Holidays Are All About Survival

Happy Black Friday, everyone. Did you survive Thanksgiving? I did. In fact, I got the world's best night sleep last night. I don't think I've slept like that since I was in diapers. If they could put turkey into pill form, I'd swap it out with my Seroquel.

It was an interesting holiday, but aren't they all? This year was particularly interesting because my mother injured herself recently and needed extra help hosting the holiday. She called me sometime around Halloween and said, "I want to have Thanksgiving here this year. How would you like to come and cook it?" Usually, my contribution to Thanksgiving is a delicious sweet potato casserole that nobody eats. Every year I swear I'm never making it again, but of course I do. I haven't always had the best relationship with my mom in the past and it has been going so well I just couldn't say no. But I said yes without fully grasping what I was agreeing to.

"Cooking" Thanksgiving, as it turned out, also meant cleaning my parents' home from top to bottom. This would not have been such an overwhelming task if they did not own a vacuum cleaner that weighs approximately 4,000 pounds. I could have pushed a donkey around the house with greater ease. It's one of those vacuums that sucks up the stuff and you can see it spinning around in the plastic canister. What nobody realizes is, when the vacuum sucks things up and spins them around at warp speed, things get destroyed...things like stink bugs, for example. I sucked up only one in the apartment but it was pulverized by the vacuumed and smelled so terrible that my mother and I both had stinging eyes for about an hour after the fact. Pennies, as it turns out, are harmless, but sucking one up into the vacuum sounds like shelling along the Afghanistan border.

I have been on my own for 10 years, and I have owned my own vacuum for just as long. Despite this, my mother does not have a great deal of confidence in my vacuuming skills. For the most part, I vacuumed while she followed along behind me, telling me I was doing it wrong. First I vacuumed too fast, then I didn't vacuum at the right angle. Then I was down on the floor with a paper towel snagging spider webs from the corners of the floor. Even though all of my parents' dining room chairs are identical, I was told that I didn't put the "right ones" in the "right spots" when I returned them after vacuuming around the table.

When I mopped the kitchen floor, my mother stood in the dining room and instructed me not to make puddles. She told me I needed to ring out the mop before actually mopping. At this point, I stopped what I was doing specifically so I could put my hands on my hips and give her a look that said, "Really, Mother. I do have a normal IQ." She stopped herself and had to laugh. She realized she was being ridiculous. But after I mopped the floor, she handed me a paper towel and told me to mop of my non-existent puddles.

By the time we got to vacuuming the bedrooms, I was exhausted from dragging the donkey vacuum around and she was tired of being the gestapo. "Do you want me to move this and vacuum under it?" I'd ask, and she'd shake her head and say, "Just vacuum around it. Screw it."

On Wednesday, she offered me lunch. Liverwurst. On my way to her place on Thanksgiving day, I stopped at Sheetz for a hotdog.

When I arrived at my parents' place on Thursday, the turkey was already in the oven. I was a bit perturbed at first because I really wanted to learn how to cook a turkey. On the other hand, my mother was right - it was just easier for her to do it. I'm not sure how you can stuff a turkey wrong, but I'm sure I would have figured out a way to do it. I made a few things and mashed a cheese ball together and put appetizers in the living room in an effort to keep all unnecessary personnel out of the kitchen (it worked) and thought things were going fine. They were, actually, going great. It's just that everyone in my family has the patience and overall calm of a squirrel, and so my mother officially started freaking out about two hours before the other guests arrived. This was when my parents started bickering at each other, a la Frank and Marie Barone from "Everybody Loves Raymond."

I have learned that following my mother around saying, "Calm down, Mom!" doesn't help. It anything, it just lights her fuse. Pointing out that everything was ready and that the turkey just had to come out of the oven only made her chain smoke. I tried a shoulder rub but she told me to get off of her because she was sweaty. All I could do was sip my cup of my father's famous old coffee (he drinks the same pot for 3 days in a row) and listen to my mother tell my father that if he didn't go shave, she was going to lose it.

With nothing to do in our spare time but sit and listen to my mother stress over whether or not her turkey was going to turn out dry, my father  recruited me to help him fix his computer. My parents' computer was built somewhere around 1950 and runs on Windows 98. They still use dial-up internet. To be honest, I didn't think dial-up internet service still existed. My parents have regular computer problems because my father tinkers around with it and doesn't really know what he's doing. Oh, and also because it was built in 1950 and runs on Windows 98. Did I mention that? My parents are not techies by any stretch. My brother and his wife got them a cell phone a few years ago for Christmas and I think my brother was a little peeved at me because when my parents opened it, I immediately erupted into uncontrollable laughter. Nobody likes someone to tell them that they wasted their money, but I had to speak the truth. To date, the phone has been used about 5 times... by me, trying to show my folks how to use it. It now sits atop my dad's stereo, collecting dust. He has no idea where the charger is.

It took his computer about 30 minutes to load when I turned it on. Upon discovering that he had old AOL software slowing down his system, I attempted to open the control panel, which took an additional 30 minutes to load. After waiting nearly an hour to open the application to uninstall software, I declared it a lost cause and gave up. My brother - the same one who gave them the cell phone - said he'd stop by tonight to help him. Again, I dissolved into uproarious laughter. My mother pulled me aside and whispered, "You do know your father has no clue what he's doing, don't you?" I assured her that, yes, it was apparent. She rolled her eyes and cursed at her messy kitchen.

Dinner itself went well... apart from a niece who refuses to eat anything that isn't a goldfish cracker or dessert, and my mother nearly tripping over her own chair and killing herself. Like little sardines stuffed into a can, we sat elbow-to-elbow at the table, all 11 of us, pigging out as my mother's blood pressure slowly returned to a normal level. The turkey was perfect - neither raw nor dry, as my mother always fears it will be every year. Every year I slave over that stupid sweet potato casserole that nobody touches, but this year I just mashed them with brown sugar and put some marshmallows on top and there was barely a drop left after dinner. Note to self.

And now it's officially Christmas. I didn't shop today. I have never shopped on Black Friday and I never will. My husband was going to brave the crowds but opted to sleep in instead. My tree-in-a-box has been successfully assembled and my oldest niece is on her way to help me decorate it. This is the part of the holiday season I enjoy the most. Nearly every ornament has a story behind it and I get a little misty when I hang them on the tree. Maybe not this year, though - my niece will never let me live it down if she catches me crying over a Christmas ball.

Let the season take wing! Here's a clip from "Everybody Loves Raymond." This is par for the course in my family.

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