Christi and Nan talk turkey...and Thanksgiving holiday visits to family...in this spontaneous, casual conversation.
Here are some tips to making your Thanksgiving dinner not too intense when visiting family. Applies to all family holiday dinners!
Nan Kinney and Christi Cassidy talk about visiting familly over the coming Thanksgiving and how to make the weekend visit a little less stressful.
Christina Beauchemin, Christi's friend and client, author of Let My Legacy Be Love (Woodhall Press, 2021), has great ideas on how to chill out and take the pressure off of Thanksgiving dinner. Find out more: https://christinabeauchemin.com/
Seinfeld - if you can find the episode with the "conversation cards," let Christi know @ christi@movingalongpodcast.com.
Moving Along - BONUS - Christi and Nan Talk Turkey
[00:00:00] Christi: Moving up, moving out, moving along. Where are you headed next? I'm Christy Cassidy, your host and the creator of moving along a podcast about travel, relocation, and life transitions. Listen in to real. Stories as we explore moving along and what it takes to make your life a positive new adventure. Welcome to moving.
This is a special quick take conversation between me and Na and Kenny, my partner in anticipation of season two of moving along. I thought, well, it'd be fun to just look ahead and think about travel in particular, which seems to be opening up a little bit more. Since 80% of Americans at least have already had Covid and.[00:01:00]
People are traveling more. There's more in-person business conferences. There's more travel for leisure and recreation. There's more travel in general. There's also more visiting families, and that's what NN and I are talking about. Today we're talking about Thanksgiving. We will be visiting my parents about a four and a half, five hour drive from Hudson, New York to upstate New York and Rochester.
Rochester is located on Lake Ontario and my parents live in a suburb of Rochester. So welcome.
[00:01:40] Nan: Okay, here come the holidays and some of us, like us are traveling to see family that's gonna. Somewhat stressful. Like we don't really wanna do it, but we have to do it. And how do you make that, you know, more pleasant? [00:02:00] Or how do you turn that into something that you can enjoy that you're not just dreading?
And also when you're there, like what are the little tricks for getting through, you know, dinners and get togethers without getting into fights or getting stressed out. So those are the two subjects I
[00:02:18] Christi: thought of. That's great. I mean, I think both of those are good subjects. ,
[00:02:24] Nan: they are good subjects. We could talk about 'em a lot.
Maybe. I don't know.
[00:02:28] Christi: The, the second one is pretty much what Christina wrote for her oped. Mm-hmm. that I'm gonna send to the. Albany Times Union. Right. Just about just getting pretty much through Thanksgiving dinner. Right.
[00:02:44] Nan: Right. But well, let's talk about the second one. What we were planning to do was, at least we know it's stressful to stay, we have to go to your parents for Thanksgiving three days, and we know it's stressful to stay with them even though they want us to stay with the extra guest bedroom.[00:03:00]
It's not good. It's not comfortable. Separate bed, separate bathroom, No TV in the room. Mm-hmm. . It's just, you know, I'm kind of like too old for living like a college student , so, you know, bathroom down the hall.
[00:03:15] Christi: So that's tip number one is get a place to stay. Yes. If you can afford it, get a place to stay.
Yes.
[00:03:20] Nan: Get a place separately to stay in a hotel or an Airbnb or something and make it comfortable so that you have like a refuge to go to when you leave. The stressful situation, like for us, we have this hotel and we've stayed there before and we know it's really comfortable and it overlooks. A couple of ponds in a nature center, so there's hiking and walking right outside the back door
[00:03:48] Christi: and a nice view
[00:03:49] Nan: and a beautiful view.
It's very serene to sit there and look out and watch the ducks and the GE flying and look at the water and watch the weather rain coming in. So [00:04:00] that actually. For me has made it so that I look forward to going on this trip where before I just have did not look forward at all to going on to visit your parents because we had to stay there.
So we figured out that this is one big thing that if we don't stay there, it makes it so much more pleasant and like a little vacation for ourselves too. Mm-hmm. .
[00:04:21] Christi: That's right. Mm-hmm. . It does. So, okay.
