We torment them.
I give you a video of Squirrel Queen’s mom, who had no idea that I was shooting a video of her at the Thanksgiving Roast Beast celebration.
Listen for her “Heh” at the end.
Yeah, it’s the Turkey Dance.
The woman really has rhythm. Seriously.
1. I am as bloated as a pregnant Kangaroo. Although I realize kangaroos are not indigenous to northwest Tennessee, I think if you came to my house you might say in surprise “Man, you look like a bloated kangaroo.” This, alas, would indeed happen.
2. The storm here last night was so fantastic and wonderful that it took me more than 30 minutes to realize I was sitting in a carport watching it that was completely made of wrought iron with the wind whipping my hair about while lightening cracked over the river leaving a dark world alight for brief seconds which was so fantastic I cannot put it into words. The wrought iron was something I needed, most likely, to take into consideration but I didn’t. I surprise myself sometimes by ignoring important details, but I lived and it was wonderful so it all came out well.
3. I can indeed eat sweet potatoes covered in marshmallows by delicately scrapping the horrid white stuff off the top and it tastes pretty good. (Don’t like marshmallows in the least.) All is well though because I don’t like merangue on pie either and I scrape that off too (I call it cow slobber.) There is always a compromise that you can find if you lookhard enough and are willing to meet in the middle and you might find it can turn out quite to your advantage.
4. Mabel is the best dog in the world because she went out to Squirrel Queen’s mother’s farm and got along with a new, very nervous, very yappy teacup poodle. I am quite thankful for Mabs. She’s a good one.
5. This is the first Thanksgiving in 12 years that I really enjoyed myself so much that it was almost painful. A delicious time that I also cannot put into words, but just wanted you to know, after a very tense year, I felt my heart was right back in the place that it needed to be.
And for that, I am grateful and give thanks to things I cannot see.
Happy Thanksgiving, campers. Thank YOU for making this fun. I really appreciate it. The family thing awaits as does turkey, dressing, pickled okra, beer…
You know, the standards.
Have a lovely holiday and see you on the flip side.
Photo from The Boat Lullabies, which is FANTASTIC.
I think you guys might want to check this out.
“UNSETTLED” THE WORLD’S ONLY ZOMBIES VS. PILGRIMS MOVIE!!! In 1585 a group of English settlers landed near present-day North Carolina. These pilgrims expected wealth and prosperity from the untouched land but instead recieved famine and hyperthermia. Their eventual fate has been unknown UNTIL NOW!!
LEARN WHAT HISTORY BOOKS NEVER TAUGHT YOU AS THE WESTERN WORLDS FIRST ATTEMPT AT COLONIZATION GETS FOIBLED BY ZOMBIES IN THIS HISTORICAL ORGY of VIOLENCE and GORE!
This was sent to me by J.D. Rainer.
Of course, it’s all true. I KNEW IT!
History books never tell you the real stuff.
Gary Sandy’s flybacks make me laugh.
I love me some Les Nessman. Yes, indeed, I do.
Yesterday, I was working on some projects from the homestead and decided to cook chili for the groovy chicks at work. Of course, if you have ever eaten my cooking, you might decide that this was not a gift although I must say I had some good intentions about it all.
I only ruined one shirt, the dogs didn’t throw up after eating an onion and a can of biscuits (for dressing I’m making this evening) which fell on the floor. Yes, dressing is one of the five dishes I can make successfully from a recipe from my mom. I dropped some water on the floor and my dog Duff slid on it and went flying into the pantry because I’d left the door open. (This was excessively funny. I guess you had to be there.) I made more noise dropping pots like nobody’s business. I also learned that ovens have timers.
I got mad skillz, I tell you. Mad Skillz.
I did pretty well with the stirring of the chili though and sometimes it’s best to look at the positive side of life and decided to document the atrocities on Twitter. It entertained me. Thanks saraclark, Russ and Ginger for hanging out with me for a while online on the “Will Newscoma-Blow-Up-The-Kitchen Watch”. I really do adore you guys.
If Homer reads this (she is on holiday for the next week), I didn’t break anything other than your dog’s stomach. Oops.
BadgerBeth came over to sample the chili and deemed it edible. She didn’t die. Another good sign from the hills of west Tennessee. We haven’t seen much of the Badger lately as she has been, da-da-dum, seeing someone who we are meeting later this week. Cool beans for Beffers. And our buddy, the Beccster, also came over and we had a lovely time. She also had some chili and didn’t die. We also imbibed in a fine frothy hopps and barley beverage after I cleaned things up. (Homer, I really did clean things up, you would be so proud. And the dishwasher didn’t ever explode.)
