Burning Down the House

Honestly, in retrospect, I’m pretty impressed that no one punched me at any point during Thanksgiving. If I could, I’d go back and smack myself right in the face and scream “Snap out of it!” like Loretta did to Johnny, because dude, it wasn’t worth the agony, and also, I was a bit…overly dramatic, and a slap might have been good for me.

Let me back up. For starters, I went to the grocery store on Thursday morning around 7:30 a.m., and honestly, it was shocking the number of people I saw tooling around the store buying all of their Thanksgiving fare – including frozen turkeys, stuffing and potatoes – that morning, as in, this was the first time they considered that maybe they should cook. Look, I am a lazy procrastinator when it comes to matters of the home, but even I couldn’t dillydally until that moment, and besides, weren’t those people just completely hosed? Doesn’t a turkey have to defrost for something like two whole months in the fridge before you can actually cook it or you will get salmonella and die a vomitous death that may or may not include cold sweats and devastating stomach cramps? Amateurs.

Anyway, I didn’t have that much to do before everyone arrived except for making a kugel, whipping together some lemon bars (Krusteaz to the rescue!) and throwing a couple of random frozen appetizers into the oven (Think cocktail weiners. Frozen latkes. We’re classy.) And of course, reheat the dinner I paid someone else to cook. Oh oh oh, and smearing shit on bread. My life was hard.

Seriously, I behaved as though I was preparing a 19-course feast for the original pilgrims who were going to be resurrected from the dead for one final Thanksgiving meal and it was all on my shoulders or they would burn in some sort of culinary hell. Because WOE WAS ME, it was so painfully challenging and NO ONE UNDERSTOOD what it was like, those ungrateful bastards. I even dressed the part, wearing an apron with a festive little harvest turkey on it, as if I was going to do anything that stood the remotest chance of sullying it, especially given that I was still wearing my pajamas. I’m cringing as I remember how I fluttered about the house with a self-important air while I shooed people – who came innocently looking for coffee – out of the kitchen with waving hands while I furrowed my little brow over the noodle pudding like it was the only noodle pudding that would ever be made ever so help us God, Amen. There may or may not have been some loud, heavy sighing involved like the weight of the civilized Thanksgivinged world rested on my sad little shoulders, because I was cooking noodles.

Don’t you want to pummel me with a thousand tiny fists? Go ahead. I deserve it. I mean, dude, I made a noodle pudding and reheated cocktail weiners in puff pastry and I acted like I had to run out and figure out a way to slaughter a wild turkey using nothing but a blunt spear followed by a solo feather-plucking session using my big toes. I was out of control.

What’s more pathetic is that I managed to completely screw it up by dropping the phone into the oven during the final moments of the kugel and lemon bars (I had to coordinate two items at once! Two items that had to cook at the exact same temperature, but STILL. There was TIME COORDINATION OH MY GOD.) I stood by, helpless, as I watched the phone melt into the oven element, the thick syrupy plastic dripping onto the bottom of the oven and (oh my God), the horrid reek of burnt plastic (which smells alarmingly like burning hair) spread through the house like an angry toxic cloud. And worse, I dropped the phone while I was screaming at Adam because he did not understand (DID NOT) how hard this was for me, because THANKSGIVING IS HARD, YOU JERK, and all he could hear was “SHIT OH MY GOD FUCK THE PHONE IS MELTING,” except he didn’t hear the words, just the screaming, and thought that I was being abducted and held hostage until I spilled my noodle pudding secrets.

When meanwhile, the poor guy was out picking up the turkey dinner for me because I was clearly incapable of driving or cooking, or even, I don’t know, breathing, without creating some sort of wild disaster. And if you’re keeping score, this brought my Thanksgiving duties to something like two things, both of which were completely expendable, but try telling that to a crazy girl weilding a turkey apron, JUST TRY.

Miraculously, everything turned out okay, if a bit…plasticky, you know. Except for the phone, which is completely ruined, which seems to upset Adam greatly, because apparently, that was his favorite phone (of course), even though we have something like 11 others. But phone woes aside, I am insanely happy that it’s over. I’m happy to lay around and watch movies, and I’m happy to go back to work without having to rush home to a frillion people.

And I’m never, ever actually cooking the entire Thanksgiving meal ever, because no one is really sure what would happen then. And also, I think it’s important to note that I find the crinoline at the top of Katie Holmes’ dress to be very upsetting.

*Talking Heads

17 comments November 26th, 2006