I was a bit concerned about posting my previous Thanksgiving article on my family’s weird holiday habits. Writing about family is a touchy subject, and although my family experiences something far from the total internet saturation of the rest of the world, they all read the articles when they come out. With that in mind, I posted the article with trepidation. As it turned out, I shouldn’t have been worried. My family loved the article. They loved it so much that they made me read it aloud on Thanksgiving Day between putting the turkey in the oven and scrambling for the table. But they had some corrections. A few additions. So that’s this week’s article: Everything I forgot about in the last one.

My aunt wanted to know why, when I devoted so much time to roasting the rest of my family, did I leave myself mostly untouched? She suggested one notable addition — the time last year when I left a paper copy of a recipe too close to the gas burner and gave it an authentically charred look. I also set off the smoke alarms, but that happens every year. This year, I added to my list of stove-related mishaps by leaving the gas on and failing to light the burner, nearly sending the entire kitchen up in flames. One of these years, the stove and I will come to an agreement. This year, we did not.

My other aunt wanted to know why I didn’t include the yearly performances of various foreign accents (usually of British extraction), by herself and one of my two moms after they’ve imbibed a few. The reason I didn’t include it in the original article is because I didn’t want to embarrass them, but since they’ve insisted, I’m stuck. Every year, about midway through the festivities, my aunt and my mother will lapse into British-type accents. Sometimes it’s cockney. Sometimes it’s received pronunciation. Sometimes it’s Australian, and sometimes, it sounds like Julia Child. However it ends up, it’s not pleasant. They persist while we beg them to stop, cackling like a couple of inebriated goblins every time we plead for mercy. Only the arrival of the food will stop them.

I also wanted to devote some time to the various cooking mishaps that occur throughout the day. This year, I served lukewarm soup to my family after interpreting an instruction to ‘simmer’ a little too loosely. On the bright side, this year was the first in living memory that we didn’t straight up forget to make something. In past years, such sundry items as biscuits, vegetables, and salads have been left off the table. The first time this happened, it was a disaster. Tears were shed. Now it’s become commonplace. The realization that this year, nothing was forgotten was met with mild surprise and a sense of impending doom, as though by failing to forget something we opened the way to some greater disaster. If the Elder Gods awaken in the next year, you’ll know who’s to blame.

That concludes this year’s Thanksgiving roundup of weird things that happen. See you all next year — if the Elder Gods don’t awaken first.