There was no death at Chez Coma last night and not one person even got food poisoning. Now I have to figure out how to get six quarts of chili to the office but I think I have that covered. A good sign for a fine Thanksgiving week.
Badger is also going to go with us to the farm at Harris Station this year to celebrate Pilgrim Day with Stephanie’s family.
This should be fun.
Of course, these are small things we are giving thanks for this week. No death by Newscoma chili, good friends, dogfriends not suffering from gastronomical issues and no food poisoning. Woot.
Because we aren’t having an office Christmas party this year (budgetary stuff from the home office in Wichita) I’m wondering if I should delve into throwing a bash for the groovy chicks at work. I wonder if I can get Home Ec-101 to sponsor it or at least give tips on how not to burn the house down. If you are wondering, I never took Home Ec. I was in Drama Club and “Swing” Choir. Yep, I’m one of those. They might be able to answer the age-old question of how someone non-domestic becomes domestic or something. They also might just pray for me. That might work as well.
One more day of herding cats before some down time before the holiday. Something we all need.
On a final note, light a candle for a buddies Slartibartfast and Lintella. We are thinking of you from the west of the state.
Is Harry Reid finally playing hardball? Not Chris Matthews HardBall, because that show just gives me the hives, but some Democratic “Harry”ball?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has decided to keep the chamber in session over the Thanksgiving break to block President Bush from making any unsavory recess appointments while Senators are out of town.
Incidentally, I like saying Harry outloud. I have no idea why.
Just saying.
All right, campers, I’m in for the Home-Ec 101 contest on Thanksgiving horror stories.
It’s a scary tale of birds, artichoke dip, our family tradition of a wonderful shrimp dip.
My mother was a great cook. She could pretty much cook anything and reminds me a bit of Claudia and Laura Creekmore as she was always trying new things but she loved her traditional dishes taught to her by the elder women here in Hooterville. She could cook better than anyone and she wasn’t afraid to try new things. It was all of the good when my mom was in the kitchen, I assure you.
One year probably around 1990, she had spent three days making dressing, a turkey and all the little dips that my family loves that have been in my family for generations. We are dip eaters from way back and the table had all the little delicacies that my family loves that everyone else would probably look at horror in.
Homer and I helped as we did each year. I think I opened the package that had the rolls in it although I wasn’t allowed near the stove.
Yeah, I got mad skillz.
She also had a dog, who, in a wild fit of imagination, she named Girl. Now, Girl was a medium to largish sized dog, black in color and reminds me of Smiley’s dog Nellie except not as poodley and sans cone (which Nellie likes, if you didn’t know). She was saved from the Animal Shelter in Nashville that used to be in West Meade in Nashville. This dog loved my mother with all of her being and had little to do with the rest of us. (True story, after my mother died, the dog died within just a few months from grief.)
Girl was my mom’s dog.
In the family home, there is a small counter where my mother painstakingly had set up the dressing, turkey, and the variety of dips that we are just nuts about and we all went into the living room (I think we were watching football) with dinner on the horizon.
Then, we heard a noise and a crash. As we ran into the kitchen, dip was lying in the floor, a turkey was torn, half eaten and our beloved dips were being eaten off the floor quicker than Britney Spears running over another member of the Paparazzi’s feet.
Girl had cleared the spread within a matter of seconds.
There would be no roast beast this Thanksgiving day.
After the fury at the dog subsided, it got funny. Really funny. And we laughed until we cried and then laughed some more.
We may have run to the Kwikee Mart to get chicken that day, I can’t remember.
The moral of the story is, we had each other, Girl wasn’t massacred for her canine eating indiscretion and everyone chortled about it for years.
I don’t know if this has to do with food-poisoning on Thanksgiving but, we all have our own odd journeys. I wonder if they will let me open the rolls again this year.
Ahh, memories.
Okay, I realize that sometimes I’m a bit melodramatic. I think I should have been hired as an extra on shows like “The Love Boat” or “Vegas” (that was Dan Tanna, right?)
How’s that for random?
I’ve been thinking about the Thanksgiving holiday. As much as a I adore Halloween, and I appreciate that we have a day that we are supposed to wake up and go “Wow, I’m thankful, by golly. I’m going to eat a big bird, watch football and avoid cranberry salad” it just doesn’t bowl me over like other holidays. As a kid, when you were supposed to make those pilgrim’s hats in kindergarten out of construction paper and something strange like a paper plate, I always felt melancholy.
