Thanksgiving is in the Air

There’s good reason for me to ignore Halloween in favor of skipping ahead to the next holiday. Here’s a particularly good reason: I’m still unemployed and too frugal for a costume which is a real mood killer. But in addition, Thanksgiving forcefully assaulted me yesterday. It was thrust under my nose not once, but twice, TWICE. That’s more than once. Two times as much actually.

This year, the family plans to convene at my brother-in-law T’s childhood home in upstate New York for the holiday. Having been raised in Jersey and lived in and around numerous cities my entire life, I’ve never seen the middle of nowhere. I visited my college roommate in Vermont once, but we spent most of our time in Burlington, which is at least a small town, so that doesn’t count. For this trip, I’ve been promised farmland and woods and moors through which I can wander and sigh into the wind like a Brontëan heroine. These dreams, of course, have been dashed by the first snow storm of the season which blanketed the area in, well, in this:

But, hey, it's not the Liki Tiki

Until then, I’m left with obscene amounts of time on my hands. One of the few productive things I do with it is romp in the park near my house. I look at the leaves, pet the puppies, and give dirty looks to the joggers that judge me as they pass me on the trail. Whatever. I’m outside getting exercise and I know better than to wear those stupid little running shorts that expose your nasty old man thighs to the 40° weather. So let’s all just keep our self righteousness to ourselves, shall we?

On my way home from said romp yesterday morning, something caught my eye as I turned into my driveway. Something moved in my backyard. At first I thought it was Winston, one of the semi-feral (but very friendly) cats that belongs to our crazy cat-lady and sometimes hangs out with me when I read outside or when I come home drunk and need to sit down on the porch to figure out which key to use. I stooped to look under the car that was blocking my line of sight for soft little paws. None. I was about to write it off as my imagination when something else rounded the side of my landlord’s unsuspecting Subaru. It was a skeksi. Except this time, it was corralled in my backyard and I was blocking the only exit.

I snapped a few blurry phone pics and returned to the apartment where I stood there for several minutes wishing I had time to return with a proper camera. But wait! I have nothing but time! I flew out the back door with my equipment, praying that the skeksi hadn’t used my absence to flee. Happily, it hadn’t. That’s because skeksis are stupid. AND THEY ARE ALSO FLIGHTLESS, COUGH COUGH. You know who you are.

As I stood at a safe distance on the back porch zooming in on my find and feeling like the Croc Hunter, Beau’s words came back to me from my last skeksi sighting. Something like, “No, honey, you shouldn’t chase wild turkeys into other people’s backyards. They are vicious birds. I’m very sure they will start shit with you and they will win.” Those words continued to echo in my head as I snapped picture after fruitless picture from a miserable, safe distance:

So far away you has to circle me in red

Here I is. Bein as tall as yur table

Soon, I grew weary of precautions, so I snuck closer. I really like to have photographic evidence of my many wild, seemingly tall tales. Not because I sometimes lie (no, really, I am an Italian supermodel) but because sometimes even the true things I say stretch the bounds of reasonable credibility. I was sneaking up behind it musing on this point when finally, it came for me.

They see me rollin. They hatin.

With as much grace as one can muster when fleeing from poultry, I jumped over a bush and ran the 15 feet to my backdoor. As I snapped one last picture of my close encounter, I thought back to my vegetarian days many years ago when I hung “meat is murder” banners in the dining room and handed out pamphlets covering the inhumane treatment of livestock to our Thanksgiving dinner guests. Times they are a changin'. Now, I’ve officially added turkeys to the List of Things I Would Eat Because They’re Really Ugly. Right after pugs.

Lonely Teenage Boys Need Not Apply

The following requires no introduction, which is convenient because I’m slightly hung over from Beau’s birthday festivities last night and my brain is having trouble formulating an appropriate opening line:

My web of spies informs me that this flier was found posted in a student dorm at Bentley College (just west of Boston) and that the square seen in the lower left corner is the genuine stamp of approval from the school. After a little intrepid sleuthing of my own I was able to find the aforementioned housing contract here on their website but was unable to find the anti-chicken-choking clause.

