The number of people I spend Thanksgiving Day with seems to swing kind of wildly by the year. It's been a while since the group I was with was
huge, but last year we went to Faith's in Palm Springs and had a group of five—the most I had been with on Thanksgiving
since 2018, when it had also been a group of five, our second time going down to Gina and Beth's in Olympia for Thanksgiving dinner. Only since 2017, our
first time going to Gina and Beth's for Thanksgiving dinner, has the group been larger: that year there had been nine. That was the largest Thanksgiving Dinner group I'd been with since going to Spokane in 2003.
This is a holiday for which even the city Shobhit and I are in quite randomly varies depending on the year—although being home in Seattle for Thanksgiving, actually hosting a dinner of homemade Indian food ourselves, has the most years: all five years in a row between 2005 and 2009 (during which this seemed to have become our tradition for this holiday); 2016; 2019; 2020; now 2022. Of course, Palm Springs—or specifically, Desert Hot Springs, where Faith lives—was giving Seattle a run for its money for a while, as we went out there either on Thanksgiving Day or during Thanksgiving weekend all four years between 2012 and 2015, then again last year in 2021.
This year was one of the smallest dinner gatherings we've ever had, with all of three people—Danielle being our only guest, after all was said and done. The only times it has ever been even less than that, with only two, just me and one other person, were in 2002 (with Barbara, a year when I had no money whatsoever for traves); 2010 (with Shobhit, in New York City); 2011 (with Shobhit, in Los Angeles, before it occurred to us to go out to Faith's); and 2020 (with Shobhit, during continued pandemic stay-home orders; Sachin did make an appearance on Skype).
For a while we thought we would have dinner for six yesterday, when we still thought Sachin woud be coming, and he'd be bringing his friend Amit, and Shobhit had also invited that other young man we met at Sachin's party on Wednesday, named Abhishek. Danielle, whose girls had dinner with their dad, took us up on our invitation, and actually got to our place right at around 4:00, when we told her dinner would be. She would have been about half an hour earlier, but she had to turn around a ways into her drive initially because she left her phone at home and had to go get it.
It was about 4:45 when Shobhit texted Sachin to ask whether he was coming. Sachin responded that he was "partied out" and would not be coming. That took his friend Amit out of the picture too. And although Shobhit had invited Abhishek independently, he followed up with him over text too, and Abhishek later responded that he was somewhere else but could come by later. Shobhit replied to him with
It's okay, we already ate anyway, which I think Abhishel correctly took to be code for don't bother coming.
Amit and Abhishek, I didn't really care that much about. But Sachin bailing, and not even letting us know he was bailing, until Shobhit actually texted him, legitimately annoyed me. We totally expected him, and probably his friend, to be coming; Shobhit literally added another dish to the menu when he thought we'd have as many as six people for dinner. Instead, we had three. And tons of food. Not that that's really any different than it ever would be, to be fair.
In that stretch of years having Thanksgiving Dinner in Seattle between 2005 and 2009, both Sachin and Barbara had always joined us. Sachin joined again in 2016 and 2019, and with the exception of 2020, had always come for Thanksgiving whenever we were in town for it. I think the key difference now is his involvement with Meetup groups, making him much more social otherwise than he used to be, and those friends and acquaintances made up a majority of the guests he had for his party on Wednesday. He was probably hungover yesterday. He did suggest coming by sometime this weekend for leftovers, which would be fine. It just doesn't count as Thanksgiving.
I'm not saying Sachin had any moral obligation to come for Thanksgiving, mind you. Only that if he wasn't going to come, he should have told us so beforehand, especially since he had earlier clearly indicated that he would be. That kind of behavior is a bit inconsiderate and flaky.
