Happy Thanksgiving! I know that many of you are very busy and/or really depressed today. Some of you are alone, and many, many more of you desperately wish that you were. So, rather than tax you with a challenging or insightful essay, I thought I'd take this opportunity to clean up my inbox and answer a few of the questions that people have asked me recently.
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Dear Simcha,
By this time of day, I'm supposed to be basting the turkey for the fifth or sixth time so it will be golden and delicious in time for our Thanksgiving feast. But I haven't even defrosted it yet, because I spent all of yesterday watching Benny Hill and drinking the rum I bought to make rum raisin bread pudding. (I also ate all the raisins, which is a separate problem.) So now I have eleven guests coming in a matter of hours, and all I have to offer them is 22 pounds of solid turkey ice. I can't even get the bag off. I think I may still actually be drunk. I'm so ashamed. What can I do?
Signed, Filled With Regret
Dear Filled With Regret,
Lucky for you, I'm an avid historian, so I can save your sorry hide with my expertise! It's a little known fact that turkeys aren't even an authentic Thanksgiving main course, so it's actually quite acceptable to serve something else. Forget that boring old bird. Instead, call yourself a purist and dish up what the original Pilgrims probably had for their main course: a couple of juicy wild eagles. If no eagles are available, swan is an acceptable substitute. Just don't forget the traditional eel-and-poopberry compote for a side dish. And they drank hot tar from wooden cups. Hope this helps, and bon appétit! Or should I say (since French had not yet been invented in Pilgrim times), Huzzah!
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Dear Simcha,
I'm eleven months old. My mother is fairly useful, and I've gotten accustomed to her smell. She can even be kind of funny sometimes, like with that noise she makes when I grab her lips and twist them around. But she has one really bad habit, and I don't know if I can tolerate it anymore.
Sometimes, when I'm awake, she puts me down. On the floor. For minutes at a time. She does this even though she knows perfectly well that the floor is a completely inappropriate and demeaning location for someone of my social standing (I basically run the household). Also, it's harder to bite her nose when she's not holding me. I'm at my wit's end. What do you suggest?
P.S. Also, she sometimes tries to put socks on me. Socks, in November! How am I supposed to deal with this level of idiocy?
Signed, Benedicta
Dear Benedicta,
The main thing you need to keep in mind is that your mother really loves you and is trying her best, but that, because of the demands of her current schedule, she has the physical prowess and mental acuity of a damp Kleenex. She knows, deep in her heart, that putting you down is the wrong thing to do, but she feels that she can't help herself.
What she needs is someone to help snap her out of her pathetic, self-pitying state. Have you tried screaming? If that doesn't work, have you tried screaming more? I really think you should try screaming, followed by some more screaming. Good luck!
P.S. Don't forget that thing you do, where you put your little head down and then look up with your big, brown eyes. Once she reassembles herself from the puddle she instantly becomes when she meets your gaze, she will want to pick you up, because you are a cutie wootie wootie, oh yes you are, and Mama loves you very much, oh yes she does.
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Dear Simcha,
We're having relatives over for Thanksgiving. We are polar opposites on just about every issue, and every other year, the feast quickly devolved into a screaming match, and everyone went home furious. Grandmama has convinced us to patch things up and get together again this year. We've already agreed not to talk about politics, but there are so many other divisive topics of conversation. How can I be sure that we will have a peaceful and pleasant day?
Signed,
William Makepeace Crackery
Dear Bill,
Don't underestimate the healing properties of just the right menu. Here are a few recipes that might just do the trick, and will give you the happy, quiet holiday your battered soul needs.
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Hey -
Leaving the office in a few minutes. Will meet you at Mom's. Thanks for making all eleven kinds of pie. It's so much easier to choose which one I want when I can actually see them, you know? Oh, some guy was selling puppies out of his trunk, so I picked up a few. You're so good with words -- you can name the one with bowel problems. See you soon!
love, D
Dear D,
>>The following address has permanent fatal errors: simchafisher@gmail.com
(reason: 540 OY-001 (FEH0-GRR4-FU23)
In order to avoid being placed on a permanent block list, please reconfigure your message so that it includes no puppies, and more gin.
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Dear Simcha,
I’ve been reading your blog for some time now, but this is the first time I’ve ever read it fast enough off the presses to be the first to comment (unless some fool gets ahead of me whilst I’m typing this elaborate missive).
I just wanted to thank you for all of the wonderful posts I’ve had the pleasure to read, and for the notes of encouragement, humor and even, at times, spiritual chiding. Keep up the good work, and I hope you and yours have a wonderful Thanksgiving (I’m Antiochian Orthodox, so our Advent is already started…but we get Thanksgiving).
Love your awesomeness! So. Much!
Happy Thanksgiving! These are so funny!
Try screaming more….Hahahaha hope my baby doesn’t take that advice!!!
Hahahaha, I was going to tell you that your link to the recipes is messed up, but then I read the web address. Hehehe.
I second Judgemental Onlooker’s comment ; you ARE awesome!
For my son, I would change “socks” to “shirts”...he hates things going over his head, lol.
Trying myself to stay out if the dog house today. (So many people here). thanks for the laugh today. Happy thanksgiving and God Bless All
We should get Benedicta and my Alice (3.5 months) together. Though she happily maps for hours on end while I am @ work and she is @ daycare (I know, for shame!), she does nothing but scream if I place her gently in the Rock n Play once she has fallen asleep. Then while looking upon the purple and red face, I meet the child’s gaze and, whilst continuing with the blood curdling peals of SCREAM, and she smiles adoringly up at me at which time I puddle and give up making the pineapple upside down cake my dear father requested for Thanksgiving dessert. Happy Thanksgiving Fisher family!
