Me! I'm getting to think it's not worth the hassle. Son/DIL are in Portugal, and daughter and SIL visited his mom in a nursing home, but she did tell us to come over late for roast chicken. Grandkids are scattered.

Sounds great. Ours is less this year as my DD’s beloved dog died yesterday. They are not in any shape to ”put on a happy face”. I sure wouldn’t be either.

Not happening here. My husband had to have a complicated surgery on his arm yesterday. And I cannot stand the thought of eating or even smelling a turkey dinner.

Just another day for us. I'm thankful I don't have to be social. Too many not so happy Novembers in my past going back way more decades than I've been alive.

I hear ya, Lily.

Hobbitmom, I’m sorry to hear about the dog passing. They are family, so very difficult when we lose them.

My mom and dad always made dlicious Thanksgiving dinners. But once in a while they would go away with neighbors, their older kids and my older siblings for an extended weekend to hunt deer. Us younger kids were left with a babysitter. It wasn’t that bad. She made Thanksgiving dinner for us. Later, when I joined the workforce, I often volunteered to work holidays like Thanksgiving and New Years. It wasn’t that big a deal by the and I didn’t want to drive 3 to 5 states away. Usually therewith others hanging around and we made a group dinner later.

I think that when one has been blessed with a lot of family together holidays, they feel lucky and generous toward those who need that family time.

We are having a Thanksgiving curse. Two years ago our Jennaire range malfunctioned and almost set the Turkey on fire. I killed the power and problem temporarily solved while we brought up an ancient table top oven to cook our sides. went through the horrible process of getting a new range( we need dual fuel) and finally got it installed. Well, Thanksgiving two the whole thing failed a day before. The oven fan that cools the electronics gave up the ghost. Got that fixed and today right in the middle of baking everything the power went out. I suspect some fool has hit the power pole that all idiots seem to have it in for. The power is due back by 4. In the mean time everything is half cooked. So the Trukey is on the grill on low and the sides sitting in the hot oven. While we have a generator it will not do ovens. So we have light and the internet and so on we are hopefully going to have baked sides as well from retained heat. Gad. Why me?

patriciae

Because my daughter and I are both working retail right now, and we had company from upstate New York, we have a had Thanksgiving food all week long. Today, I reheated the turkey in some chicken broth, reheated the dressing, remade the gravy, and made some mashed potatoes... there's more...but I'm eating it by myself. My daughter had to work again today. I worked last year, so I was out for this year. Her boyfriend decided today was the day to cut the limb down from the tree??? And since our guest is gone, I'm just eating this crap by myself. I'm thankful for a lot of things, but I try to have an attitude of gratitude all year long. So I am Thanksgivinging by myself. Except we're all here together, so I guess we're not really not doing Thanksgivinging?!

Rhizo, I hope your DH’s arm is healing well and that he is comfortable.

Thanksgiving doesn’t have to be a thing, or a turkey thing. Did you get in touch with your doctor and are you able to eat anything beyond oatmeal? I hope you’re still not losing weight or going hungry.

Goodness, patriciae. Lousy oven luck. I should send you my electric roasting pan. It’s one of those dark blue with white flecks enameled steel roasters. I never made a roast in it, but bought it to use outdoors to bake blueberry muffins in in hot weather. It worked well for that. I hope you finally got your dinner cooked.

wildchild, I’m sorry to hear you’ve had one too many horrible Novembers.

Thank you petalique. But our generator will not support something like an electric roaster. It is the power surge when it comes on. Our generator will do the hydronic heat and the fridge and freezer and the water pump and such. Lites, computers , that sort of thing. We could get a bigger generator but it would use more fuel. It is a balance. One of my friends has a Whole House. Envy. Seriously expensive.

So they told us the power would be back by four barely fifteen minutes after it went out.????? Excuse me. We are a long way from where they dispatch the truck and it never showed up on the ap. So, we have recently had two outages mid day that were obviously planned. Did they just turn our power off?? Enquiring minds. It was back in 1 1/2 hr. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Thanksgiving day. Why not?

patriciae

The electric company shut ours off last month for a few hours. No advanced warning.

Power outages are the worst, especially on Thanksgiving. Here it's the ponds. The generator we have would go up to the big pond because the 16 large koi would die without oxygen.

My Thanksgiving ended well as daughter told us to come over at 5 and they had a lovely chicken dinner with sides, and we both decided no turkeys will ever be killed for us in the future as we're never serving it.

It’s always something, and I was thinking yesterday that, kind of like the Grinch realizes (I am in no way a Grinch, I love all the Thanksgiving trappings) that Thanksgiving is, perhaps, a little bit more. My greatest happiness was having my family around a table, everyone talking to one another, missing those who couldn’t be with us, or who will never be with us again, but how wonderful that they were here in the past, and here in our hearts now.

’tis the season for love, but then every season is the season for love.

I'm sorry for those of you who don't enjoy or weren't able to enjoy Thanksgiving. It seems to be an easy and baggage-free holiday - no politics, no religious conflicts, not enough time off for anyone to go on vacation so people are either home or have enough days off to be able to travel, no year-end unpleasant memories or unhappy emotional nostalgia. Usually just good food and pleasant company.

For those who like the holiday but were unable to enjoy it as they might have wished to, I hope that the next one will turn out more to your liking.

Those are lovely, well expressed sentiments, bpath and Elmer. I hope you enjoyed your dinners and get togethers.

DH and I did a few home things and made pastaa with fresh clams, garlic, olive oil and parsley. This weekend we’ll get together with friends. My family is far flung, but we stay in touch. One sib is traveling, another is recovering from surgery.

In the old days, with my parents, we’d call those who were away and all say hi.

Yes. People can be far flung and/or absent because of alternating families each year for the various holidays. We had video visits with absentees using Apple's FaceTime. Any video meeting software that participants can access in common is fine, I have no preference for any one.