On the Monday before Thanksgiving, I always make the dressing.  And freeze it.  Then on Tuesday, I begin to make the giblet gravy.  Which is exactly what I did yesterday.  Starting by boiling six eggs, which I then chop up and refrigerate.  There is a lot of chopping going on before Thanksgiving.  I've done exactly this same thing for over sixty years.  Monday, make the dressing.  Tuesday, boil the eggs, and go to the store to get giblets and a chicken--to make broth.  Wednesday, put it all together and make the gravy.

But I got ahead of myself yesterday, and tried to do two things at once.  I put the eggs on the stove to boil,  and once that was done, I started thinking about going to the grocery store to get the giblets for the gravy and forgot all about the eggs. I can't even begin to describe the result.   When I got back from the store, of course, the pan with the eggs had boiled dry, and the house was full of smoke.

The result:  As the eggs heated up and the water boiled dry, they began to explode.  There were eggs and shells on the ceiling, the cabinets, the floor, and in every imaginable place.  An egg, when it is heated like that, is a hand grenade.  I can't tell you how bad the house smelled.  I opened the doors, turned on the fans and started cleaning up the mess.  It still smells terrible this morning.

I will never do that again.  And in retrospect, it could have been worse.

I used to be able to do a dozen things at once.  Now, I can't manage two things at once.  So I will reset my pre-thanksgiving ritual and I will finish cooking the eggs before I even think about doing anything else.  I will never forget the mess and the smell of this disaster.

Maybe by Thursday the smell of burned eggs will be gone.  I hope so.  It is pretty terrible.

Everyone in the family has an assigned thing to bring.  Becky has the dinner at her house and has a phone-group that everyone notifies everyone else what each of us are bringing so we don't duplicate.  I think there are thirty-nine of us if I count my brother Bill, sister Lisa, and cousin Ann and their spouses.  Every time I try to count, I lose track.  Most all of us will be there.  In nineteen fifty-six there were just two at our first Thanksgiving dinner.  Ken, and me.