[00:04:25] Nan: So that's one good thing. And then your client, Christina, has some tips about how to get through.
situations where people are bringing up topics that are stressful for people to talk about and might start arguments like, what are some quick couple of those,
[00:04:45] Christi: right? One, as politics and religion, we are gonna avoid politics and religion as we were all taught to do when we were kids. Mm-hmm. . Yeah.
Although that's difficult. Um, and then the other thing, [00:05:00] Avoiding gossip, which I think is a good thing to do.
[00:05:04] Nan: Oh, I didn't think about that. I hadn't thought about that because sometimes it's like negative, the gossip is negative or.
[00:05:12] Christi: Yeah, gossip usually is negative, but it's petty, I think is a big part of the reason why.
It's like, just don't gossip about other people and if, if the conversation starts going in that direction, distractions are always good. I'm. More to the food distraction side of things such as right here, can you help me with these green beans? Do they have enough salt? Right. But Christina is more like, Look at that cardinal out the window
Right? Or how's that new puppy
[00:05:46] Nan: you bought? Yeah. Or even talk about travel. Like what, how was your trip to get here? Or trips that you're gonna be planning to do? Like travel, I think is a good neutral subject that everybody can talk about. Invites [00:06:00] to talk about. And of course with family, there's all, there's all the whole, you know, history, like stories that have been told for ems.
Maybe some of 'em are funny and heartwarming. You can say, Oh, remember the time that I made the Turkey and I left all the string or something inside the turkeys? All the gits. All the gits. I didn't unwrap the gits and we cooked the gits with all the paper wrapping inside, you know, telling funny, goofy stories.
Get people to calm down and,
[00:06:31] Christi: yeah, that's good. The right, mm-hmm. . I was gonna say, Christina, she even suggests like conversation cards, which I, Oh, what are those? I've never heard of them. They're little cards and you can put them at people's plates or you can put them in the middle of the table and. Then if it gets weird you can say, Hey, you know so and so try, you know your turn with the [00:07:00] conversation card.
Oh, interesting. I can't imagine that my family would ever go for such
[00:07:05] Nan: a thing. No, I think, I think we see that on a curve year enthusiasm once where they had this journey with all these people and they wanted to make sure everybody got a chance to talk. Not just Larry, Ah, dominating the conversation. So they had these little cards so other people got, I think we saw something like that on tv.
[00:07:21] Christi: I bet in the episode, I don't know. I had suggested football as a neutral topic, but
[00:07:26] Nan: yeah, sports is another good food. Travel, sports, weather, I mean, you know, weather. But that can lead into like climate change and Exactly. That's not as good as good as it used to be for a general topic. Uhhuh books. Books, right?
Reading books. Books. Movies. Movies, movies, music, any kind of art things, you know, any. Shows you've been to or as
[00:07:51] Christi: long as you avoid religion, Politics, . Yeah.
[00:07:54] Nan: Religion, politics. I would say that covers weather now. Sure. Yeah. That can be political,
[00:07:59] Christi: [00:08:00] but yeah. Are certain kinds of art installations
[00:08:03] Nan: art? Yeah, Art installation.
Let's see. Dansky. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:07] Christi: Banksy Banks.
[00:08:08] Nan: Banksy. . Well, let's see. We have talked now for how many minutes? Shall we stop it? It? Yep,
[00:08:16] Christi: that's fine by me. Thanks for being my
[00:08:18] Nan: think. Yeah. Well you're, what do you call it? Practice the person you practice with? Yeah.
[00:08:24] Christi: Story partner. My sparing partner . Okay. Well this is the first time I've done it with this microphone.
And set. Well,
[00:08:32] Nan: I, hopefully it works. I hope it recorded. Otherwise you have to do it all over. Otherwise, we have our backups, we have our backup. Awesome. Okay, so see you.
[00:08:41] Christi: Bye. Bye.
Thank you for listening to moving along a podcast about travel, relocation, and life transitions. If you like what you hear, please share and subscribe. You can find moving [00:09:00] along. Wherever you listen. This show was edited by yours truly, Christy Cassidy. The music is by Eve's Blue. If you have an idea for a show, contact me at Christy.
At moving along podcast.com. Till next time.[00:10:00]