This is just one of the majillionty ways he tortures me.
F#$%ing cat.*
*I say that with love.
There are three hours left in November so I can totally get away with this
Lots of people feel like Thanksgiving weekend is a good time to pull out the Christmas tree and start listening to carols on the radio. Not me. As long as I’m still eating turkey leftovers, it’s Thanksgiving season. I can’t get into the Christmas spirit until the first of December at least. With that in mind, and because so many of you requested it*, I present you with a story of Thanksgiving, as told by the Sylvanians.
*No one requested it.
It is November, 1621. A friendly Native American family approaches the home of some wary Pilgrims.
The Pilgrims are incredibly wary. Those natives are awfully intimidating.
“Keep the children indoors! Away from those frightening savages.” Mama Thistlethorne whispers loudly. Nevermind it was those very people she called savages who gifted her with the nice rug for her floors, all the food laid out, and the lovely hand-carved totems that guard her door.
What is it the Native Americans bring to the wary Pilgrims? Another blanket! And some pretty necklaces for the ladies. Those savages aren’t so savage after all! (They should be though, considering the gifts of infectious disease they’ve been getting from the Europeans for years.)
Meanwhile, in the nearby Native American village…
Father Sweetwater teaches the chief about Jesus while a fisherman cooks them a nice roasted fish dinner.
Father Sweetwater said, “Jesus is good.” And that is the story of the first Thanksgiving.*
*Not really.
Extended Holiday
He made squash for Thanksgiving dinner. He had to work that night, but he made this wonderful squash dish as his contribution. His love in a side dish, so we wouldn’t forget. There was a moment at the table, one moment, when everyone was eating and someone tasted the squash and exclaimed over its flavor. Then someone else had to try and soon everyone was eating squash and exclaiming, so I got to brag on my beloved, which made me beam. I adore him.
“Where is he?” They all asked. “It’s so awful he has to work!” And then they pat my cheek while I insist that I don’t mind, I’m used to it. He’s worked every single holiday for every year I’ve known him, eleven years last July. I long ago gave up on the idea of spending holidays with him. I resented it for years until I figured out that holidays don’t have to be celebrated when everyone else celebrates and new traditions can be invented every year. Now I kind of love it. He works on holidays so we’re forced to draw them out, add an extra day of celebration to the week. An extra day to feel grateful, safe, loved. An extra day to sleep in and eat good food. It turns out to be pretty fabulous.
This year we shared a romantic Thanksgiving for two on Michael’s day off. We ate meatloaf leftovers and worked on a Christmas craft project inspired by the Dia de los Muertos display we saw earlier in the month. It turns out that clay people and cardboard houses are waaaaay harder to make than you’d think. Three hours of work yielded six naked, faceless people, one house with an unattached roof and only half a paint job, and a miniature wiener dog. If we actually want a whole village we’ll be working on this every year for the rest of our lives, but then again, isn’t that what it was all about? Creating a new family tradition.
He’ll work Christmas Eve and Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. We’ll wait until his next day off to celebrate together, the two of us, alone in our little home with the beasts and their endless shedded tufts of hair. We’ll cook if it sounds like fun or we’ll order in. We’ll nest. We’ll watch holiday movies or go adventuring, build tiny dream homes out of cardboard and hot glue or spend hours in bed. Whatever we do won’t matter as long as we’re together, uninterrupted, happy and in love.
This is my fourth week linking up with Just Write. You should totally link up too.
And on that day, we gorged ourselves on the flesh of dead birds
I could have titled this post, “Snapshots from Thanksgiving Weekend,” but where’s the fun in that?
I baked a strawberry pie. Someone who ate a piece wanted to know if I’d made it. I answered in the affirmative, of course.
Friend: Did you make this pie?
Me: Yes, sir!
Friend: How did you make the crust???
Me: With unicorn magic and fairy dust.*
Friend: THIS IS THE BEST PIE CRUST I’VE EVER EATEN.
*I did not tell my friend that, in fact, the pie crust was made by Pillsbury. I’m probably going to Hell.
We hosted our first family dinner on Saturday. I made turkey meatloaf, roasted red potatoes, and a nice green salad. I also set the fanciest table I’ve ever set in my young little life. But it’s nothing in comparison to this:
My mother’s holiday table is what my kitchen table aspires to be when it grows up.
She made these beautiful turkeys out of pinecones she’s been saving for fifty-five-ish years. Her mother found them on a vacation in 1956-ish and thought they looked just like turkey bodies, so my mom has been saving them all these years to turn them into Thanksgiving decorations. Next time Mike wants to know why our linen closet is stuffed full of craft supplies I rarely use I’m going to say, PINECONE TURKEYS.
Even her hors d’oeuvre table was gorgeous.
It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without the Sylvanians! In this scene, a friendly native bearing gifts of friendship approaches a wary pilgrim. Not pictured – our fireplace mantel, where a Puritan minister teaches the natives about Jesus.
Mike made a wonderful squash dish that was the belle of the Thanksgiving ball, next to the turkey and my grandfather’s infamous wild rice stuffing. Even Valentine wanted this squash. If you behave, dear readers, I’ll share the recipe later this week.
What were the highlights from your Thanksgiving weekend?
It’s not all skin and bones
This is the best. song. ever. I seriously cannot stop myself from dancing whenever I hear it. Total mood picker-up-er. Play the video, close your eyes and listen to this song. Now. Play it play it play it DO IT!
