The sounds of Thanksgiving...

Most people hear the sounds of snoring after a huge Thanksgiving meal. I would not classify my family as "most people."

She's a beaut, Clark!

In my family it's all about building fence. Snow fence.

This fence building has become part of our tradition. I'm going to guess that this is a 20 year tradition, but it may even be longer. We were putting fence up when I was in high school (15 years ago) and I believe we even put it up prior to that. Regardless of the exact number of years, it's been something we've been doing for a long time.

We've gotten pretty good at it.

However, the older we get the harder it becomes to walk the next day(s). I still hurt, and it's been up for three days.


We have a system. We load all the fence sections, posts, and wire onto the tractor and we head out to the field across from the house and we step it off and start driving posts. How do we drive posts you ask? With a post driver. No, it's not mechanized. It's manual. Very, very manual. It's an apparatus that is basically a tube made of heavy metal with two handles on it. You lift the heavy device as somebody tips the post, then you start driving.




Why, yes! They do make mechanized models. We had a discussion about mechanized models in the truck over the holiday.

Me: "Why don't you invest in one of those automatic post drivers?"

Dad: "They're expensive."

Me: "Understandable. Why can't you just make one to put on the scoop, or something like that? I think you could make one."

Dad: "I've made two of them."

Me: "Um, then where are they?"

Dad: "Sitting in this truck."

Me: "Funny. Real funny."

Another sound of Thanksgiving you'll hear at our family gathering is laughter. It's one thing we do really, really well. In my family we don't do "lovey dovey" we do "make fun of you and pick at you until you just can't take it anymore" because that's how we show love.

After our late Thanksgiving meal we all gathered around the table to play Smart Ass (I know, fitting for my family because we're loaded with them). This year we played with my cousin's little girl, she's 7 going on 27. She could read the questions, and with a little prodding could even answer a few of the questions - especially the really hard ones we made up on the fly about Frozen.

Common knowledge.

I absolutely love trivia games. Because, well, I'm good at them. Strategy - not so much because I second guess myself all the time. Trivia, though? I can nail that.  Smart Ass is a trivia game, and I now have a new nickname.

Piebald.

That's right. I knew what color a piebald horse was.

Nobody else knew it.

For the record: A piebald or pied animal is one that has a spotting pattern of large unpigmented, usually white, areas of hair, feathers, or scales and normally pigmented patches, generally black. 

"Of course you knew it. You know everything." 

I'm glad somebody else recognizes this.