Jeremy Irons is still dead.

Johnny Depp is Polish now, maybe? I can’t quite place the accent, but it’s definitely Eastern European.

Jessica Biel has three breasts.

Reese Witherspoon has zero hairbrushes.

Dustin Hoffman looks more and more like Andrew Jackson every day.

There’s a cut-off age for wearing a dress that reveals your back, and I’m not sure exactly what it is, but Jane Fonda and Jessica Lange have passed it.

Jessica Lange in general: hot mess. But the women of a certain age club otherwise all looked pretty good. Meryl Streep is still beautiful. Helen Mirren is still beautiful. Glenn Close is still, well, let’s just go with “handsome.”

Mostly the show was boring, except for one incident that was rather upsetting to me personally and that was the Douche-Off between Elton John and Madonna. Both were nominated for Best Original Song and on the Red Carpet beforehand, Elton dismissively announced that Madonna wouldn’t win and that he wasn’t making a prediction, he was stating a fact. He’s pretty pompous for a guy who sold out years ago. The upsetting part is that his pronouncement actually made me root for Madonna a little, and let me tell you, that shit is not on.

On the other hand, there really couldn’t have been a better outcome. Because Madonna did in fact win, prompting Elton to make this face:

Then later, they brought Madge back out again to embarrass herself with an assist from Ricky Gervais. As far as I’m concerned, it makes up for the crap job he did on the tenth anniversary DVD release of the UK version of The Office.

Ricky: Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome once again that skank, Madonna.

Madonna: Ricky, you are so gay, but in the lame way, not the way that I am sometimes gay in a totally edgy way. I dare you to have sex with me because I’m the last person in the world who still buys into the pathetic persona I created for myself in 1985 and can’t seem to relinquish no matter how veiny my arms get.

Ricky [running off stage as fast as he can]: Yipe yipe yipe yipe yipe yipe yipe yipe!

Madonna might be the biggest posturing phony in show business, but Demi Moore still exists, so it’s hard to say. Ideally, they’ll marry, move into a crumbling mansion, and spend the rest of their days trying to out-Norma-Desmond each other.

Other things were even more confusing:

Oh, wait. Now it all makes sense.

I still have some goals for the year, however.

Why don’t I just tell you what they are?

1. Sell my house.
2. Move to Hawaii.
3. Win the Lotto.
4. Change careers.
5. Buy a pale orange rain jacket.

I think these are all equally likely to happen. Technically, I have already won the Lotto, but I have yet to cash in my ticket from the January 2nd drawing in which I won three dollars, and I don’t want to start imagining how much better my life will be until I actually have that cash in hand.

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Do you guys know about Teddy the Porcupine? Teddy wants you to have a Happy New Year.

 
On second thought, maybe Teddy doesn’t care about your new year.

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I have never seen an entire episode of The Bachelor, but I had planned to watch the show this year because I need something new to make fun of. Then I read an article about this season’s bachelor Ben in which he reveals that he’s given himself the nickname “Storm Horse” and runs with some idiots who call themselves “Frightening Lightening.” I don’t know if that’s how they think “lightning” is spelled or if they’re a group of vitiligo sufferers. He also said that he likes to go to football games “incognito,” which is probably a good thing seeing as how very few people know or care who he is. All of that was enough to convince me not to watch, but there was also a picture:

So am I being overly critical or does this guy look like — how should I put this delicately? — a neanderthal? I’m just not seeing him as someone whose affections a lot of women would vie for. On the other hand, maybe he has exceptional hunting and gathering skills. Looks good in a woolly mammoth pelt. Discovered fire. In any case, I missed the first episode, and I’ll never get caught up now, but next season for sure!

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I am beginning to sense that 2012 is not going to be a year of outstanding blog posts.

But as I said, today is Festivus. Which means three things: a beef dinner, feats of strength, airing of grievances. I’m going to put a roast in the oven at 1:00 and then at around 3:30, I’ll make a gravy from the drippings. At 3:50, I’ll say, “this gravy is just floury grease,” and throw it out. Then five minutes before dinner, I’ll make gravy from a packet. Traditions are important.

I haven’t decided what my feat of strength will be. I have to go renew my car tabs today, so I would like to say that my feat of strength will be pummeling the Department of Licensing clerk for wearing that same dirty Santa hat eleven years in a row, but my non-confrontational nature always gets in the way. I will probably just go rake the leaves out of the storm drain and call it a holiday.

Incidentally, if you haven’t purchased my Christmas present yet, this year I want a new rake. Not ski socks. RAKE.

Which naturally leads into the airing of grievances.

1. The items on my Amazon wish list are not jumping off points. If I put a two-slice toaster on the list, that means I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading customer reviews of various toaster options, reviewing the technical specifications, and having taken into consideration the amount of counter space in my kitchen and my toasted bread needs, concluded that that particular two-slice toaster is the way to go. You don’t have to buy me that toaster, but when you instead give me a 6-slice toaster oven with a pizza setting and convection heat and say, “this one’s nicer than the one you wanted!” you are just making me haul a big-ass box down to the post office and forcing me to interact with a postal employee who not only washes his Santa hat with the same frequency as the Department of Licensing clerk but also wears it well into the new year. Moreover, RAKE.

