Holiday Lovin'....

The holidays are upon us. I think they snuck up while we sleeping off the diabetic coma of Halloween or something. But they're here! The Christmas music arrived for our work sound system (not that I'll be playing it. Ever.) and Turkey Day has come and gone.

Prepare to overeat. Prepare to overspend. Prepare to overindulge. Holiday Season '07 only comes once every 100 years! No, really, it does... I did the math and everything.

This is a special year for me, personally. Since I was the number-one, card-carrying, woman-denying, hyphen-over-using commitment-phobe on the planet before being snatched up by a lovely (and forgiving) young lady, I have never celebrated a holiday with anyone else.

My relationship history prior to meeting Sonja went sort of like this:
Boy meets girl.
Boy kisses girl.
Boy keeps on kissing girl until she decides to have "the talk."
Boy freaks.
Boy meets another girl.
And so on...

There was never any reason to spend the holidays with someone else because there really hasn't been a "someone else" for years. And there's the fact that my family are isolationists of a Pat Buchanan-level (political joke there... primaries are in two months... I'll stop now).

Basically, spending the Thanksgiving meal at Sonja's house with 20 of her relatives was a big deal for me. I never really get nervous about anything, with the possible exception of my sort-of-annual physical, but it was kind of nerve-wracking.

I was a definite outsider. Everyone else there had either sprung from the loins of her dad (good mental picture there), married into the family or was pretty much in a common-law marriage type relationship. So, I stuck out there. All the guys (she has five brothers and one dad) are much bigger than I am, which always makes me feel a little uncomfortable. You'd think I'd be used to this, since I haven't grown since 8th grade, but I havne't yet. This is one reason, I think, that the few guys I consider to be good friends can be described as "bookish." The menfolk are also all hard-working, salt-of-the-earth types who ride Harleys and know stuff about machinery. I drive a Camry and the most manly thing I've done in the last week is get the lid off a jar of spaghetti sauce for my sister. Needless to say, I wound up spending more time in the kitchen slicing veggies and learning how cheesecloth can be used to marinate a turkey (fascinating stuff).

You know what, though? Our differences didn't matter. Once everyone sat down at the table, appetite, dinnertime conversation and a general spirit of thankfulness took over. We took turns complementing the half-dozen chefs that contributed, we talked about the different places we live, I even tried out a couple Grizzly Adams jokes on Sonja's brother Greg, who sports mane of hair and 4-inch goatee. He laughed and didn't give me a noogie, so that worked out all around.

The holidays are about family coming together. And now that I have "someone else" in my life, my definition of family is expanding. I wound up having a great first Thanksgiving at her house with her wonderful relatives. They made me feel welcome, accepted and overstuffed. And for that I am thankful.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!