W is for Why not? Thanksgivng by the numbers (integers and non-integers!)

***I’m going to try to post something every day in the month of November. I definitely may not- it’s just a goal and I’m not going to be upset about missing it! Hopefully in my spare time, I can come up with a post per day. My prompts are going to be the letters of the alphabet. I will write about something that starts with the day’s letter- think Sesame Street meets the blogsphere. Of course there are more days in the month of November than there are letters in the alphabet. I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it!***

Well, so much for posting something every day!! When I decided to challenge myself to writing something every day in November, I knew there was a possibility that I would have multiple guests spending various nights in our house near Thanksgiving but none of that was for certain. I knew that if I had guests, it was highly unlikely that I would write a post every day. That is one reason I wrote the disclaimer in the above paragraph. Writing every day was a goal but not something that I was going to feel bad about missing. 

W is for Thanksgiving by the numbers (Ok, it is a stretch... you have to add Why Not to make it work!!

0- Pictures taken of Jacob and/ or with Jacob in them on Thanksgiving. UGH. It’s like he wasn’t there. As I was lamenting the dearth of pictures of him, I couldn’t help but think back to Christmas 2000 when Jacob was the breakout hit and photographed an extraordinary amount. He was all of five days old, less then 36 hours from being released from the hospital, about six pounds and arguably should not have been out and about around more than a dozen relatives but did that stop us from dressing him in his premie Santa outfit and bringing him to Christmas dinner? Uh, NO! We had a baby to show everyone!!

Christmas Day 2000- We probably should have stayed in but...

All Jacob wanted for Christmas were socks on his feet, lol. This must have been taken before we put his wee Santa outfit on.

1- Border crisis to potentially keep my sister from being unable to come (easily) to America from Canada to celebrate with us. On Wednesday afternoon, all four of the US- Canadian border crossings from New York to Ontario (and vice versa) closed after a fiery car crash near the border prompted fears that the crash was deliberate and was an act of terrorism. The timing of the border crossing closing was not good as my sister was planning on leaving Ontario early Thursday morning to come to our house. Fortunately, the car accident appeared to be just that, a car accident (while tragic for the two people who died in the crash, it was better for everyone else that it was not an act of terrorism). By late Wednesday, the borders between the two countries opened up. Travel crisis averted!

2- The number of food products that I had for the meal that I forgot to bring out. At Kroger, I impulsed bought a dessert a couple of days before Thanksgiving- a cake roll that needed refrigerated. I put it in the fridge and forgot all about it until I saw it after Thanksgiving. It was not missed! We had many desserts and didn’t need another one. I also forgot to set out the Lindt box of chocolates. I should have set this out on the kitchen counter prior to Thanksgiving- that would have ensured that I didn’t forget about it. But, like the cake roll, it was not missed. 

11- The number of eggs that I went through to prepare the Thanksgiving meal. A couple of days before I started preparing any food, I verified that I had enough of some of the high quantity ingredients for the dishes. To that end, I went through the recipes that I planned to make and counted how many eggs total I would need to prepare everything. Almost a baker’s dozen of eggs for the win! In actuality, I used more than eleven eggs. Counting items that I had prepared beforehand like pie crust and cookies that I’d made and frozen, the number of eggs is even higher. 

32:10- The ratio of pounds of meat to people at our Thanksgiving meal. One twenty pound turkey plus one eleven pound ham plus one pound of meatballs adds up to 32 pounds of meat. The number of people (well, not babies) was only ten (there were supposed to have been more but in the end it only ended up being ten of us). The turkey and the ham both had bones in them so it was not like that much total meat.

Let’s simplify the fraction of 32/10. Two goes into both numbers so we’re down to 16/5’s. Let’s make the improper fraction a mixed number- five goes into 16 three times with one left over so we have 3 1/5 pounds of meat per person (again, though, pre bone). By the sheer volume of leftovers, it is safe to say that no one came close to consuming that much meat! We had a (proverbial...) ton left over!

0.49- Cents- the cost per pound of the turkey. Thanks, Kroger! You did have to spend $25 to get the turkey at that price. That was obviously not a problem with how high the cost of  everything is (save great deals like the one on the turkey).

51- Pictures of Mary Gracia that are on my camera roll from the day!