When your neighbor makes you the worst smelling turkey ever

Last week I changed my blog header to the snowy frog scene and bam, it snowed.

Curious, ey?

If you're like me, you're spending this week in a pre-Thanksgiving frenzy. I don't cook, but Chuck and I do go away with the kids, which means packing and wrangling, driving and bickering.

For the last five years we've shared a timeshare condo on the ocean with my parents and Chuck's. It's right in Connecticut, so the drive isn't more than an hour and I swear I'm not complaining—ocean view for the holidays? Yes, please—but the condo is one story so we sleep in close proximity (all 10 of us). We have snorers. We have sleep talkers.

We have a toddler.

Toddlers have the propensity for destroying rooms, meals, and lives.

Think I'm being dramatic? I bet you $100,000,000 you've never had a toddler.

I'm hoping this year will be less stressful than last. Cam had just started crawling and the condo we were staying in was dressed in industrial style, uber modernistic furniture. Steel legs on chairs, dagger edges to the coffee tables, pointy sides to the beds, you get the idea. Add a few Matchbox cars to the floor and suddenly the place is a rollerskating arena of death, especially for senior-aged family members who've had a few too many cocktails.

Oops! Did Grammie just plummet face-first into the steel bolts of the fireplace?

Cam slept well in the Pack 'N Play the first night. (Why the hell do they call it that anyway? It should be called the Please Sleep in Me. Please.) Lulled into a false sense of well-being by Cam's feat, Chuck and I drank and ate way too much at Thanksgiving dinner the second night* and of course, Cam woke up screaming every 30 minutes after we put him to bed.

Around 11 p.m. we decided we couldn't spend the whole night like that. Despite the 15 fans we'd brought for white noise no one was getting any shut-eye. Chuck and I packed up Cam and all of our stuff and started for home. On the way, I called our next door neighbors who were dog-sitting and let them know we'd be home.

"We let her sleep at our house and we know you've missed her," they said, "so we'll bring her back home."

I told them that wasn't necessary. We were straddled with a baby who wouldn't stop screaming. We'd be okay without the dog, but they insisted.

An hour later we pulled into the driveway and found our neighbor Bob standing in our driveway, holding our dog. We stepped out of the car with a still screaming Cam and smelled...

...skunk.

"I'm sorry," Bob said. "When I opened my door your damn dog ran into your yard after a skunk. I chased her into the woods. We both got sprayed. I opened your door to see if I could find a towel and she ran inside. So yeh, it reeks!"

Bob had been drinking. Or he was high on skunk fumes. It was hard to tell. If you've never smelled skunk spray right after it happens, it has a sweet onion pungency to it that makes your throat burn and your eyes water. When we went inside it was even worse—but I had to put our screaming monster-child to bed.

"I'll open the windows and crank the heat," Chuck said, "if you deal with the kid." He winced—from the skunk or our child, I didn't know.

Bob followed us inside and apologized. Chuck put the dog on our screened-in porch and started to wipe her down. Thankfully she'd only been sprayed on her snout. I put Cam in his crib. He immediately stopped crying.

"Little fucker," I said as I shut his door. The upstairs was safe from the smell but it was brutal downstairs, where Bob had parked himself on the couch. He was examining his shoes.

"The thing is," he told me, "when I ran out the door to bring your dog home I grabbed the first pair of shoes I found. These aren't mine, and they stink. I'm scared to go home. I think they belong to my uncle."

Chuck returned from the porch. "I got most of it. She's fine."

"I feel terrible," Bob said. He rubbed his shoes.

"It's fine!" I lied. "We'll probably just go to bed now. The upstairs isn't bad."

"Let's get the air moving. Where are the fans?" Chuck asked. "Oh right, they're all at the condo."

Bob wasn't moving. "Let's just go to bed," I urged Chuck.

"Right!" Bob said, standing up.

"No," said Chuck. "I need a drink."

"Yes!" Bob said.

And that is how Thanksgiving ended. With watery eyes and burning throats, we tied one on with Bob. Eventually he got over his shoe worries. Eventually Chuck and I went to bed. And the best part—the part I am most thankful for—is that Cam slept until 9 a.m.

In EPT (Exhausted Parent Time) that's fucking noon. 

Happy holidays to you and your family. Like myself, I hope you have a skunkless, toddlerless time!

For more holiday merriment, check out these Thanksgiving posts from years past:

• I have no idea what day it is. Plus, quit bitching about your gift cards 

• Happy Thanksgiving, Buttfart Face! 

 • If you were in line tonight at a liquor store, I am thankful for you
 
• Anyone wanna trade grannies?

• Because a frozen turkey is riding shotgun, that's why  

• Is that a drumstick in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

* Slight exaggeration for dramatic effect. In other words: We were okay to drive. I don't take drinking and driving lightly.

