has gone home, you eat a spoonful of it by itself every now and again until there’s no more, knowing full well that it’s quite possibly the most unhealthy thing you could place in your mouth this side of arsenic, but not caring, since it brings you enough pleasure to make the two years you’re slicing off of your life worth it, as long as you don’t mind losing the teeth, too.

                 (L to R: MY WIFE [who is in the witness protection
             program and wishes to remain as anonymous as possible];
                 Cousin Scott; Scott’s wife, Andrea; and my Mom)

                 (L to R: My stepfather, Bill MacDonald; Tom Starr;
                       Uncle Rick; Grandma Maybelle)

Maybelle, who is my Mom’s mother, will be 102 on December 1st. I’ve written about her before, on the occasion of her 100th birthday. What with her birthday coming up on Saturday, I’ll be re-printing that piece on Friday. If you didn’t catch it when I put it out here before, it’s worth a read. She’s my hero.


This is the room I put everything into. I have no idea where I'm going to put stuff come next Thanksgiving.

And now, it’s back to work. Thanksgiving is over, and I have to earn enough dough to get through the Christmas season.

(Tomorrow: The story of Pointy The Poinsettia. I can tell you can hardly contain your anticipation.)