2. In other toaster-related injustices, I had a Trader Joe’s gluten-free toaster waffle a couple of days ago, and now I know what evil is. I don’t have a problem with gluten; I just didn’t know these weren’t regular waffles until I got them home. I guess it’s nice that they offer a gluten-free option, but they really need to label the box more clearly. Maybe putting the words “gluten-free” in a larger, bolder font and also a black box warning that states, “this waffle will turn into a disgusting slime as soon as you begin chewing it. It will also leave an aftertaste that will haunt you well into your retirement years. Enjoy!”

3. Gmail. I am never going to give you my phone number. Stop asking me.

4. This:

Thanks, WoerdPress! What a helpfuel tip!

5. The saleswomen at the Benefit counter at Macy’s, all of whom are over 6′ tall, insane, and lacking a volume control. Why are they always screaming at people? Last year, a friend and I were walking through the cosmetics department when suddenly, this hugely tall woman with a Bumpit in her hair said from a distance of about 60 feet, “ARE YOU LADIES RUNNING LOW ON DR. FEELGOOD?!?” Okay, (a) stop yelling, you moron. And (b) I don’t know what it is and I don’t care. I’m not buying something called, “Dr. Feelgood.” Then last week, I was in Macy’s heading for the exit door. Another, equally gigantic woman blocks me in the aisle, grabs my arm, and screams in my face, “WE HAVE AN OPENING IN THE BENEFIT BROW BAR! DO YOU WANT YOUR BROWS SHAPED? WHY NOT?” Because I don’t want an intimidating mental patient coming at my eye area with sharp implements? Maybe? You think? Although after I got home and looked at my brows in the mirror, I did have to concede that a little neatening up wouldn’t be the worst idea.

6. The Jersey Boys version of Jingle Bell Rock. Also, the Jersey Boys version of anything else. Please stop singing, squeaky men.

And that’s Festivus. May your day be angry and dim, and all your Festivuses grim.

“I wonder what time the chalupa place opens at the food court,”

and

“Itchy.”

So I abandoned that plan and instead started looking around the room to see if anyone had died of boredom yet. No one had, but I may have ducked out early (or I may not have depending on whether someone from the State Bar is reading this), so I don’t rule out the possibility that it happened later in the day. What I did notice, though, was that out of the 100+ people in attendance, all but four of the people were white. I suppose it’s like this more often than not, but for some reason it seemed especially noticeable this time. The four people who weren’t white were me (and I’m half-white/half-Asian), the woman sitting next to me (also half-white/half-Asian), an Asian woman sitting behind us, and an Asian woman sitting on the other side of the room.

Slight digression, or … well, it can’t be a digression because I am just rambling pointlessly, but we go by the term “hapa” now. “Hapa” is a Hawaiian word meaning “half,” and the term originally was short for “hapa haole” referring to someone who was half-white and half-Hawaiian. Somewhere along the line it came to refer to anyone who is mixed race with partial Asian or Pacific Islander heritage. Not everyone likes the term (as it was originally somewhat derogatory), but I don’t have strong feelings about it one way or the other. I do prefer it to “Amerasian,” because we’re already American or to “Eurasian,” but only because when I was in junior high I said it when talking to my friend Cynthia, who was Chinese, and she took great offense to it.

“‘You’re Asian!’ There’s no such thing as ‘You’re Asian’!”

(Don’t worry about what would become of Cynthia. Her parents had money.)

At any rate, you might be wondering how I knew that the woman sitting next to me was hapa. The only answer I can give is that I don’t know how, but we can always spot each other. It must be similar to the thing where balding people can always spot a toupee. Do you remember that show Lois and Clark? After it debuted, I was talking to people at work about it and saying, “Yeah, it’s cool that they got an Asian guy to play Superman,” to which they replied that I was crazy and also horrible and clearly had an agenda, but being an early adopter of the Internet I was able to fire up my 2400 baud modem and only six short hours later prove to them that Dean Cain was one-quarter Japanese. Don’t mess with our racial divining abilities. We are second to none in that regard. You know, I don’t even look all that Asian, but sometimes people I’ve just met will say, “are you half-Japanese?” and I will excitedly reply, “Yes! You?” and they will say, “Yes!” and then we will be friends for life because, as you may have heard, we are clannish like that.

I am being facetious, of course, but the thought did occur to me when I was in the bathroom at the break and standing next to me at the sinks was the hapa woman and waiting to use a sink was one of the other Asian women. “Oh no,” I thought. “This is going to support people’s incorrect assumption that we all know each other!” Then the door opened and the other Asian woman came in. She did a double-take at the first Asian woman and said, “Ann?” To which Ann replied, “oh my God, Gina! It’s been ages!” Hapa woman caught my eye in the mirror and sent me the sardonically telepathic message, “well, isn’t that great,” and I telepathically replied, “isn’t it just?” Then Ann asked Gina, “what are you doing here?” and Gina replied, “uh, well, CLE.” Evidently Ann’s not too quick on the uptake. Maybe she’s Cynthia’s cousin. Oh, who do I think I’m kidding? We’re all cousins! After that, my seatmate and I returned to the conference room, where we studiously ignored each other for the rest of the day.

In light of our mutual non-acknowledgment, I wish she had been sitting next to me a couple of weeks earlier when I took the utterly useless Time Management for Professionals class, which I only took because my options that week were that or some hideous thing about property boundary disputes. Instead I got this extremely social person, wearing ostentatiously low low-rise jeans and a pink thong. The class had been underway for ten minutes and I was feeling pleased that no one was sitting next to me. I mean, you guys know I’m unfriendly, right? I feel like I’ve been pretty upfront about that. But suddenly there was this face right in my face stage-whispering, “HI!” and spreading her stuff out all over the table and scooting her chair over closer to mine. Things were fine for a while until the speaker said, “how many of you know what you want to be when you grow up?” which was bad enough in itself but then Thong turned to me and conspiratorially whispered, “I want to run a fashion magazine.” I gave her the non-committal nod and half-smile and plotted her grim demise.

