In the Rough

It’s finally occurred to me that it’s November and Christmas is coming. Or perhaps more pressingly, Thanksgiving is coming. I’m sure you all already knew that, with the weather where you are being normally cool/cold and all, but given that I took the dog out for a walk this morning for about three minutes and came back with beads of sweat on my upper lip, it’s not so obvious for us. My sister asked me about our Christmas plans Thursday, and I was just…confused, to say the least, because it’s AUGUST, and Christmas is not something you think about in the summertime, you crazy woman.

But sadly, heat or not, time marches forward, and in little more than two weeks, I have an entire mound of family descending on our little house for Thanksgiving, and a dining room that looks like this:

Clearly, we eat in front of the TV. And keep our pets in a strange sort of prison.

I’ve always wondered who the hell uses Rent-A-Center, because paying $200 a month for a dining room table, or worse, a flat-screen TV, makes about as much sense as wearing a black bra under a white wifebeater, because if you can afford $200 per month for a dining room table, you can afford to save and BUY the dining room table, so why, Rent-A-Center, why? But given that hopefully we’re moving someday soon, and even if that move is three blocks from here, I am not paying to move a dining room table that may or may not fit in my next dining room.

And so to avoid having to lay down towels for everyone to sit on the floor and eat on, we’re going to rent the world’s most hideous dining room table. It’s plastic, painted to “closely resemble” cherry, which is entirely my fault, because when the man asked me if I cared if it was made from wood, I earnestly replied, to Adam’s endless amusement, “Well, I don’t know. I do know that I would like it to be made out of something!” As opposed to nothing, or maybe that new-fangled invisible material that’s all the rage in dining room tables.

But apparently “something” does not equal “wood” and so a shiny plastic faux-cherry dining room set is making its way to our home next week, for the price of $200 (we have to pay for the whole month, even though we only need it for the day. Thanks RAC(ket)!.) Dress code for Thanksgiving is green polyester. Extra kugel for bellbottoms. Bring grape jelly pie.

Are you all asleep yet? Because this was my weekend, and let me tell you, it was riveting.

I’ve opted to cater Thanksgiving entirely (with the exception of kugel and autumn bruschetta), as opposed to even attempting to make anything at all and give us all foodborne illness, or worse, stuck desperately trying to find a restaurant that is open on Thanksgiving to save us all from the charred remains of what was supposed to be dinner.

By the way, nothing, absolutely nothing, is open on Thanksgiving, and that seems to include Burger King, and I know this from many years of experience. Even Chinese restaurants close on Thanksgiving, I suppose to thank Columbus for presenting them with yet another country to spread their astrological charts and love for pu pu platters, and if you forget even one thing, you’re hosed, just hosed right up the hoo-ha, and a sad frittata made from months-old eggs may be your only saving grace.

Incidentally, the final nail in the catering coffin was when Adam read this post, where I discuss my delusions of foodie grandeur and beg for help in crafting a delightful meal for our family (location of TwoBusy‘s autumn bruschetta recipe is in the comments). Within moments of him reading it, I was politely informed that the only delusion I was still harboring was “the one where I’m actually going to let you make any of it and risk killing off my entire family.”

Arrangements to cater were made shortly thereafter.

As for the rest of the weekend, when I was not agonizing over plastic rented tables, I was torturing myself by cleaning the house in the manner of an obsessed lunatic that included a horrible Joan Crawford moment where I worked myself into a hysterical Fantastik’d frenzy because I could not, just COULD NOT, get my dishwasher control panel and dial clean enough. (“Miss Jenkins said it was clean? Do YOU think it’s clean? CHRISTINA!”)

Finally, the weekend was not without fabulous movies, and this weekend’s choices included Two for the Road (one of Audrey Hepburn’s last before her quasi-retirement, and Albert Finney manages to be sexy, would you ever guess?), Suspicion (Cary Grant as villain! Joan Fontaine!) and Rebecca (Joan Fontaine again! Hitchcock again! Creepy lesbian pseudo-necrophiliac housekeeper!)

I hope y’all had great weekends. If you’ve made it this far, give yourself a cookie. I’ve had four.

*Anna Nalick.

19 comments November 5th, 2006