Giving Thanks
- Things get crazy for Mom around Thanksgiving time, because Mom manages a clothing store downtown. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. It's the beginning of the biggest shopping season of the year, the Christmas season.
- While preparing for the holiday season, Mom sets "totally unrealistic" (28.2) sales goals for the store. Plus, she chain smokes and coffee binges.
- Mom plans on cooking Thanksgiving dinner, even though Dad and Melinda try everything they can to stop her.
- On Thanksgiving morning, Mom realizes she's forgotten to thaw the turkey. She tries to cut up the frozen bird with a knife. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is very important to Mom.
- After Dad buys doughnuts, Mom starts getting calls from her store (which seems to be open on Thanksgiving day).
- She gives Melinda some orange juice to drink, but it burns Melinda's bitten, chapped lips.
- After Melinda showers, cleans her room, and gets dressed, she finds Mom trying to thaw the turkey by boiling it.
- While Melinda is reading magazines in her room, she hears her parents fighting.
- Mom has to go into the store, and Dad begins chopping the frozen turkey with a knife. Dad tries to salvage the meal, to prove how much better he is at Thanksgiving than Mom. He makes some kind of gross turkey soup thing.
- In the end, though, he gives Melinda some money to order pizza.
- Meanwhile, he buries the turkey in their pet cemetery, next to Melinda's deceased dog, Ariel.