Then the speaker decided it was meet and greet time at the commune and told us all to introduce ourselves to the person next to us. First, I made a promise to myself that I would never again take a CLE class on a non-technical topic. I would rather spend seven hours listening to people drone on about 1031 exchanges or current issues in maritime law than deal with this bullshit. Second, I steeled myself and turned to face Thong. Oh lord, she was smiling. It was one of those enthusiastic open mouth smiles, of the Lassie or Marisa Jaret Winoker variety:

Thong could not wait to tell me all about the awesomeness of her existence, adopting pretend emotions as appropriate. Faux humility: “I’m a managing partner at [firm I wasn't familiar with]. It’s a mid-sized firm. Well, mid-sized to large.” Faux I Just Don’t Know How I Do It All: “I have two girls, they’re one and three! Thank goodness I’ve got a good husband!” Back to faux humility: “I still haven’t got my body back yet!” After what felt like twenty more minutes of this, she said, “and I guess that’s it.”

“Okay,” I said. She waited to see if I would, I suppose, congratulate her on being so inspirational and when I didn’t her dog smile faltered a bit and she asked, “what about you?”

“I work at home in my pajamas.” Should I say that they’re comfortable pajamas? Nah. Too braggy. Thong laughed uncertainly. Fortunately, she had talked so long that we had run the clock on enforced bonding time and the instructor started talking again. He had us make a list of everything we do in a workday and then rate each item as “can delegate, can partially delegate, or cannot delegate.” After we had done this, he said, “now I want you and the person you traded introductions with to convince each other to delegate those tasks that are either delegatable or partially delegatable. Before I had a chance to think about how “delegatable” isn’t even a word, Thong started talking about her high-pressure managing partner duties. She actually used the word “rainmaker.” No one says “rainmaker” except maybe Corbin Bernsen in LA Law. Normal people just say they bring in new business. Although the exercise required me to convince her to delegate some of her work, she was more than happy to convince herself, mainly so that she could tell me how many people answer to her.

“Now let’s do you!” Thong pointed at my list.

“I work alone most of the time. There’s no one I can dump my work onto.” Oh. Whoops. I think this is where Thong began to get the idea that I didn’t want to be besties. She decided to try the woman sitting on her other side, who was not partnered with anyone. Why couldn’t that woman have sat next to me? She seemed appropriately anti-social.

“Do you have a list?” Thong inquired, big open-mouthed smile, paw … er, hand gesturing toward notepad.

“I’m retired!” the woman replied, turning her back on Thong. Okay, now I want to be friends with someone.

More yammering from the instructor and then he said something about how we should get a buddy to talk to on a regular basis to encourage us to continue delegating work so that we don’t slip back into the bad habit of doing our own jobs. Then he said, “so what I want everyone to do is to trade phone numbers with the person sitting next to you and make an appointment to talk a week from today!” I can’t believe I paid for this class.

“Do you want to …” Thong began.

“No.” I said it as gently as I could, but come on. NO. She turned to the woman on her other side.

“Do you …”

“I’m retired!”

I felt a little bad for Thong then, almost bad enough to consider trading numbers with her. But then she snottily said to neither of us in particular, “well, you only get out of something what you put into it!” So then I felt less bad. By the time she started playing Angry Birds on her phone, my remorse was a distant memory. After I got home, I Googled her and it turns out she’s actually kind of a big deal, both at her firm and in the legal community generally. If I were an ambitious person looking to get ahead in my profession, I would be kicking myself for being such a standoffish jerk; fortunately for me, I am unmotivated and sloth-like.

Deanna: Do you want to burp her?

Me: No.

Deanna: Why don’t you change her diaper?

Me: No.

Deanna [handing me what appeared to be a miniature turkey baster]: Here, you can suction the snot out of her nose.

Me: Jeez, Dee, I’m not your wife!

As a result, Deanna came to the mistaken conclusion that I was either afraid of or had an aversion to her baby, when in fact it was just that I was either afraid of had an aversion to accidentally touching poop.

One evening in December, I was invited to go out to dinner with Deanna, her two sisters Michelle and … Pearl (hey, it’s hard to come up with a whole bunch of aliases), her mom Helen, Michelle’s 16-year-old daughter Emma, Michelle’s friend who doesn’t figure into the story and so won’t get a name, and Pearl’s boyfriend Tom. We went to a crowded trattoria, where we were seated in two adjacent booths. Deanna held her sleeping baby in her lap while she tried to eat a plate of spaghetti bolognese, and I have to say, it was quite the spectacle. She had to sit far back enough so as not to have the baby under the table, but because she was an inept spaghetti twirler, she held the fork up over her plate and tried to trapeze the individual strands into her mouth. Sometimes I am really sorry that we didn’t have YouTube in the ’80s. In short order, I took pity on her and offered to hold the baby while she ate. She asked, “are you sure?” because evidently I was her best friend but also a monster. “Yes,” I said. She handed me the baby. I held the baby. The end.