Now, that’s a lie. I had no idea what melancholy meant at 5-years-old. My happiness level had to do with whether or not I got to play the cymbals during the music part of the day. Man, I loved the cymbals and hated playing the triangle. Now, that was just plain torture, playing that goofy triangle. I was a cymbals girl.
But, nonetheless I still hated that damn pilgrim hat. I would have much rather have made the boy pilgrim hat, but no, we were stuck with this atrocity.
The one thing I do like about Thanksgiving is that it kicks off the holidays and, if you can find your best chi, people tend to be more cheerful right after Turkey Day. As it gets closer to Christmas, I think people get more stressed although I have nothing to back that up other than 40 odd years on the planet.
So, as I tend to do, I looked up Thanksgiving Zombies. I didn’t really find anything (I do this to amuse me, remember that.) I’m still on the hunt. I think that would cheer me up immensely, although I’m actually already pretty cheery.
But I did find this one sentence in a story about gasoline (one I’m not 100 percent buying, incidentally) that said this:
The most significant change is that the Pentagon will open unused military airspace from Florida to Maine to create “a Thanksgiving express lane” for commercial airliners.
I don’t know why I find that unusual, but I did.
Here’s your arbitrary blog post of the week. From Dan Tanna to the Thanksgiving Express Lane in just few scant seconds.
I have no entertaining skills when it comes to the holidays. If you want a Pabst Blue Ribbon (I’ll be having a Bass, as I’m wont to do) and some cheetos, I’m your girl.
And cheese. Yeah, I dig cheese.
Anyway, I found this list online and it made me wonder what I’m doing wrong. And, the original article is here. And it’s called Foxy Festivities so I listed their advice just for you, campers. My answers are in red.
1. Reserve the bird Reserve a turkey and schedule a pick-up, so you avoid racing around at the last minute to find the perfect one.
Okay, no. They are in the frozen turkey section at the grocery store which usually has a lot of people rooting around for 2 more ounces of rock-hard bird. Not gonna do any reserving of Tom Turkey. We usually eat chicken anyway.
2. Brush up Dust off your linens. Wash and iron them so they are table-ready.
Ironing. Next. Paper towels are your friend. Or your sleeve. Have another Pabst.
3. Dig in Dig up those Thankgiving-exclusive utensils that you’ll need, including items such as gravy boats and turkey carvers. This way you’re not scrambling on Thanksgiving day.
I have a gravy boat. Okay, I’ll get that out. I like the words “gravy boat.” Wait, it’s not my gravy boat. It’s Homer’s. I’m not allowed to touch it.
4. Lighten up Stock up on candles: tapers, along with some pillars and votives in autumnal hues to adorn your home.
I buy candles all the time. No biggie here. What is a taper? We have goats around here. Will that do? Aren’t they in the same family?
5. Order in Place an order for a centerpiece or floral arrangement. If you plan on making your own, order flowers for your local shop to set aside for you. Consider gourds and pumpkins for your table or around your home.
I will not order a flower arrangement, but that money can go to hooch and pickled okra. The table is filled with magazines I have to read. Just scoot them over if you come over. And old newspapers. I will buy a gourd, just to be Foxy Festive and classy
6. Easy freeze Prep and freeze homemade cranberry sauce ahead of time.
I’ll freeze some jello shooters. I don’t like jello shots but I had one last week and only gagged a little and then had another. That’s how it goes. I will also freeze some water. It becomes this crazy thing called ice. My parties are BYOB. I will supply some Dr. Pop, SunDrop and Shasta. What time are you coming again?
7. Make arrangements Create place cards for your guests. Purchase plain cards and address ‘em up with a rubber stamp or ribbon.
Oh, that’s funny. Really. I’m laughing.
8. Mix it up Be your own DJ by crafting a music playlist. Burn CDs or create a long holiday mix on your iPod.
No problem on this one. I hope you like Miles Davis and Johnny Cash.
9. Refresh your refreshments Load up on wine and beverages. Make sure you have ample glassware.
PARTY! Where are the Solo cups!?!!
10. Give thanks Thanksgiving should include a ritual where everyone expresses what they are thankful for. Make “Thanks” cards for all your guests to write down why they are grateful.
No problem. I will give thanks. I’m glad to be alive everyday, thankful for a great family, superfriends (not to be confused with the Wondertwins) and a moderately good life. I give thanks everyday. I’ll do it with more gusto next week. Pinkie Promise.
I’m really a better guest than I am a party thrower.
I know a good juke joint if you are interested. It just depends on what you are in the mood for.
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