Hey everybody, how was turkey day? And do they call it that for what we eat, or who we have to put up with? And what are your Thanksgiving wishes? I just ate my 8th T-Day dinner among the homeless. Happens, I'm one of 'em. So to all you who helped the less fortunate, thank you! Now I'm at work, trying to stay awake after working 13 hours until 3am last night, then going home and cooking until 9am. Then getting back up at 1pm to help set up. Where I live is a combined ladies' residence/domestic violence shelter. Not one person from the DV unit showed up, and they didn't even bother to say they weren't coming. Well, what happened was that the "resident advisor" from my floor (who volunteered to put the dinner together, she is paid & gets a free apartment), she got kind of lazy (er, complacent probably being a kinder word), and never bothered to get official word out about the dinner, so what was happening was the "homeless" shelter residents, we were all going bonkers trying to figure out the time etc. We knew the dinner would be donated, and we assumed 4th floor knew too, but the DV unit ladies don't stay long enough to remember how we did it last year, which is, we ate in a big common room in the building. So word never got out, and they made other plans. The whole dang floor, like 10 women and 6 kids. The shelter board got us 5 dinners--each dinner containing enough to feed 8 people each--and only 10 people ate. The director came in and I could tell she was really upset, and who could blame her? That's like $200 down the drain (each dinner cost $40-$50 dollars). It was like we kept trying to shove more food in just to be polite, and we were all kind of looking at each other like, "Lady, please leave, if I hafta eat anymore stuffing I'll puke". It was all too funny, really. I mean, you have to laugh, a whole room like 50 by 100, 3 banquet tables, and only maybe 8-10 people, hello, echo echo. Next year they ought to just give one cooked turkey and let us do the rest, Every dang year I make loads of stuffing and yams and how hard can potatoes be? And why do they assume we don't want to cook at least one small something each? We're only homeless or abused, we're no less of a woman for that, please, let us take over the kitchen? But I do understand why the shelter did what they did, a few years back we had this one really bossy lady in the shelter who took over the whole Thanksgiving dinner, had the shelter pay for it (what she wanted, not one item anybody else wanted was presented to the board)(before that, we did it on our own, same as any other household), and then she put the turkey in for 18 hours, or tried to, burned it like it was something from CSI, (thank God I came home from work and took it out, it was SMOKING) that morning she then set the oven to 500 degrees before walking out and not telling a soul...we ate a LOTTA carbonized calories that day. Well, at least there's leftovers. But for once, I feel worse for the board, actually what they needed to do, and they didn't, was to talk to the long-term residents--there's 4 of us who've been there over 7 years. The resident director acts like little miss know it all but it's her first TDay there. But us long timers could have told 'em: "Look, one big turkey or turkey breast, gravy, and a couple pies, and thank you." Because if there's 15 residents there, maybe 5 will stay to eat, and most of them will want to cook a little something special. Sorry I'm rambling!! I do that when I'm tired! So anyway that was my story. Has anyone else out there ever spent a T-Day somewhere unusual??