Battlescars

In spite of the fact that I am not a domestic goddess, I can hold my own when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner. One would hope that's the case after twenty-four years of practice, anyway. And so it was last Thursday. We had a wonderful turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, and all the usual trimmings, including homemade pumpkin pie. I'm no slouch when it comes to the holidays.

In spite of the fact that I can cook a pretty wonderful meal on Thanksgiving, I still freely admit that the kitchen is not where I feel the most at home. It's not where I am in my natural setting. And my wonderful holiday meals are not without their casualties.

This past Thursday the casualty was my thumb. As I was cooking our twenty pound turkey and peeling ten pounds of potatoes and supervising four boys between the ages of sixteen and ten in their various kitchen duties, I got a litte careless with the chopping knife. As if slicing into my thumb wasn't bad enough, I also sliced into the side of my thumbnail.

I still managed to produce a pretty good meal, if I do say so myself, even though I had to do the rest of my work with my bandaged thumb sticking straight up in the air. And it got me out of the dishes.

On the down side, the bandage didn't do me much good three days later, when I had to fill in on the piano for church on Sunday. I thought I managed okay until my husband started publicly thanking me for filling in while our regular piano player as out of town. I normally play the organ, so it's not like it's unusual to see me up there on an instrument. But then he went on to explain how I had sliced my finger open.

Hmm. Clearly I must have been playing rather poorly if he felt an explanation was in order. Well, at least I had an excuse this time.

The piano is not my natural setting either. But I'm beginning to think the emergency room might be. So how was your Thanksgiving?