All that said, I still had a thoroughly wonderful day yesterday regardless, with just Shobhit and Danielle. I don't get to see Danielle often enough, and it was great to get to spend some quality time with her. She was super happy with the menu, as was I; her favorite of the three main dishes Shobhit made was a yogurt based dish called
kadhi—in which Shobhit mixed dried onions, and I liked better mixed with
rice. My favorite dish was the
paneer stir fry, because of course I love paneer. The third dish was
seasoned potatoes with sauteed vegetables, also good. Then of course, there were the aloo (potato) parathas, which Shobhit made
seventeen of because we thought there would be six of us; Shobhit came up with a new plan of efficiency on those, cutting their prep time in half by
running two frying pans at once.
Oh! I forgot, there were actually four dishes: the fourth was taro root, which Shobhit makes into something very similar to mashed potatoes. There was far less of that though, and I only had a little of it; there was
also salted-and-peppered cucumbers, and a few papadams, sort of like tortilla crackers, Shobhit deep fried. We also had cucumber mint water, and wine.
Danielle will be back in town again today, and we plan to go to the Lighting of the Tree Ceremony together—a specific event I haven't been able to attend since 2019. (I think they did have it last year, but we were in Palm Springs.) I figure we'll all get together for dinner again, to burn through some of the leftovers. Although we did send Danielle home with a whole bunch of it last night.
She did stay quite a while, which was nice. She had gotten here at about 4:00, and I'd say it was close to 9:00 when she left. It was long enough for us to do a lot more than just eat—and this was after Shobhit and I had already taken a roughly one-hour, three-mile (or so) walk around Capitol Hill, from home all the way up 15th Avenue to Louisa Boren Lookout (with a
great view of Mt. Baker), then across the street to Lakeview Cemetery to see
Bruce and Brandon Lee's graves which I don't think Shobhit had ever checked out before; then through Volunteer Park to Broadway and then to QFC which was open and we were able to find the frozen peas Shobhit needed for the rice. Once we finally got back home again, there was just enough time to get to work on the parathas, which we were still cooking when Danielle arrived, complaining that we didn't have music playing. Soon enough I put on my Thanksgiving playlist.
Anyway,
after dinner, Danielle said she wanted to smoke a joint, so we all got into Shobhit's car and drove down to Uncle Ike's on 23rd and Union. She got a little tin box of three joints for roughly $18. We stood with her on the sidewalk outside our building on 15th Avenue, Shobhit lit her joint for her, and she only took a few drags before we went back inside.
Danielle said she wanted to watch a movie. I have a working list of "Chrsitmas movies" to watch this year, and this year I had
The Nightmare Before Christmas on it; I suggested that, and she was all about it—even though she spent easily more than half the time just
looking at her phone. It seems she and Ivan very much have that in common. (Shobhit would eagerly point out that I did the same thing, except I have seen this movie countless times—although it had been several years—and I was generally looking up information about the movie itself. I have excuses!) We asked Danielle to bring dessert and she brought a Safeway pumpkin pie, with an extra can of whipped cream. We had that while we watched the movie.
Danielle was prepared to stay the night if need be, but then she decided against having any more alcohol, and was pretty well sobered up by the time the movie was over. Rylee apparently was ready for Danielle to pick her up and drive her home, so Danielle left shortly after the movie ended. Otherwise, it might actually have been more convenient for Danielle just to stay the night, but, whatever. She can spend more time driving Natasha the Van, which she had managed to park on the street right in front of our building. I still walked her out, and we hugged before she drove away.
I came inside, and Shobhit and I watched this week's episode of
Fleischman Is in Trouble on Hulu, then the first one and a half episodes of
1899 on Netflix. We put a bunch of dishes in the dishwasher, and I hand washed all the other stuff, pots and pans and wine glasses etc, that needed washing. Then off to bed.
Danielle asked me yesterday to engage with Rylee today, when she plans to kind of insist she join us. "Talk to her, please," she said. I'm not the most natural conversationalist with teenagers. We'll see how it goes. They're going to come park in our garage before heading downtown. I think I might make hot chocolates to go for us all.
In the meantime, with the four hours I now have left between now and then, I'm going to get started on setting up my Christmas Tree and decorations for the year!
[posted 11:24 am]
