How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

Turkey Day this year was quite the event. The auntie who hosts moved in with her boyfriend and so a very large number of us, the largest it's been since the Thanksgivings when Grammy Mc was alive, showed up and overwhelmed the boyfriend's family, who numbered five to our 24, which swelled to 28 at dessert.

There were in fact people from ages one

to 99

I was deemed worthy of the "cool kid's" table, where I sat next to M M, one of my first cousins once removed, and learned all sorts of interesting things.


Another first cousin once removed sat to my left, giving bad boy advice to M about her myriad and sundry suitors, one of whom was deemed a "Chub Scout," while his mother told the story of the time she flushed our cousin M W's mouse Myron down the toilet while she was babysitting. She forgot to put a weight on the cover of Myron's cage, and happened upon Harry the cat sitting on the back of a toilet with a mouse tail hanging out of his mouth. Poor Myron, who had already suffered the indignity of having his balls gnawed off by his cagemate, floated off to his burial at sewage with no tears from T, who scoffed at M W's sorrow over the demise of a lowly rodent.

It was a pretty typical Mcholiday.

And this is M W's son T. I remember when M W's youngest brother was this small. Now he is apparently dating five women at once.