But wait, there’s more. You are probably wondering how it was that I could hold the baby when Deanna couldn’t. Didn’t I have my own plate of spaghetti to deal with? Well, yes. Also, no.

First Important Piece of Background Information: Glamour Magazine has a feature called the “How To Do Anything Better Guide.” For the record, I don’t read Glamour Magazine anymore because I’m not really interested in winning a makeover from the Kardashian sisters or creating an entire month of work outfits out of only one pair of pants and two dozen scarves. But back when I did read Glamour magazine, I used to like the How To Do Anything Better Guide because it had useful pieces of information, like, “How To Jump Start Your Car Like a Pro,” or “How To Trim Your Own Bangs Like a Pro,” which saved me thousands of dollars over the years in professional jump-starting and bang-trimming fees, or at least it would have if I didn’t have AAA and face-framing layers. Also, in this section, they regularly featured a “Sticky Situation of the Month,” done in a question-and-answer format. For example,

Dear Glamour,

My friend is always trying to get me to change her baby’s diaper. I like babies, but I don’t think I’d enjoy changing one’s diaper. How can I tell her without damaging our friendship?

Ontologically yours,
A Long-Time Reader from Seattle, WA

Dear Long-Time Reader,

Tell her you’re not her wife.

Love,
Glamour

Second Important Piece of Background Information: As far as I know, Deanna’s mom Helen has never not been on a diet. She’s not particularly overweight, maybe 15 pounds or so, but she has also never lost even a single ounce. Why this is will become apparent shortly.

Third Important Piece of Background Information: In the issue of Glamour Magazine that was current at the time of the dinner/babyholding, the following Sticky Situation of the Month appeared:

Dear Glamour:

My friend and I often go out to lunch in a restaurant. If we order different things to eat, she always asks if she can have a bite of mine. I do not eat from other people’s plates and I do not think it’s polite for someone to ask to eat from mine. How can I tell her without damaging our friendship?

Yours truly,
Germ-Free and Staying That Way in Wichita, KS

Dear Germ,

The next time she asks for some of your food, try saying, “you know, I have been looking forward to having a full portion of this for myself all day long. Why don’t we order another one of these for you?” That way, you can both enjoy your lunch out and neither one of you will feel deprived!

Love,
Glamour

I am now prepared to answer the question I pretended you asked about where my spaghetti was.

When we arrived at the restaurant, Deanna and the baby, her mom Helen, her niece Emma, and I were sitting in one booth. In the booth behind Helen were Michelle and her nameless friend and Pearl and her boyfriend Tom. Deanna order the aforementioned spaghetti bolognese, Emma ordered whatever, I ordered spaghetti carbonara, and Helen ordered a large salad because she was dieting. Before the pasta came out, the waiter brought all of us small salads. Helen told the waiter she was having a large salad for her entree so she didn’t want the small salad. He took the small salad back and brought her a large salad in a Jethro Bodine sized bowl. She was mostly finished by the time our pasta was brought out, and those of us who had eaten with Helen before understood that this meant that we should begin eating as fast as we possibly could. I started to hoover my spaghetti carbonara, but it was no use. She was staring at me, I could feel it.

I look up and Helen is making that crinkly-eyed, hidden tooth smile that can mean only one thing.

Helen: How is it?

Internal Voice: Here we go.

Me: It’s okay.

Helen: Looks good!

Internal Voice: **sigh**

Me: Would you like some?

Helen [pushing her bread plate 3/4 of an inch towards me]: Maybe just a taste.

Internal Voice [watching myself push plate of carbonara all the way across the table so that Helen can remove half of it]: Nooooo! My spaaaaghetttttti …

Once I finished eating what was left, I had plenty of time for baby-holding. The end.

But wait, there’s more. The waiter arrives with the dessert cart. Deanna gets cheesecake with raspberry coulis, Emma gets chocolate cheesecake, I get the plain New York cheesecake because that is cheesecake the way God intended, and Helen gets nothing because she’s dieting. I am still too despondent over the loss of my pasta to eat quickly, but this gives me an opportunity to observe Helen observing the table. Her eyes begin to crinkle and I begin to eat faster. Suddenly, Emma looks up to see that her grandmother is smiling at her without teeth.

Helen: How is it?

Emma: It’s good.

Helen: Hmmm?

Emma: I SAID IT’S GOOD.

Deanna [heroically]: Mom! Do you want some of my raspberry cheesecake?

Helen: No, I don’t like raspberries. But …

Internal Voice: Not me not me not me not me not me not me not me not me

Helen: I would like a bite of Emma’s dessert.

Emma [taking deep breath]: Grandma? I have been looking forward all day to having a whole piece of chocolate cheesecake all to myself. Why don’t we order another one of these for you?

Internal Voice: GLAMOUR MAGAZINE! GLAMOUR MAGAZINE!

After that, all hell broke loose. Helen got this look on her face to indicate that she’d just been stabbed in the heart. In the booth behind us, Pearl asked Michelle if she’d heard what her horrible daughter had just said to their mother and then in an insulting high-pitched imitation said, “Grandma! I want to eat this chocolate cheesecake all by myself. Get your own chocolate cheesecake!” Helen continued to look around, confused and gravely wounded. Tom, who had also ordered chocolate cheesecake, shoved the whole thing in his mouth. Michelle got up and came to our booth to give Emma the evil eye. And Emma? That girl sat there stoically, looking at no one, and resolutely and methodically ate her chocolate cheesecake. They gave her hell for that night for years, but Helen never again asked for a bite of Emma’s food.