If you were in line tonight at a liquor store, I am thankful for you

I had to go to the grocery store after work today to buy stuffing and diapers. Mmmm. I'd expected pandemonium. Thankfully it was just congested, not quite chaotic.

Next I hopped over to the liquor store to buy red wine (loving Sangre de Toro for $9.99 by the way. Wine plus a free plastic bull!).

Therein lay the pandemonium. Lines of people snaked through the store. They were out en masse.

As the shoppers clutched their beer/wine/vodka/nips (not unlike someone might cling to a favorite stuffed animal), I stepped back and smiled. I felt all warm and smushy with kindred spiritness.

Can we be honest? Lots of people talk about how thankful they are at this time of year but really, there are some things (like wacky relatives) we just can't be thankful for because they're too weird for words.

Alcohol helps.

Immensely.

Case in point, my father called me at 9:45 last night to tell me he was hosting Thanksgiving. Nine-freaken-forty-five. One day before the holiday. Our family plays the holidays like a hand of poker.

"Whatcha doing for Thanksgiving?"

"I don't know. What are you doing?"

"I'm not sure. Why don't you tell me what you're doing then I'll tell you what I'm doing."

We dance this little dance because deep down, we don't really get each other and would rather that everyone forgot about the other and went about their own decking of the halls. Except that a day or two before the actual holiday, someone has a case of the sentimental warm fuzzies—"Remember that Christmas we all stayed awake and watched TV together?"—and picks up the phone.

"Whatcha doing for Christmas?"

"I don't know. What are you doing?"

"I'm not sure. Why don't you tell me what you're doing then I'll tell you what I'm doing."

It's quite bizarre. I blame it all on my 40-year-old cousin who still lives at home. The same scantily clad women of 1970 (think "Help Me OB1 Kenobi, you're my only hope") are still affixed to his wall on posters. My other cousin? Her mouth is a fire cracker of swear words, Marlboro Reds and Budweiser.

So here's what I want to say on this eve before Thanksgiving: I am thankful—for all the people in line at the liquor store who need to throw back a few to make their day with the relatives more tolerable. Family members are crazy. A drink or two can be a curing salve to an open, Princess Leia obsessed wound.

One that can talk only about Nascar and the Food Channel, which you'd think would be mutually exclusive interests and yet at the end of the night, race cars, Parmesan Roasted Butternut Squash* and chicks swirl together in a beautiful display of colors.

I told you booze helps.

Happy Thanksgiving!

*No, he doesn't bring any of this shit to Thanksgiving.

Ten signs you're on the cusp. No. 1: You contemplate setting up your bedroom in the parking lot. No. 2: You swear a lot. No. 3...

When my friend Jen and I rented an apartment together 10 years ago, I moved most of my belongings in by myself. At the time, Chuck and I were taking a break and I was going through my I-am-an-independent-woman-hear-me-roar phase.

I may have even, ehem, stopped shaving my armpits.

I said may have.

Because the walkway leading to the front door of the apartment was a winter mud and slush pit, I had no choice but to move my things in through the back entrance. The door at the top was nice and wide, but the stairwell was a narrow two-story metal fire escape.

My solo stint was going fine until I got to my futon mattress, which was a double.



If you’ve ever tried to pull or tug on a futon mattress you know that it’s impossible. They weigh a ton, and you can’t get a good grip because its innards are so smushy.

Hear.me.roar.

I grabbed the edges and dragged it out of the car, then hogtied it with electrical cords and pushed it towards the stairwell.

What ensued was 45 minutes of grunting, pushing, tugging, grabbing, climbing, swearing, bending, jumping and crying. The cords kept catching on the railing. I couldn’t get a good enough handful of stuffing to pull it. I wasn’t strong enough to push it. I felt like a pencil trying to birth an elephant through my eraser top crotch. But I did it. I finally pushed that Godforsaken mattress

all

the

way

up

the

stairs.

When I leaned against the railing to catch my breath, I looked over and saw that an entire apartment complex had been watching me out of their windows. Watching and laughing. Laughing and watching.

Bastards.

Yesterday, as I carried co-worker Robert’s 20-pound frozen turkey up his creaky, slippery fire escape stairs because he assumed his complimentary ride home included the services of a personal assistant—he even asked me to stop for smokes at the gas station!—I found myself remembering that fateful futon fuck. And I started laughing hysterically.

Life is absurd sometimes, isn't it?

I laughed the whole way home. Laughing while riding through Mulletville felt as good as sex. I felt like a fucking superhero.

I hope you laugh a lot this holiday—even if some dude who smells like cat pee is staring at you like you're crazy as you slap his frozen turkey on his counter and back slowly away.

Especially if.

Gobble, gobble.

P.S. If you'd like to read about my Aunt Burty and her affinity for drumstick strumming (as in, her own drumstick), check it out at honestbaby. It's a real whisker biscuit tickler.