Thanksgiving Part One- or- The Pre-Thanksgiving Family Pub Crawl

Yeah…

It really happened.  How it happened..? Who knows- but a new tradition of nonsense and debauchery has officially begun in for the Cleerdin/Seyfried Clans.

Let me begin at the beginning...

One never knows where one may find oneself in the days leading up to Thanksgiving- even when knows where one is, errrr, physically.

Hence the day before Thanksgiving I found myself wandering around Vero Beach, Florida, with my parents, aunt, and uncle…. and we were drinking.  Heavily.

Sitting ocean-side on the Atlantic coast, watching a dog bound in and out of the water, we began the evening at Waldo's- apparently the Last of the Great American Hangouts.  This, having been to Chilkoot Charlie's in Anchorage, Alaska, is a debatable claim.  Perhaps the last of the great Floridian hangouts.

As we sat and shot the … ahem… shit, raising a glass to my grandfather (whose memorial may or may not be part three of these Thanksgiving blogs), the Bob pondered the merits of Waldo Sexton and his inability to tell the same story twice (see below).

Everything changes all the time.  Details weave themselves in different patterns.

Next up was a spot called Mulligans for some truly terrible wine and, much to my diet's dismay, truly delicious sweet potato fries (if you are ever in the Vero area- check out the cinnamon-honey dip served with the fries.  Two words: Holy bananas.)

Needless to say a fire was going to happen at some point yesterday evening.  Because, perhaps in a cosmic nod to my desperate desire for chill weather on a fall holiday, it actually dropped to 40 or so degrees.  Sitting on the back porch, flame gently crackling in the fire pit (which is another blog for another time because pit implies something sunken in the ground and this contraption most definitely sits above-ground) we polished off more wine, beer, and conversation.

There is a certain merit to being an adult in your own family.  You gain rights- rights to talk, fight, and engage in other most wonderful activities which you lacked before the rise in aged stature.

Not that my 'adulthood' within the family implies any respect from the family at all.

No indeed: I'm still pretty much the black sheep.  But this sheep can officially say that she found Waldo.  And that good times abound when you let them.

Until Thanksgiving Part Two, Or, A Whole Lot More Family Time…

Happy Thanksgiving.