Oh, and then I gave Helen the rest of my cheesecake. Because she looked at me and I was afraid not to. The end.

But wait, there’s more. A poll:

(But only if you are reading this on my blog. If you are reading this on a reader, then there is no poll. It’s the end. There is no more.)

The first baby was the little brother of a grade-school friend of mine who I will call Pam because that is almost her name. Pam was eight-years-old and the oldest of four girls when her mom became pregnant with a fifth child. I don’t remember how it came up, but at some point we found out that Pam’s dad had decided that they were going to keep having kids until one of them was a boy. Doesn’t Pam’s dad sound great? He called his wife, “Mother,” and she called him “Dad.” He looked like Joe Garagiola, but with a unibrow. As it turned out, baby #5 was a boy and Pam’s mom was allowed to retire her reproductive system.

A few months after Simba was born, I went over to Pam’s house for the express purpose of holding him. I knocked on the door and when Pam’s mom answered, I announced, “I am here to hold the baby.” Which in retrospect sounds odd, but that’s how I remember it. Before I get to the thrilling tale of how I held the baby, I should say that historically Pam’s mom had not been a huge fan of mine. I think it’s because one time I accidentally shut their station wagon door on her arm. She treated me with a certain level of suspicion after that. But during Pregnancy #5, I was over at the house one day and she was vacuuming. As soon as she put the vacuum cleaner away, one of Pam’s sisters threw a bowl of dry corn flakes on the floor, causing Pam’s mom to cry out, “you know Dad likes a clean house!” which prompted me to ask, “then why doesn’t he clean it?” She didn’t answer, but after that, Pam’s mom seemed to think I was okay.

At any rate, I knock on the door, announce my intentions regarding her baby, and Pam’s mom tells me to sit in the rocking chair. She hands me the baby swaddled in a blanket, and goes to the kitchen to start fixing Pam’s dad’s dinner or to weep or possibly both. After a few minutes of electrifying baby-holding action, Simba starts making those “enh! enh! enh!” noises and kicking his blanket off. As I was only a child myself, I called for parental intervention. “Mrs. Hamilton! Mrs. Hamiliton! The baby is not cooperating!” Or something. I don’t remember what I said. Pam’s mom said, “oh, he’s just being fussy,” scooped him up, took him back to his crib, and then I went home. The end.

But wait, there’s more. Shortly thereafter, and probably unrelated to the time I held the baby, the family decided to move to the suburbs. Pam’s dad wanted his son to grow up in a nicer neighborhood, and they moved at the beginning of summer. A year later, a bunch of us from the old neighborhood were invited to Pam’s birthday party. My friend Lynette’s trashy mom drove all of us in her Pontiac. When we got there, it turned out that except for Pam’s sisters, we were the only kids at the party. They had lived there for a year, and Pam had made no new friends.

The thing about Pam was that she was a giant weirdo. She wore eyeglasses from the 1950s. She called jeans, “dungarees.” Every day at lunch, she ate her peanut butter and jelly sandwich by taking a bite at the top of the sandwich and then nomming all the way down the center of the bread, leaving the left third of the sandwich in her left hand and the right third in her right hand and the middle third in her mouth, where she would chew on it for 7 to 12 minutes before swallowing with an audible gulping noise. And then there was the horse obsession. A lot of little girls love horses to distraction, but Pam went way beyond that. I can’t say for sure, but she may have wanted to be a horse. At recess, she was always trying to get us to “play horses,” a game which consisted of her circling the playground making clip clop noises with her feet and the rest of us clip clopping along behind her. But the strange part of it is that while we were clip clopping along, we were also holding the imaginary reins and when it was time to stop, we were supposed to pull up on the imaginary reins and say, “Whoa, girl!” So I was never sure if we were horses or girls riding horses or grade-school centaurs or what. It was a confusing game, metaphysically speaking.

Thus, I can see why she had no friends after a year. We were her friends because she hadn’t come to us as The New Girl. If she had, in the nutty glasses and needing to be Heimliched every day at lunch before taking a good long gallop around the monkey bars, we probably wouldn’t have been all that eager to hang out either. But because as far as we were concerned, she had always been there and she was always like that, even though she was clearly a crazy person, she was our crazy person.

At her birthday party, the first order of business was to go to her room and look at her collection of plastic horse figurines. She had at least twenty, each with its own name and personality and proclivities, which she lovingly detailed to us for what was probably the millionth time. Then it was time to go outside and play horses. We clip clopped around on their sidewalk, all of us feeling like idiots except for Pam, who seemed pretty happy. Then we went back in to check on the plastic horse figurines. And then it was time to open the presents. Pam opened the one from her dad first and it was a A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf and The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.

Just kidding. It was a plastic horse. She immediately took it to her room so she could introduce it to the other plastic horses. Suddenly, we heard her voice like a car alarm. “MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM!” Her mom and Lynette’s trashy mom went to see what was wrong, while out in the living room, Tammie and Lynn told the rest of us that they took all of the plastic horses off the shelf and hid them in Pam’s sister’s toy chest. We all ran down to the room to find Pam jabbering about the paddock gate or the barn door or something, while her mother said, “obviously someone is playing a trick on you.” And then she looked at me! I had nothing to do with it! I thought we were cool, Pam’s mom! Remember when I said your husband should clean the house? Come on!

