Crossed Giblets of Death: The SJ Thanksgiving Family Therapy Thread

Though I really can't come close to 21's explanations, and not that any of you want to hear the family drama, I wanted to share the horror of my holiday in hopes of saving on the therapy bills:

My mother is a horrible cook. But she cannot accept this fact and proceeds to torture us every holiday.

This year, since it was just me, my dad and her, I suggested we make reservations. "But I like the way it makes the house smell!". Fine. I'll buy you a fucking Glade candle. Just spare us.

This is the first year in the last five that I've lived in their vicinity and can come over for Thanksgiving. I walk through the door and immediately despise my brother, who is living across the country, for his unbelievable good fortune on this day. He is being fed by the aunt who is half a cranberry shy of being Martha Stewart. And I have to face the parents alone.

Back to my mother's cooking: my grandfather had a digestive disorder, so my grandmother (who actually is a good cook) only made bland foods that he could eat. Ergo, my mother does not know how to put any flavor into food.

The turkey was dry and flavorless as always. The gravy was pale and bland. The mashed potatoes had the consistency of baby food. I never touch the green been casserole because previous experience has taught me that it will be slimier than it should be. The rolls were burned and dry. The cranberry was in its canned-food mold glory.

And the stuffing. I love stuffing. I eat it on normal days. But I refuse to eat it when it's been stuffed up a turkey's ass. It took my mother 15 years to learn that I will not eat in-the-bird stuffing. Ragu, be thankful for your sister and her efforts. It takes some people a loooooot longer to catch on.

But my mother's outside-the-bird stuffing is little more than dried bread chunks and raw celery. I will be adding about a cup of water and some serious seasonings when I reheat the leftovers.

After dinner I called my brother and threatened to kill him. He asked about the wine.

The wine has been a joke for years. My parents only drink wine on holidays, and the only wine they drink is Blue Nun. Think 70s kitsch at its finest.

Though my mother wouldn't let me bring a thing when I offered (stuffing? sweet potatoes? No! I'm cooking!), I put my foot down with the wine. Y'all can drink your Blue Nun, I said, but I'm bringing something else.

So I got a $12 bottle of something I couldn't pronounce at Whole Foods and it turned out to be great. Gave me at least enough of a buzz to drown out my mother’s passive-aggressive behavior (though on a good note, I didn’t hear “you should go to law school like your brother” once).

Dessert was banana bread, which tasted good but was very dry. It was served cold and buried in a mound of fat-free Cool Whip.

Thing that got to me, and maybe I’m just cranky because I worked double deadline yesterday and will have worked today, tomorrow (missing the shopping) and Saturday, is that my parents acted like this was a huge deal. “We’re so glad you could come over. It really made our Thanksgiving. This was so special.”

I’m over at their house about once a week. It’s so much better when we order a pizza and watch Law & Order together.

They acted offended that I didn’t want to stay the night, but I live 40 minutes away and have to work early in the morning. “Can’t you just tell them you won’t be there?” No, because then there will be no paper.

30 days until Christmas. At least my brother will be here for that and we can commiserate.

 

No. The conversation rapidly eroded into Emmah's bold rendition of 'CHINESE, JAPANESE, DIRTY KNEES, LOOK AT THESE!' (plucks front of shirt forward to make two perky little boobs--she is six, so we are all temporarily unsettled, I am sure this has something to do with all the incapacitated tampons.)

'Oh, well, isn't that darling...Emmah, come here and sit with Grandma....now sweetheart, it really isn't nice to make your boobies stick out like that, one day when you grow up you'll have lovely boobies, just like your mommy used to have, before you were born, sometimes when mommies have babies their boobies are never quite the same, but that is not your fault! You did nothing wrong, your mommy loves you no matter what has happened to her boobies! So! 21, do you wash these plastic forks, it seems such a shame to throw them away, no one even touched the cheesecake, except for Marcee, she certainly enjoys a good meal, doesn't she....God in heaven, I hope Lou remembered his Lactaid, Lou, did you take your...I SAID DID YOU TAKE...CAN YOU TURN DOWN THE TV, LOU, WE ARE NOT ALL INTERESTED IN WATCHING 'MEET THE FOCKERS'...God, he just loves that Barbra, I'm going to smooth out all this tin foil, 21, you can surely use it again....Boom, did you enjoy the anchovies?'

 

Cadet--Best line in the whole thread.

'Oven Roast Scentations! They'll think you cooked!" Commercial cuts to caterer shrpitzing house with Glade Oven Roast, while lady of the house gets a pedicure.

 

I started a thread about my family's Thanksgiving misadventure today, but I missed this one. So I shall post it here as well.
It isn't often when PVC pipe, Homeland Security, a trampoline and Rachel Ray all play key roles in my family's Thanksgiving, but so it was ...

