after the requisite gobs of turkeystuffingcranberrysaucemashedpotatoessweetpotatoescorncasserolegreenbeansalad dessertsgaloreincludingagermanchocolatepecanpiethatwassosweetitwasalmosttoosweetforme andyouknowthat’sreallysweet,
it was time for the highlight of the holiday, our traditional Thanksgiving Karaoke.
one year when i was living in LA and never came back for thanksgiving because it’s so close to xmas, for some reason the rest of the family decided to sing some karaoke at thanksgiving. it was a crude affair, with no karaoke machine at all, so they had to sing along with CDs they had around the house. but it was quite a production, with costumes and microphones and everybody stood up on the fireplace base stage to perform.
i was sad that i missed it, but luckily they preserved it on videotape. it was definitely the funniest thing i’ve ever seen, one of the highlights being my brother david’s rendition of “you dropped a bomb on me,” wearing a wig and a shower cap.
priceless.
we did thanksgiving karaoke one year after i moved back, and that, too, is preserved for posterity.
kevin, though, never got to partake in our family’s only actual holiday tradition of any kind, and this was the year.
we bought a karaoke machine for our GIGANTIC HALLOWEEN PARTY, but people were so busy dancing all over the house that karaoke never happened. so there sat our new karaoke machine, complete with a cd package of 576 songs that we’d gotten for an incredible deal on ebay. anything you’d want to sing is on one of those cd’s.
except, actually, for “puff the magic dragon,” one of my favorite songs, but then again it would have been kind of sad to sing it at thanksgiving because of jackie paper leaving puff. if you don’t remember the whole song, here’s a summary of it from wikipedia:
The lyrics tell a bittersweet story of the ageless dragon Puff and his playmate Jackie Paper, a little boy who grows up and loses interest in the imaginary adventures of childhood and leaves Puff alone and depressed. The story of the song takes place “by the sea” in the fantasy land of Honah Lee
the last time i wrote about puff was after we went to hawaii and visited Hanalei, which wasn’t actually the same town as the Honah Lee in the song but it was magical anyway.
but i digress. thanksgiving karaoke.
we spent a lot of time setting up the various cords and things to make it all happen, and then amy dragged out her big speakers that she’d used for her disco band and we were all set. but this year, i think we all ate way too much, because nobody wanted to get up and sing. instead we did karaoke korean-style, meaning we sat in our chairs and passed the microphone around.
it was still a lot of fun, and when we got to barry manilow’s “copacabana” (which, as you may recall, is all about lola, a showgirl who ends up perhaps even more depressed than puff the magic dragon), many of us got up to dance.
and this is where the cha cha part comes in.
kevin and i started dancing together, and then i realized he was doing the cha cha. i knew he had taken couple dance lessons before we went out, plus he had studied dance in various forms at various times. but we have never really dance together much, except at the wedding, which is a little bit of a blur but i’m sure there was no cha cha.
as we danced on thanksgiving, though, he kept doing more and more steps. they were all things i’d learned when i’d taken lessons in college, and i suddenly that he was really good at the cha cha and a great dancer and did an excellent job of leading.
and WHY HAVEN’T WE GONE DANCING BEFORE THIS???
that is my central question.
it’s because we’ve been busy with roofing and fencing and running and biking and fencing and he’s been busy with his band and tomorrow he’s starting something new, some kind of cowboy shooting thing that starts way too early in the morning but at least i don’t have to go with him.
but WE NEED TO GO DANCING. holding out on me.
thanksgiving was fun, and the leftovers were even better last night, but tonight we’re going to eat something besides turkey. i’m having the family over for mexican tortilla soup, and afterwards we’re going to stack the copious dishes in the BRAND NEW DISHWASHER that we bought yesterday, and that makes me very excited because we have not had a working dishwasher since i’ve lived here and there are frequently many many dishes to wash.
and finally…last night randy BEAT ME AT BOGGLE. i kept wanting to call christine to try to pry out of her the secret of being able to write down thousands of boggle words, but maybe she just has a special gift for it and i’ll never achieve that.
but randy did beat me, although i’m sure it was because he was flagrantly cheating his head off, plus i was so tired that i thought i was coming down with a cold.
ok then,
holiday grace.