Tammie and Lynn triumphantly threw open the lid of the toy chest, revealing all of the horses. Pam took one look and let out a very cinematic scream.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Pam’s mom reached in and pulled out a plastic horse and the plastic horse’s plastic leg, which had broken off. And a plastic shotgun to humanely euthanize him. (That last thing is untrue. I get loopy when my posts seem to go on forever with no ending in sight.) She held the horse and his leg up, which caused Pam to fling herself face down on her bed and wail as if she were being beaten with a large stick. Tammie and Lynn began apologizing profusely and probably would have started crying themselves, when Pam’s mom told them that that horse’s leg was always breaking off and getting glued back on, so they shouldn’t feel bad. Meanwhile, Pam is still face down on the bed, wailing. All of the girls, minus Pam, were ushered back into the living room where we were served cake and punch, which we ate with heavy hearts. It didn’t help that we could still hear Pam sobbing.

After a while, she quieted down but didn’t reappear. Pam’s mom gave each of us a bag of party favors and we all piled into Lynette’s trashy mom’s Pontiac to go home. As we started to drive away, Pam came galloping up to the car, pulled up on the imaginary reins, and with a big goofy smile on her face started waving at us with both hands.

“Thanks for coming! Thanks for all the presents!” Man, Pam was nuts, but she certainly had good manners. She took a last look at Lynette’s trashy mom and said, “thanks for bringing the party here!” before turning and galloping up the driveway and off into the sunset, and by “sunset,” I mean “semi-finished basement.” Godspeed, Crazypants. Godspeed.

Next time on Adventures in Babyholding: Glamour Magazine leads a young girl astray.

For example, a week ago last Monday, I went to the store to buy a turkey. Correction: I went to three stores to buy no turkey. It used to be that turkeys were anywhere from 8 to 14 pounds and if you needed to feed more than, say, ten people, you either bought two turkeys or you bought one turkey and a ham and then twice as many people in your family would be slightly put out all through dinner because they didn’t get a drumstick. In the last few years, however, you are lucky if you can find a turkey that doesn’t require that you first call in a handyman to attach your stove to a wall stud so that when you place the monster bird inside of it, it won’t tip over. Since I never have more than six people over, even in an ordinary year, turkeys are too damned big. This year, however, Thanksgiving is going to be just me and my mom, which is something I actually am thankful for because my siblings and their spouses are lovely as individuals, but when you get them all in a group, after about 45 minutes I want to clonk their heads together.

I knew getting an appropriate amount of turkey for two people was going to be a challenge, which is why I started early. My goal was a three- to five-pound “Li’l Butterball,” which has achieved a mythic status within both the Spinster Network and Double Income No Kids Coalition. I think I got one once in the early 2000s, but maybe I just dreamed that. My more realistic goal: a three- to five-pound turkey breast (or half-breast, depending on how pedantically you characterize your cuts of meat). I first went to the huge, new Safeway with the terrible parking. They had approximately one thousand turkeys, all of them 20 pounds or more. I then went to the small, old Safeway with the terrible parking. They had two turkeys, because why plan ahead, both of them also in the 20+ pound range. Then I went to the medium-sized, new-ish QFC with the terrible parking. They had a reasonable number of turkeys, all larger than 20 pounds. They also had a butcher (for those of you playing at home, go ahead and drink) putting out packages of ground beef. As I was running out of both stores and patience, I decided to ask him for help, even though historically, this has not worked out for me.

Me [miming oblong shaped item, the international gesture for turkey breast]: Do you have any turkey breasts, or do you only have the whole turkeys?

Butcher [pleasantly]: We should have some. [walks over to frozen case where I've already looked, finding nothing] GOD! I’LL HAVE TO GO CHECK!

Five minutes later, I’m still waiting, so I stomp over to the counter where I find the butcher pulling frozen breasts out of a box, weighing, and pricing them, but since the scale doesn’t seem to be working correctly, he is mostly slamming things around and swearing.

Butcher: WE HAVE SOME!

Me [eying the gigantic turkey breasts dubiously]: OKAY!

Butcher: I DON’T KNOW WHY SOMEONE DIDN’T PUT THESE OUT EARLIER!

Me: YES! SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE DONE THAT!

Butcher: WHICH ONE DO YOU WANT?

Me: I’LL TAKE THE SMALLEST ONE!

Butcher: THEY’RE ALL EIGHT POUNDS!

Me: THAT’S TOO BIG! DON’T YOU HAVE THOSE THREE POUND ONES?

Butcher: WE’RE GETTING A SHIPMENT TODAY OR TOMORROW! WE’LL HAVE BABY BUTTERBALLS AND TURDUCKENS AND ALL THAT OTHER CRAP THAT NO ONE BUYS!

Me: I WILL COME BACK IN A COUPLE OF DAYS THEN!

Butcher: THAT SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN!

Two days later, they had two turkey breasts. One was eight pounds and one was two and a half pounds. I got the two and a half pound one, a package of turkey drumsticks, and some throat lozenges.

I need to go bake a pie now, so I think I will save my list of things for which I’m not thankful until the Festivus Airing of Grievances. Instead, I will tell you about something I am thankful for. And that something is Coach Ben Wade from Survivor, the most annoying, delusional jackass to ever play the game. He’s a 40-year-old man who refers to himself as “the dragonslayer.” He insists that everyone, including his own parents, call him “Coach.” He claims that he once escaped from cannibal pygmies in the Amazon. I was not happy when he appeared again this season to play for the third time, but a couple of weeks ago, he said something that made it all worthwhile. In one of his many pompous talking heads, Coach:

said, “some of the greatest inspiration is borne of desperation,” and he attributed that quote to Marcus Aurelius:

when in fact, it was not Marcus Aurelius who said it, but rather Comer Cottrell:

the inventor of the Jheri Curl:

Happy Thanksgiving!