So the mighty Farrar [not our real name] clan gathered today for Thanksgiving.
So me, and my brothers were outside throwing the football around with the nephews and nieces. My mother has a trampoline and we play a little game where we stand outside the trampoline and throw the football to a jumping child inside. Good times.
So my brother, a sports information director who shall remain nameless, is horsing around with one of the nephews. The trampoline is one of those safety first things with pipes and netting. And my brother had tossed a piece of PVC pipe through the net and one of my nephews was talking through one end and my brother was listening on the other and the nephew had pushed the PVC pipe out of the net and popped my brother near the eyebrow, so now bloodied from the pipe, he goes inside to clean up. Food's ready, so we all head inside a minute or two later.
I find my brother in the kitchen and he has a little gash. Nothing serious, but I take a look at it and say "I think you are going to need a stitch." And my brother pshaws my suggestion. A minute or two later he looks at me and says "I'm starting to feel sick." So I tell him let's get you into the living room and on the couch. So we start walking and then he says, "I think I'm going to faint." I laugh, but wrap my arm around him.
He then faints.
Panic ensues.
Key notes: My mother is a retired EMS director, another brother is the asst. Chief of Police in his town and I have some background in these matters as well.
Anyway, panic ensues.
One of my sisters asks, "is he faking?" as my 170-pound brother becomes dead weight as I lower him to the floor. My mother comes rushing over and starts screaming "Call 9-1-1!" She also knocks my brother's wife out of the way to get to him. My other brother starts pushing furniture - furniture? - out of the way and yet another sister - we have a large family - is screaming that the phone is off the hook and that she needs a cell phone. Also, in the background, six nieces and nephews are screaming and crying that their uncle is dead. I am still unflustered. I ask for a watch to take my brother's pulse, it was 60, and note that he is clammy and a delightful green color. Like guac.
My sister, the one who called 9-1-1 is now off the phone and pissed that dispatcher wanted to know if need for the ambulance was from a fight or not, which is a way to find out if the cops need to come as well, but that didn't make her very happy.
While my mother is just convinced that it is a concussion (my diagnosis - maybe, but likely mild) but my mom is sure because my brother has had a concussion before, like 18 years ago when he went tumbling out of the back of a pickup truck when he had been pitching eggs and biscuit dough - yay for small town living! - on Halloween night.
So my brother is more or less starting to come around. An ambulance is on the way and he's like "I'm not going to the hospital."
So the paramedics arrive and my brother is still on the floor. So they begin asking questions but this one is best:
Paramedic: Do you know what day it is?
Brother: Are you stupid? It's Thanksgiving.
Paramedic: I think you're fine.
A blood pressure is taken, low, but not unusual. Forms are signed. All this while my other brother, the cop, is taking pictures for posterity and what I'm sure will be later hilarity. Because of my mother's old job, I assume, the local Homeland Security guy makes an appearance, but maybe he thought it was the terrorists.
Anyway the turkey was delicious and per Rachel Ray's suggestion some of the stuffing was baked in muffin tins for individual servings. A thumbs up to that idea.
My brother is, by all appearances, fine. I predict at least one nephew or niece will mention this incident at a future therapy session and my brother's wife will be eternally pissed that she got knocked out of the way when her husband hit the ground.

 

Cadet, that is a great story. I think our mothers should swap recipes. Reading the description of your meal took me back to childhood.

In my mother's defense, a.) if she didn't cook from 1973 through 1999, she and my dad would have spent three-quarters of their income on takeout food since my dad can barely boil water and my sister and I are only slightly better and b.) she realizes she's a JV cook and gladly stepped aside for Xmas when my wife and brother-in-law volunteered (re: demanded) to cook last year.

Then again, my grandma was a great cook (RIP) so I have no idea why my mom didn't pick it up.

 

Heh. Your stories all are better than mine.

I had the always wonderful 15-hour travel day from hometown to Mom's town which included driving three hours from the middle of nowhere to the airport after the ominous "check engine" light came on, getting the flight delayed so much that I wouldn't have been able to make my connection and doing the frantic phone-rebooking so that I got into the final airport 3 hours later than I'd originally planned.

So I was all sorts of cheery when the cat-who-thinks-he's-a-dog woke me up at 6 a.m. for attention. Drug butt out of bed at 9 a.m. to watch the parade with a cranky younger sister and mom, plus the attention whore cat and the dog-cat, who is stalking said other cat.

Watch parade, mom sends the sister and I out to get newspapers, egg nog and cold medicine. Accomplish two of the three, come home to find the mother fretting that she doesn't know what tempurature the roast needs to be to be cooked enough to not kill us. She loves to cook but refuses to read recipies all the way through before starting cooking. I totally don't get that.

Combine with general disagreement between my mother the Cowboys' fan and her SO who's greatest joy in life if being right all the time and completely pompus about it arguing about Drew Bledsoe, the cranberry sauce looking like a cross between beets and jello mix and the cats wrestling on the stairs as I try to walk, and I was toast by 4. Which sucked because I wanted to see the Cowboys game.

And now? The sister is dragging us out for early morning shopping. This is me being so. fucking. thrilled.

That said, I'm so happy to be home and not stuck in my apartment.

 

Who here has the "Cousin Eddie" relative?

I swear by everything that is holy, I have an uncle that every year, we expect him to show up in a torn-up Winnebago.

 

The best I can come up with is having to sit across from the wife's cousin-in-law as she breast-fed her 4 month old.

 

Further proof that Thanksgiving and guns don't mix.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&pubid=968163964505&cid=1164366365725&col=968705899037&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News

OAKLAND, Calif. — An apparent family dispute turned deadly when a gunman burst into a Thanksgiving Day gathering and opened fire, killing three people, police said.

 

To all who participated in this great thread: Cherish your memories. Time passes quickly.

 

As a fellow oldster, I'll second that motion.

 

Hear, hear.
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