Touche Thanksgiving. Touche.

My family is, from a distance, your run-of-the-mill, normal family… Blue collar immigrants with strong cultural backgrounds embracing American lifestyles and traditions tossed into a suburban neighborhood where excellent landscaping supersedes any and all victories.

Really though, we’re a mess. And with every holiday comes the adventure and drama of bringing together not so friendly relatives and their goody-two-shoe kids that can do no wrong. Fuckers.

Not this time. Not in this house. This Thanksgiving the aforementioned drama turned out to be too much for the family to get together and play nice. No sister, cousins, aunts, or dogmatic uncles that even a Buddhist would consider beating with roll of quarters.

They simply don’t get along. This left me with only my mom, dad, the cool uncle, and way too much booze. Now I’m guessing that religion begins to take a higher precedence when you’re much older because I was shooting down any and all discussions that had to with God by pouring more booze and saying things like, “How about that guy Abraham, eh? Almost killed his son for no reason. That’s messed up.” It’s the guilt of being drunk combined with the inability to explain why that was okay to do that gets them every time.

::evil grin::

But what scared me the most was the unsolicited conversations after consuming 2 bottles of wine and 1 very good bottle of Patron Tequila. First, my Lebanese mother decided that she should explain the timing of her marriage was largely in part due to the unplanned birth of my crazy sister. Too much information. You see I was content…No. I was happy as a lark going 33 years knowing for sure that my mom was and still is a Saint. No longer true. I mean she’s not Jodie Marsh or anything, but still.

I ask mom, “Some wine please?” She takes the bottle to the head, puts it down next to her and says, “Yeah it’s good”. How could I have not seen this before???

Then good ol’ dad wants in on the disappoint-the-shit-of-out-son day and tells me that before he was a tailor and a boxer in Mexico, he wanted to be a priest. In fact, he was so far in the process that he only had to take his oath! Again, too much information. He only changed his mind about priesthood and went on to a boxing career when he couldn’t provide for his siblings. Thank the gods for 3rd world conditions! So now I’m sitting at the table - in absolute horror - thinking about how small of a chance my entire existence had.

Dad asks for more tequila in a language I’m not familiar with. “It’s Latin taught to me by Missionaries”, he says. My dad speaks Latin fluently? This is too much.

Not having family around to UFC fight each other to the death was supposed to be a good thing. Instead, I found myself putting on imaginary ear muffs and stuffing my face with comfort foods much like the day I found out there is no Santa Claus. Fuckers.

So, Thanksgiving, here’s to you giving me more memories I’ll need to bury deep – way deep – in that abyss I like to put direful things. More pie, please.

Fluff and Fold Saves Lives

I heart fluff and fold. A fellow blogger (Peach In Place) recently reminded me how much I used to appreciate the service. And here's the undeniable reason why... the art of matching socks. No one else does a better job. The proof is in the fact most of us tend to have those almost identical pairs of socks in your laundry. Almost in that one pair is a little more worn or downright holey than the other pair. The trick is to match the shotty sock with its equally shotty partner, not to be mixed with the good pair. Nothing is worse than, just before leaving for work, unfolding your socks only to find that one sock is pristine while the other looks like well... crap. You know instantly if you don’t take the time that you don’t have to go back to the sock drawer and vigorously search for that other good sock, your day will suck because of a disproportionate and uncouth feeling at your feet, increasing the chance of you becoming unhinged and offing your boss and/or useless co-worker. Phew! All this violence and mayhem could have been avoided with the simple and ever-convenient services of an immigrant lady resembling my own grandmother from either side.

Fluff and fold. It can save lives.