9th grade. November.

Tamarind:
Thanksgiving. The first real holiday we’ve had to split between parents. Wednesday and Thursday with Mom, and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with Dad. This house rotation is not fun. I wish Mom and Dad could move from home to home instead of me and Grover. That’s the only bad part, though: living in two places, making sure I have duplicates of everything. Sharing a room with Grover at Dad’s apartment isn’t terrible, since it’s only on the weekend, and Grover usually falls asleep on the couch at night playing video games.

The good part is that my parents look happier than they have been in a while. At least Mom does. Dad looks a little lost. He’s lived in this apartment for over four months, but he’s not always sure where things are, or where they should be. Like where to put the cereal or the bread or the peanut butter. He asked me if they went in the cabinet or in the refrigerator. I told him Mom puts most stuff in the refrigerator so it doesn’t go bad as quickly, but technically those items could go in the cabinet. Then Dad shoved everything in the grocery bag in the refrigerator, even the canned peas, and he wandered into the living room to watch a sports documentary.

Thank goodness our grandparents came over on Friday. They brought food. At least it looked like food…

Lilo:
Last weekend, while my kids were away, I watched a marathon of Couponing to the Max. In an attempt to save money, I later decided to apply what I learned to the upcoming Black Friday. What was I thinking?  It’s like I watched a day’s worth of track and field and decided to compete in the Olympics.

On Thursday night, after Jencks picked up Tamarind and Grover, I reviewed my strategy for the next day, a meticulous itinerary designed to simultaneously stock up on bargains and take my mind off of not having my children with me for the rest of the holiday weekend. I asked my mother if she’d like to join my excursion. She vehemently declined, but my father eagerly invited himself along to function as backup and defense. I jokingly suggested he wear his old high school football jersey. Why was I surprised when number 86 showed up at my door at dawn, ready to feel the adrenaline rush?

                                                                                                 

I had big goals for Black Friday, involving six different department stores and over 100 coupons, including combinations of offers that allowed me to either acquire items for free or get paid to take them out of the store. I also knew that if I was going to do this, I couldn’t become a hoarder, primarily because I didn’t have enough space in the townhouse to create a stockpile like the couponers on the show.

Poppy and I started at the grocery store around the corner. That is also, coincidentally, where we stopped. I didn’t realize how exhausting accumulating all those items could be, especially when fellow customers were elbowing us out of the way. Couponing cuts five hours worth of bargain hunting into a 22-minute episode. I lasted about an hour and half before I wanted to collapse. Poppy put up a good fight, but he had no objections to returning home early.

After we organized two shopping carts worth of boxes and bags and cans and bottles into my kitchen cabinets, I took a well-deserved mid-morning nap on the couch while Poppy attempted to take in a smattering of college bowls on the TV. When I woke up around noon, the LACal Coyotes were leading the NorCal Sea Lions 28 to 6 (Go Coyotes!). Poppy was knocked out on the loveseat, imitating a buzz saw.

I went to the kitchen, baked one of the 10 frozen pizzas I’d purchased for 50 cents each, and ate a steaming slice over my sink full of dirty dishes.

It was a good day.

Grover:

Two Thanksgivings means two days of eating. That’s what I had planned, anyway. Thursday was turkey, ham, yams, lumpia, green beans, pumpkin pie, enchiladas, cornbread, roast pork, and adobo with mostly Mom’s side of the family. I had never called them that before because we used to have one big party at Grammy and Grampy’s house since it held the most people in the yard and everybody was everybody’s family. Now that Mom and Dad aren’t together anymore, not as many people showed up, and the ones who did looked uncomfortable around Mom.

Friday was not what I had expected either, but for a different reason. Our grandparents on Dad’s side brought what I thought was another full Thanksgiving meal, and I was ready to chow down. We opened the containers, and all the food looked normal and smelled normal. But when I ate it off my plate, it tasted blech. Abuelito said something about cleansing his colon, so all the dishes he and Abuelita cooked were either low-cholesterol, low-sugar, low-fat, vegan, or raw. Raw? How do you cook raw food? They didn’t bring any sushi or sashimi, so what were they feeding us?

When I asked our grandparents why they couldn’t have made the new stuff and some of the old stuff, too, Tamarind told me to stop complaining because this was a healthier way to eat. I noticed she didn’t finish her kale and quinoa casserole or her gluten-free apple pie. Neither did Dad. I bet all the leftovers will still be in the refrigerator when we visit next weekend.