Wasn’t that awesome? Don’t you feel great now? Is that not the happiest song you’ve ever heard in your entire life? The perfect feeling to start a long weekend with, am I right?
Maybe he misses Manhattan
The wiener in winter – NYC, Dec. 12, 2008
There are two dogs under me on the sofa. I’m sitting on them because they wouldn’t move when I tried to sit down and — wait — the wiener just moved. Now he’s at my elbow, jerking his head around and licking the air.
Internets, I do not know why he licks the air. He licks the air, sways his head around, whimpers, licks the air some more, licks my arm for a little while, licks the sofa pillows for a little while, and then, exhausted, he collapses. When he’s finally quieted, if I show him any interest at all, if I even so much as glance at him from the corner of my eye, his head snaps up and he continues, frantic in his efforts to lick my arm, then the sofa pillows, then the air, for as long as wienerly possible. It’s not cute. It’s awful. It amuses house guests, but only until it goes on for so long that they begin to worry about his well-being. The other night he licked a sofa pillow for over thirty minutes. It was so soaked full of dog spit it felt like someone pissed on it.
I recently praised Theo online for being officially house-trained after four years of exhaustive work and now that we’ve got that under control, I feel the need to address his obsessive-compulsive licking.
You may not know this, but one of his nick-names is Lightning Fast Poo Tongue. He’s recently gone back to eating Valentine’s poop as soon as he can snatch it from her bum. (We thought we had that under control – HA! Who’s the dumbass now?) He will eat a large turd on our morning walk and afterward, if I do not pay careful attention to where his tongue is in relation to my whereabouts, there will be a poo-tongue smacking the inside of my eyeball before I can say “What the.”
You guys, I could get a BRAIN INFECTION. And I would have to tell the doctor it was because I got poo in my eye.
Why oh why does my wiener dog compulsively lick the air and/or surrounding objects while swaying his head and whining? Why do I have a raw spot on my forearm where all the hair has been licked off? Why are the sofa pillows always damp? Is it anxiety? Is it a medical condition? Is he trying to tell me something? Am I somehow failing in my attempt to display appropriate dominance? WHAT WOULD CESAR DO?
Please help me. Don’t help me. Forget me. Help Theo. Help the little wiener. (I’m begging you.)
P.S. Valentine is still sitting under me. She’s bonier than you’d think.
This is my third Just Write. Join us!
Fake it till you make it – Thug Life
I love it when the neighborhood gang bangers get all inspirational and shit.
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The cat on the table and the child in my head
I’m chopping vegetables when she starts crying, a plaintive meowing. She paces across the kitchen table, coat gleaming, belly hanging, begging for my attention. “I’m sorry, Cat. I’m fixing dinner. I’ve got nothing for you.”
In my head she’s a little girl. Three or four. Her eyes wide and pleading, “Mama, play with me!”
“I’m sorry, Baby. I’m fixing dinner. Papa will be home soon and I’m hungry! Would you like to help?”
She peels the garlic and breaks heads off brocoli stalks. “They look like tiny trees!” She is gleeful. I’m in awe of her strong little hands and the pleasure she takes in such simple tasks.
And then I chide myself for being so stupid. Getting lost in childish imaginings. Children are not in the picture. Not now, not for years, maybe never. Maybe because you never know and maybe because it just seems impossible. The other day I asked Michael, “How will we know?”
“When I have a job and we have health care and we’re ready to buy a house and we’re not worried about paying bills every month. Maybe then.”
Maybe we’ll wait until we’re in our forties and adopt. I can see myself, like all those women I watched in Manhattan with long silver hair and ethnic children. I could love any child I held in my arms, I know that.
By now I’ve peeled and chopped a whole garlic bulb, but I don’t care. I sprinkle it over the vegetables, slide it into the oven, set the timer. I over-season everything. Fresh cracked pepper makes raw chicken black. Kosher salt, onion flakes, garlic powder, oregano, basil, sage smells like pee but I sprinkle on three-times the amount you would anyway. The chicken will come out of the oven crunchy for spices but I don’t care. I like it that way. Just like I like my food burned crisp. Everything tasting like it came out of a campfire. Smoky.
I reach for another beer. Dinner is in the oven but Mike won’t be home for three hours at least. I’ll eat alone while I balance the budget. Wait up for him. Reheat a plate for him. Press my face into his neck while he eats. Breathe. So glad he’s home.
This is my second installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments, begun by Heather of the EO. You should totally join in.
Afternoons in the garden
When I was a little girl, I believed my Aunt Sue had a fairy garden. We would sit together, she and I, and watch her garden from the sofa in her living room, waiting to see the fairies. We had to sit very still and be very quiet or else they would not come. My heart would flutter with anticipation. It felt nearly impossible to sit so still, but I wanted to see the fairies more than anything in the world so I would hold my breath and pretend to be a statue.
And then she’d gasp, a nearly inaudible intake of breath. “There’s one!”
“Where?” I’d stretch my eyes open as wide as they would go, straining to see.
“That little whisp of light! Right there, near the roses. That’s a fairy.”
And then I saw it. The tiniest glint, like sun bouncing off a drop of dew. “I see him! I see him! He’s so beautiful!” My heart leapt and overflowed with joy. Fairies! Right there near the roses. Magic in real life.
Aunt Sue died fifteen years ago, but I think of her every day. When I sit on the balcony and hear a buzzing and feel the breeze from a hummingbird’s wings caress my cheek, I watch while the little bird takes long sips from the red salvia at my shoulder and I can’t help but think I’m being visited by fairies.
