Thanksgiving Break

From Stephanie: So as a senior at Bates, Thanksgiving break was different this year in some ways. Yes, it was still the first time seeing friends from home since the school year started and yes, we went to my dad’s cousin’s house to see family that we see once a year. I realize that every time that I’ve seen these people we’ve eaten turkey. And mashed potatoes. And stuffing. And the “fruit of the forest” pies that my father purchases through some sort of mystery pie-drive at the March of Dimes. I feel as though they should be selling folic acid candies or something, not necessarily pie but fruit of the forest has become a family staple for us. The name is the most mysterious part of this pie, forget that it came from the March of Dimes. What exactly are fruits of the forest? My personal hypothesis is that the pie is comprised of apples and raspberries and such and that whoever was in charge of these pie titles just liked the alliteration. I mean, we buy it. I’d buy it for the ingenious alliteration, who cares if it makes sense or not?

But anyway, a lot of things were the same: I had a pre-Thanksgiving day brunch with friends and ate dinner while watching Hardball. But, as I said before, things were different too.

The difference began with actually leaving Maine to go to Connecticut. I didn’t just have to make sure there were not apple rinds in the garbage can before grabbing my dirty laundry, locking my dorm room door and leaving. I had an entire apartment to which I had to do things. And I wasn’t quite sure what I needed to do. I brought a near empty container of plain yogurt, a few carrots and 2 beers across the hall to my roommate who wasn’t leaving until later that week. I then emptied the trash, turned out the lights, made sure dishes were clean and power strips were off. Made sure the arrow on the Thermostat was a tiny bit after 65 (why I chose this I didn’t know, I needed however, to make sense of the situation and 65.78 degrees seemed less likely to let the pipes freeze than say… 65. So once I figured that all out I locked the door and left, praying that everything would be fine when I returned. [More…]