(no subject)
However you choose to view the history of the day, I hope everybody enjoyed their National Day for Giving Thanks.
iamcompubear and I were up at an hour that should be illegal. We went out in our slippers to load sound equipment into the car, then headed out, still in our slippers to set up for the Thanksgiving Dinner at City Hall. We went to Safeway to collect what they would give us, which did not include pies, but that was ok since we'd been up all night making some. She did most of the work on the pies, simply because she knows what she's doing. What, you think I've ever baked a pie?
Safeway gave us so much bread that it took me an hour to get it out of the car while iamcompubear wrestled with coffee makers and figured out how we were going to use what we had. Of course, much of my time was walking back and forth as we can only get so close to the door. Once that was unloaded, we made the drinks, discovered a need for strong men to help get chairs unstuck from the broken floorboards, and started to organize bakery goods. Then we went to the bargain store to collect the things that the owner's wife will no longer allow him to take home. This was mostly to hand out to needy families.
We came back started cooking some things. Checked on things we had cooked, got extra help, moved the stuck chairs, set up for the people coming, etc. We were told that we were getting turkey, potatoes, stuffing, and carrots to serve people who came in. This didn't seem like much of a selection and I started thinking how many people would only eat turkey and potatoes at that point. Cranberry sauce had been made, a cold vegetable selection had been brought in, and I thought to look through the canned goods for green beans and corn. I actually didn't think it was such a great idea, but it worked. We did not discover much in the way of green beans, but we managed to make corn one of our choices.
Once we opened up, things got easier. I took a break to be among the first to eat, then stood and scooped out mashed potatoes and stuffing for everybody. At this point, the gravy had not arrived, so iamcompubear had made some from the turkey juice (with dry mashed potato mix for thickener because we didn't have flour; it worked really well). Honestly, I wouldn't have manded if somebody had been saving that turkey juice so more of the good stuff could be made. But that's just me. I spent the next several hours serving food while other volunteers ran around making sure everybody who needed them had blankets and coats and food.
Memorable moments:
Apparently there were notices that we were supposed to start at ten. When a guy showed up at ten, we told him it started at ten for anybody who would like to help. He did his best with only one lung. He'd been stabbed the week before by, coincidentally, my coworker's friend's husband. Apparently he was dating the friend and didn't know about the husband, who is now serving a life sentence for his third attempted murder charge. Just the kind of people I want to be around, right? So when he asked many questions that were vaguely answered (what's my age? an unlisted number), about me and finally asked if I wanted his phone number, I said no. I don't generally like to be rude, but I couldn't put that one nicely. He walked by a little while later and gave it to me anyway.
Many of my regulars from work were there. One guy asked me if I could get away from serving food for just one day. Nope.
My team won at tug of war. It may have had something to do with the 5 vs 2, but I choose not to believe that.
Bud mentioned to somebody that we were taking at least one tray of everything home with us, but he was trying to convince us to take it all. I looked over and said "Michelle, Will's coming. We can take it all." Mistake. We did and arainbowcat iamcompufrog and I got to bag it all to put in the freezers.