Topsail Island, NC

I always like Thanksgiving
best--
you can eat leftover tart tatin
for breakfast
and drink coffee
and watch the parade
and the dog show
and walk on the beach
and solve puzzles
and quizzes
and ride bikes
and eat
turkey
and stuffing
and potatoes
and turnips
and gravy
sitting shoulder to shoulder
around a long table
with eleven chairs
filled with your family
and have pies
and pudding
for dessert
even though you're full
and go to bed
grateful
for the stars on the beach
and everything else.

Process of Elimination

"Wanna do the Slate history quiz with me?" I asked Treat, knowing his knowledge would boost my usual result on the six-question game.

We both knew the first one, that Japanese-Americans were interred in Manzanar, but I was lost on the second question about the late 19th-century split in the Republican party between the Stalwarts and the Half-breeds. Of course, the first and second Continental Congresses met in Philadelphia, but we weren't sure which of our four choices had been Secretary of State for a record eleven years. 

"Seward was in the Lincoln administration," I said, "could Andrew Johnson have kept him on?"

"Were any of them in the FDR administration?" Treat asked, "That would make sense with the number of years."

"Seward was Lincoln, Weinberger was Reagan, and Rusk was JFK," I said.

"Then it's probably Cordell Hull," Treat guessed, and of course, he was right.

In the end, we did miss one question about a former president of Mexico, but I didn't feel bad, and neither did Treat. "It wasn't really that hard," he shrugged, "except for that Secretary of State question."

"Yeah, but we really used our test-taking strategies, didn't we?" I laughed.

Feast, Not Famine

I checked the box for 16+ pounds when I ordered our locally-raised heritage black turkey for Thanksgiving down here on Topsail Island. Honestly, I briefly considered attaching a note requesting one closer to 18-20, but in the end, I decided to leave it up to the butcher, since I knew 16 pounds would be enough if we got one on the smaller side. And the turkey I picked up today in Wilmington seemed plenty large for our group of eleven. 

"How much does it weigh?" my brother and chief turkey cooker asked as I wrestled it into the fridge. 

"I don't know," I confessed. "Let me look at the receipt."

Um, we have a 24-pound turkey this year. At least there will plenty of leftovers!

❤️ the Beach

On a Monday in November, the beach here on Topsail Island is sparsely populated, and Heidi and I met only a few people as we walked the dog around noon. Most were fishing; they had their surfcasting rigs, cleaning tables, and roller coolers with knobby wheels all set up, but there were a few families and a couple of other walkers, too.

Earlier in the day, Bill and Emily had seen both an eel slipping in and out of its sandy hole as well as what seemed to be an injured loon, and so when I spotted four men on their hands and knees up the beach, I wondered if they were involved with either of those. As we drew nearer, we saw that the four were Latinx guys in workmen's clothing and that we were in front of a hotel that was either undergoing a major renovation or demolition. 

It made sense that they were enjoying the beach on their lunch break, but we were charmed to see that they were also drawing hearts in the sand with messages inside, and one was now on his knees constructing a heart-shaped fortress. 

"Nice!" I said, with a thumbs-up, as we walked by.

"Thank you!" he laughed. 

And when we passed again on our way home, they were gone, but their hearts remained.

Ptooey

"I don't think I know that card game you and Bill were playing," Heidi said as we walked along the beach this morning.

"You've never played Spit before?" I asked with some amazement, because in my mind, every child of a certain age spent hours on hot summer days slapping cards on piles in numerical order as fast as they could. 

"No," she shook her head. "I might have heard of it, though. Do you actually spit?"

I laughed. "There's no spitting," I told her, "except when you get spitting mad!"

Nothing to Do and All Day to Do It

"There's the edge of the front," I pointed as we were driving south on I-95 to our Thanksgiving beach house rental. 

We were south of Richmond, and the driving had been cold and damp, a light drizzly mist under leaden skies. But there ahead of us we could clearly see where the clouds ended and blue skies began. The outside temperature was 57 as we barreled toward the front, but just a few minutes later, huge cumulo nimbus clouds filled the rearview as we continued south under blue skies. It was sunny and 73, and even the traffic congestion was gone.

Vacation mode activated!

Rounding Up Those Pennies

One of the errands I ran today was taking our big jar of coins to a machine that would count and cash them. I have avoided this task until now, mainly because the 12 percent surcharge seems so onerous. But then I figured that, whatever the cost, the time it would take me to sort and roll the coins (mostly pennies, nickels, and dimes) was probably more valuable. 

I was right. The machine did in five minutes what would have taken me several hours, and the charge was about six bucks. At the end of the process, the contraption spat out a ticket for me to take to customer service. My total was 44.13, and it made me laugh to think I would get thirteen cents back after just ridding myself of 5000-some cents.

When the cashier scanned the barcode on my ticket and tapped her screen, the readout on my side showed 44.15, and there was a line item above the total that said +.02 [penny round-up]. She handed me 2 twenties, four singles, a nickel, and a dime, which I tucked into my pocket, sure I had seen our penniless future.