The class was held downtown and I considered driving, but there’s no early bird parking rate at that building and I would have had to pay $26 for the day. By contrast, if I ride the bus, round trip fare is only $5 plus the $8 copay for prescription antibiotics.

My god, how I hate the bus. I haven’t ridden it in a couple of years, and in the intervening time, the light rail train has started running. You would think this would make the bus less crowded, but no. Because more people are riding light rail, bus routes have been cut back. But at the same time, more people are riding the bus to get to the light rail stations, which means not only do I have to pay $2.50 to smell people who have irregular bathing habits, but I have to stand up while doing so.

In a related vein, while I don’t necessarily think men should have to relinquish their seats to women — I mean, I think it, but I don’t necessarily think it — I do feel it’s completely uncivilized for younger people not to give up their seats for older people. The seats were filled with people in their teens and twenties staring straight ahead, pretending not to notice all the elderly people in the aisle who were trying not to go ass over teakettle every time the driver remembered at the very last second that red means stop. I am kind of old, but I still will give up my seat to older people or pregnant women or really to anyone at all if the person I’m sitting next to is odiferous enough.

This morning when I boarded the bus I had to stand, but once we got to the light rail station, seats opened up and I got to sit. Unfortunately, I had to sit on one of those sideways benches at the back of the bus, which is normally prime sleeping hobo territory. Some people don’t like the sideways benches because riding sideways gives them motion sickness, but I don’t like them because you have to face the people sitting on the bench across from you and at least one of those people is staring at you with a murderous rage. In addition, behind the sideways bench there are seats facing forward and thus people facing forward staring at your profile, one of whom will invariably lean close to your face and say, “those are nice earrings. Are those your earrings?” That’s always a comfortable moment.

To make matters worse, I was in the middle seat of the sideways bench, sandwiched in between two guys who evidently were in agreement that at some point prior to this morning, I had used up my lifetime allotment of personal space. They were relatively fragrance-free, so I allowed it, not that I had much of a choice.

Then the bus driver made an announcement, “James Street, King County Courthouse,” and pulled up to the stop. Oh no. The guys to my left and right stood and while I am always happy when strangers stop touching me, my happiness was mitigated by the fact that I was now sitting in between two empty seats and this was the stop outside the courthouse. Also known as the official bus stop of commercial bail bonding. If you ever find yourself on the bus at this stop, there are two rules you ignore at your peril. Rule #1: Do not make eye contact with anyone. Rule #2: If someone sits next to you, for the love of all that is holy, do not get up and move to a different seat. That is just asking for it.

Because it was my lucky day, not just one but two people who boarded at this stop sat down next to me. I couldn’t look directly at either of them because of Rule #1, but out of the corner of my right eye, I could see a tall man, with a walking stick, wearing ripped jeans and a black pleather coat, judging by the smell of which he had worn while running a million laps in the hot sun around a cheese factory. I ceased all respiration for about two blocks, but then I decided passing out from lack of oxygen in this particular location was probably bad thinking. In an attempt to breathe, but in a surreptitious way so as not to cause the kind of offense which leads to being beaten with a walking stick, I turned my head slightly to the left, my gaze falling upon the leg of the other man sitting next to me, a leg covered with denim, the denim covered with grime. Seriously, I have never seen a dirtier item of clothing in my life. I could actually make out that there were two levels of filth. There was an undercoat of gray dirt, and a second coat of brown dirt. The time to flee had arrived. I was still seven blocks away from the stop I wanted, and it was cold as hell out, but I’ve heard that freezing to death can be pleasant, whereas asphyxiation is disagreeable.

So I got off the bus seven blocks early and walked to my class, where I learned many many useful things. The first thing I learned is that you have to get to the conference center before 7:45 if you want a sugar-free Yoplait. If you get there after 7:45, all the sugar-free Yoplaits will be gone and they will only have Activia left, and one of your classmates will examine each of the cartons of Activia with a look of disdain and say, “isn’t this that yogurt that makes you go to the bathroom?” before he takes a poppyseed muffin and returns to his seat. And because you have had an upsetting commute and you really just want some yogurt, despite its 18 grams of sugar you will take one of the Activias, and you will return to your seat and you will be eating your Activia and you will look up and the guy with the poppyseed muffin will be watching you eat your Activia as if he’s afraid you are about to blow. The second thing I learned is that the hot water handle on the water dispenser needs to be jiggled around before you depress it. If you depress it without jiggling it first, you won’t get any hot water. The third thing I learned is not to take a seat near the water dispenser unless you feel like helping a half dozen people make their tea.

Me: It’s …

Internal Voice: Shel … Sheldon … Shelby … Shelby Who … Shelby Woooo … Shelby Woooof … Shelby Woof! Shelby Woof-Woof!

Me: Uh …

Boss: Just let me know when you know.

Internal Voice: It’s Shelby Woof-Woof!

Me: No, I know. It’s …

Internal Voice: Shelby Woof-Woof!

Me: …

Boss [shakes head disapprovingly, walks away]: Tell me later.

Internal Voice: Tell him Shelby Woof-Woof! Tell him now!