BWAHAHA! Love it. Thanks and stay sane this holiday season. (Nah, just thanks.)
LOVE your blog!
@Bob crachit…got an old friend (old meaning long-standing, not in years, of course) who has brought you to life in ST.C,MO for years. That you, FrankO? If so, hi-de-ho from your old BC buddies who birthed all the boys.
Happy Thanksgiving!
So much fun! Thanks for writing this, I have to work through the night tonight so we aren’t “doing turkey” until Sunday. Finally found the perfect way to ignore the bird an extra few days and still get it done “on time”. Love you, Happy Thanksgiving!
I tried screaming, but it wasn’t age-appropriate screaming (What is age-appropriate screaming for 48 these days?), and so I was put in time-out, put in time-out in a completely different state of the Union. Is that what happened? Oh, I don’t know. Our God is an awesome God.
As I sit here typing this I’m supposed to be scrubbing the guest bathroom so my mother-in-law doesn’t think it smells like the gas station kind. Instead, I was perusing the aol homepage and deciding whether or not to click on the article about the guy who cooked his wife. I resisted, as my virtue is impaired but not dead, and the clank of my husband’s pans in the kitchen IS pricking my conscience.
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Three teens and a twenty are still asleep except for kid #2 who is in the south of France with his new family that he has decided is cooler than we are. He finally called after two days. His last call was one in which he was stuck on the tarmac on a broken airplane after three hours of layover. Last night, after 24 hours my husband told me: “If there had been a crash we would have heard about it already.” So kid #2 casually calls me at eight this morning to ask me for my green bean recipe, and blithely tells me how beautiful the Mediterranean looks.
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Adorable child #8 just happily dressed herself like any other August day. Children are impervious to cold. Are we just slow,stupid, or have too many high ideals as far as dress codes go? Yesterday I meditated on the acute suffering of mothers who have fat babies that scream and scream and scream when Mommies are expected to have clean houses while they keep the world spinning and have dinner on the table at five. Moaning three year olds that want me to fix them a cup of decaf with lots of cream and sugar are soooooo easy in comparison. This is not why I’m delighted over the sweet little poppy seed sized baby happily ensconced in my aging uterus. Yes, God willing, he will be a fat little screamer too, given time and blessings. I will surely reflect how God must see us all in this way….
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I will admit to a tiny flash of delight in your first letter writer. I was already bonding with her until I smelled your naughty ruse. That was when I breathed a sweet Thanksgiving sigh of relief that you haven’t so advanced in the attainment of perfect perfection, that you were rendered unable to write what you wrote above. Thank the good Lord. (raising my imaginary Thanksgiving goblet of—-, until little poppy seed is not capable of getting pickled.)
p.s. Husband is in the kitchen obsessing over his gravy and mashed potatoes while I write this. Heh. Thanks be to God.
Oh. my. dear. Your first correspondent and I could become such good friends… I hope she writes you again!
Happy Thanksgiving to all and Congratulations Anna Lisa!
Yay, anna lisa, I’m glad that baby is still safe and sound! And I’m also very glad to hear that I don’t have the only coffee-loving 3-y-o. Tells ya what they get in mama’s milk around here…
@Cordelia. I like new friends! You should look me up on Facebook (but do know that she is actually a he…my name is Josh) :). Just look for the fella in the black fedora…
@queenieB, No. I’m just a fictional charachter from a 19th century English novel.
Anna ,
I used to shop at a salvage store for groceries.Having 8 kids & little money to buy stuff to pack lunches with, I sent them off to Catholic school one week with lunch boxes packed with Starbucks iced coffee.It seemed like a good treat,cost pennies per serving, & may have kept them awake through Math class.
My mama drank tea & kept the Irish custom of serving it to all,small children included.
It’s all probably healthier than drinking Coke.Easier on the teeth, too.
Is mapping kids something that just started happening since the 1990’s? I remember doing that with a laborador retriever. He took to it like water.
Thanks venerable, good, mamas! :D Wishing you and your families blessings too.
It would seem that my eleven month old penned you a letter about her latest annoyance with me. She tried screaming, screaming more, and even putting her head on the floor then looking up at me, but alas, she has spent most of the day on the floor with her sisters. Thanks for this post!
How’s spiderman?
Tell your first correspondent to chop the turkey up. Then it will cook quite quickly. There is no rule that it must be carved at the table. If it is still very frozen, use an axe ( or put it in the oven till it softens up, then chop it up.) Do not ask me how I know this.
Give the baby drugs. The screaming will stop and she’ll be willing to be on the floor.
Seriously, whenever my eleven month old is like that, I spend the whole day at my wits end, then my husband comes home and says “did you try Ibuprofin?” 15 minutes to a total personality change. I think we underestimate how much teething makes them suffer….
Oh, Gosh!
I missread the email about the baby and missed the part where she said ‘eleven months old’: I was thinking about a full grown woman and was HORRIFIED about the was she treated her mother! I’m not wearing my glasses and missed the first sentance the first seven or eight times I tried to read it.(it also didn’t dawn on me till then that the letters and replies are jokes, my reaction in general was. Wow, Simcha has become very bitter in the few monthes I’ve been offline.)
Again, I was horrified. Now, though, I’m cracking up.
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