Giving Us the Bird

For the first time in many years, we spent the Thanksgiving holiday away from home.

A Neighborhood Fairy Door

Our friends, Lisa and John (and son Karl), invited us to join them in Ypsilanti. We had been trying to settle on a date to pay a visit, so this seemed like a very good opportunity.

Upon our arrival, we were greeted by Ruffles, their middle-aged pooch, who was disappointed that we didn't remove our footwear. As we witnessed later on, he has a shoe fetish, and will claim your loafer as his own, snapping it up and carrying it off to his "den" under the chair.

The other pet resident is a cat named Ruthie, who spent most of her time hiding from us. But that's okay, we're used to persnickety feline behavior.

After watching lots of football on TV, their neighbor arrived. An earlier conversation in which parsley exchanged hands revealed that she was going to be on her own because she had to stay home to nurse her cat, who had been involved in a vicious fight with another animal of some sort. Then John's mother arrived, and we were ready to roll.

The food, prepared mostly by John, was amazing. It was nice to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I seldom have turkey because my guys don't like it much. But Mr., in spite of his meh attitude toward the bird, had more than one helping. Which gives you an idea of the quality of the cooking.

Unfortunately, my kid wasn't able to make the trip, and that was really the only sad thing for me about the day. As a consequence, Mr. made a point of teasing Karl mercilessly...Karl is a few years younger than Joe, and he was a good sport about putting up with the robust ribbing. Fortunately, he is an avid Ohio State fan, so he and Mr. got on famously.

We didn't want to inconvenience our hosts, so we spent the night at a nearby Red Roof, and met up with Lisa the next morning. The original plan was to head into Ann Arbor to shop. But we never made it out of Ypsilanti. Lisa insisted that we visit a store called The Rocket. We spent a lot of time (and several clams) in that establishment, before we continued with our battle cry of "shop local." No malls for us on Black Friday.

Once we had exhausted the shops in the area, we had lunch at a place called The Crossroads, which is right next to the train tracks. The food was yummy, and we toasted our buns by the fire as we ate. After driving us around her town and pointing out the various areas of note, we went back to the house to pick up our car and head home.

Sometimes when life gets crunchy and you think all the good has been sucked out of it, you get invited to your friends' table to share an amazing meal. And you realize there are still lots of good folks out there. It was a nice reminder on the traditional day to give thanks.

And...we've been invited back next year. So I guess we were okay guests!

P.S. The fairy doors were Über cool!