The irony has not escaped me that I will most likely achieve goal within a week or so of Thanksgiving.
I love going to my grandma's house at Thanksgiving. I don't see my relatives very often, living hundreds of miles away as I do. This year we'll be missing one of my cousins; she is the second person in the family to move far away. I have not missed a Thanksgiving yet, except for the year I had influenza in eighth grade, and then there was the year that Oscar gave everybody the norovirus.
Yes, they're all still talking about that one.
Ever since I lost my mom five years ago to adenocarcinoma (a type of lung cancer that is not as strongly associated with tobacco smoke as other types), it's even more important to me to be at Grandma's table every Thanksgiving, even though (since Mark won't think of skipping the trip home at Christmas) it means two big driving trips within a month of each other.
So I'm going, and I'm going to eat the food that Grandma has for us, particularly the bread stuffing, which was Mom's favorite. I'm not sure she ever ate anything else at Thanksgiving, now that I think of it.
How will I cope?
A couple things.
First, the bathroom scale is coming with me on the trip. I know that sounds kind of crazy, especially since my in-laws (where we'll stay) already own one. Here's the thing though: I know what habits got me here, and I know I need to keep those habits, and the first couple months of maintenance are going to be especially important. Well, one of those is stepping on the scale first thing in the morning. I'm not going to do it if I have to wait till I can borrow the bathroom in Mark's mom and dad's master suite.
Second, I'm going to do something that as far as I know nobody has ever done: I am going to bring a covered dish to Grandma's house.
(No kidding. Grandma's pushing ninety and she still cooks everything for Thanksgiving. My uncle helps her get the turkey in and out of the oven, and it helps that we're a fairly small family, but still.)
Grandma MJ and me, long before my little MJ was born.
I brought some roasted vegetables (yes, it was the fatal vegetable medley) to a potluck last weekend. It wasn't the sort of thing that anybody would rave about -- they were very plain, and there were a lot of them left at the end of the night. But it was something I could fill half my plate with: broccoli, yellow summer squash, and carrots, with a little bit of oil and some garlic and herbs. I plan to bring the same stuff to Grandma's, for half my plate.
And I'll fill the other half with whatever looks best. Probably not just stuffing. I like turkey, and sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie, too.
The really weird thing I've already started doing? Rehearsing it mentally. I am picturing myself sitting down at Grandma's table with a plastic plate, half full of the vegetables I'm going to bring, and half full of the other stuff. Over and over, surveying the loaded platters, piling on those plain vegetables, leaving room for only a little of everything else.
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