Me: Okay, I’ll let you know!

Internal Voice: He’s getting away! Shelby Woof-Woof!
 
 

 
 
Post-awkwardness fact-checking reveals the person’s first name is Pete. Last name? Not Woof-Woof. Not even close.

There is some precedent for this in my family. My mom’s first experience with Halloween was shortly after my parents were married and living in an area of Tokyo where there also lived a few American military personnel. She had never heard of Halloween, and it never occurred to my dad that Americans would send their kids out trick-or-treating in Japan, so it came as a surprise and something of a mystery to her when a bunch of kids showed up at the door wearing odd clothing and begging for treats. Having no candy in the house, those kids ended up getting apples and 1 sen coins. That might sound crappy to you, but my mom grew up in Japan during the lean years of WWII. Those kids are lucky she didn’t give them slices of pickled radish.

Before I continue, I think it would be useful to discuss the relative merits of various candies available for distribution to the adorable moppets who will repeatedly interrupt and annoy you tonight. In general, the relative merits are these: chocolate candies good, non-chocolate candies less good. More specifically, and in descending order of goodness:

1. The A-list: Snickers, Milky Way, M&Ms, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Kit Kat, Twix, 100 Grand
2. Less highly-regarded but still good: Fifth Avenue, Mars Bar, Oh Henry, Almond Joy and Mounds, Heath Bar, Look, Chunky
3. Not that good, but it’s chocolate, so you know: Tootsie Rolls, Tootsie Pops, Malted Milk Balls, Goobers, Raisinets, Rocky Road
4. Dentists’ Delight: Bit-o-Honey, Big Hunk, Payday
5. Caramels and where the trick-or-treating starts to not be worth it: Sugar Daddy, Sugar Babies
6. Crap in a box: Jujy Fruits, LemonHeads, Dots, Hot Tamales, and whose dumb idea was it to manufacture a candy called Boston Baked Beans?
7. They’re not even trying: Dum Dums
8. Chalk
9. Sweet Tarts, Necco Wafers
10. Wax lips, wax teeth
11. Actual human earwax
12. Candy corn

Which leads me to the second story of Halloween non-preparedness, concerning my sister and her first holiday season in her own apartment. Unlike my mom, my sister was well-acquainted with Halloween, but since she lived in a mother-in-law apartment — Wait, here I have to digress. Is “mother-in-law apartment” a term widely known, or is it common only in this part of the country? I said it once to someone who was from Chicago and she looked at me as if I was speaking some kind of crazy moon man language. In case people don’t know, a mother-in-law apartment is a one-bedroom apartment located in what is otherwise a single-family house. It’s usually a basement apartment, with the entrance at the back of the house. They’re generally rented out by the homeowner; I’ve never heard of anyone letting their actual mother-in-law live in the apartment, but I like to think if someone did do that, that person would also keep gloves in the glove compartment. Anyway, my sister, twenty-years-old, mother-in-law apartment, Halloween. She wasn’t expecting any kids to even know anyone was living there, much less come into the back yard and knock on her door; therefore, she bought no candy to give out. When suddenly, ding dong! Trick or Treat! Well, crap. Although she had no candy to give out, she did for some reason have a bag of candy corn. I’m not going to judge. She was 20. When I was 20, I liked Billy Joel. We’ve all had youthful indiscretions. Being a bit flustered, she grabbed the bag of candy corn and distributed a handful in each child’s bag. Later, she said it might not have been so bad, but her place was the kids’ first stop and when she dropped the candy corn in their bags, you could hear it splatter across the bottom of the sack.

I changed my mind about not judging my sister. I just remembered that a few years ago at Christmas she brought over a three-pound container of candy corn. Instead of orange, yellow, and white, it was red, green, and white and called Reindeer Corn.

What I thought: “What in the hell am I supposed to do with this? Put on a Billy Joel album and chow down? Reindeer Corn. Do you not understand how disgusting this stuff is? How can we be related? What is wrong with you?”

What I said: “Oh! Reindeer Corn!”

Unusual though it may be given my documented love for people both old and young, no trick-or-treater knocked on my door until maybe fifteen years after I’d had my own home. That’s probably because I always lived in a security building or a mother-in-law or possibly it was because I either went out on Halloween night or at the very least turned off all the lights and kept the TV volume low. Hard to say. The year of my first trick-or-treater, I had just moved from San Francisco across the bay to Alameda. As I had in every previous year, I purchased candy to give out. As I recall, that year it was Three Musketeers and mini M&Ms. Suddenly, there was pounding on the door. “TRICK OR TREAT!!! TRICK OR TREAT!!!” Um, it’s 10:00 AM, kids. Who goes trick-or-treating at 10:00 AM? Seeing as how I’d just gotten out of the shower, I ignored them, they went away, I dried my hair and left the house for the day. Later, I learned that in Alameda, daytime trick-or-treating is the norm and because I didn’t get home until after 6:00, I ended up not giving out any candy that year. I feel a little bad about ignoring that first set of kids, but since I ended up eating the candy I’d bought, mostly I regret that I didn’t get the full-sized M&Ms.

In any case, I have no candy to give out this year. I probably won’t get any kids tonight, but if I do, I have a lot of extra toothbrushes and nickels and slices of pickled radish, and come to think of it, given my penchant for sticking unwanted things on a high shelf in the kitchen and forgetting about them, there might even be a three-pound tub of Reindeer Corn in the house. Everything should be fine.