So many questions come to mind (a much better place to come than the Bentley showers apparently). I’m positively bursting with questions, much like their pipelines are overflowing with the raging spermatozoa of a thousand desperate freshman boys. But enough puns. Onto the inquiry. Right onto it. All over it, in fact. One might liken it to a money shot. But seriously:

Who was the unfortunate plumber that discovered the problem? How exactly does semen clog a pipe other than the one in which it originated? How does the school expect students to masturbate in their rooms when most are shared by a roommate? Isn’t that why they’re escaping to the showers for a little privacy? Is Bentley suggesting they do the five knuckle shuffle with their roommate? Is that sexual harassment or homosexual activity? Do they permit the non-ejaculating gender to wank in the showers? Isn’t that gender discrimination if they do? If the boys can’t beat the bishop in the shower OR in their rooms, will all that baby batter on the brain affect their schoolwork? Which is more important to Bentley: keeping their students happy and healthy enough to succeed in their classes or keeping the cost of facilities maintenance at an absolute minimum? If the guys are cock blocked in their own homes, will they compensate by having more sex elsewhere? Will the school turn into one giant outdoor orgy? How will that affect the teen pregnancy rates? How about the STD rates? Is Bentley prepared to provide free condoms as a precaution? Wouldn’t it probably be cheaper to just clean out the pipes once in a while? How much sperm does it take to clog a pipe? How much are these guys masturbating anyway?!

The only certainty in this case is that the housing authority at Bentley College wouldn't be so up tight if they engaged in a little prohibited self-love themselves. I suggest the administration make a special visit to the showers immediately.

Wildlife: A Summary of the Past Week in Three Vignettes

I. Goats

After months of whining that I always share Beau with our friends and that he never takes me anywhere nice (other than the Chili’s on route 1 which is pretty rockin’), I was treated to a date-weekend commencing with a trip to Belkin Lookout Farm for apple picking. I was informed that there was a petting zoo which quelled my griping over the $14 per person entrance fee… which didn’t include any actual fruit. Fruit was extra.

We got our money’s worth though because we rode a little train to get from orchard to orchard which I found exhilarating. Anyone who has been on a kiddy rollercoaster with me can personally tell you that dragging me on any ride that involves drops or unreasonable speed results in my uncontrollable swearing. Kind of like that scene in The Exorcist where she cusses out the priest. Except instead of a priest it’s usually my close friends and relatives and an errant ride operator or two. In addition to this fantastic amusement, Beau managed to scarf down one Asian pear and three grapes while we hid behind trees watching for farm workers and other immigrants. By my calculations, we stole approximately $1.93 worth of merchandise.

Truly the animals were worth every cent I overpaid. I was expecting some chickens and a really exasperated looking pig. What I got was a pen of a dozen hungry goats and small children. Less adventurous types in skinny jeans and Uggs watched on in horror at the chaos of these constantly defecating creatures. I quickly grabbed Beau and pushed in front of a nine-year-old while dancing around steaming piles of pooh. I chased them around in little circles, I scratched them behind the ears, I otherwise amused myself until finally, I found the Holy Grail of the petting-zoo world: a wee little goatling baby which I played with until it started chewing on Beau’s sneakers and nipping his fingers. As I told Grasshoppah a few days ago, baby goats are adorable for many reasons but also because they don’t reject you from a job that you had two interviews for and felt promising since the employer went through the trouble in the last meeting of explaining the company's benefits package thereby causing you to waste three weeks of job searching. So there’s also that.

II. Turkey-dogs

After returning home with the Most Expensive Apples ever, we punished them for their excessive cost by making them into a pie, then decided constant consumption of pie makes us fat, so punished ourselves with exercise. We took a stroll through the park near our house which was similar to our other walks there: we discussed my continued lack of employment, the little graveyard tucked in the forest that always makes Beau say “Wow, I’ve never noticed that before!” every time we pass by it, and the cuteness of the dogs we saw. I was still remarking on the chubbiness of a huge chocolate lab and fluffiness of a miniature husky when we heard hysterical laughter behind us. The chubby lab had mounted the fluffy mini-husky and the owners were attempting to pull them apart. It’s dogs humping in the park that I find most useful in fighting off the hovering clouds of self-pity and depression. As long as I’ve got that, things can’t be all bad.

Monday I had jury duty which was disappointingly uneventful. Upon leaving my apartment for the courthouse, I saw a gigantic turkey walk down the street. It must have been as tall as my hip. But what the hell was it doing in my neighborhood? For that matter, what was that coyote doing in my neighborhood? This is a suburb of Boston, people, not Des Moines.

Anyway, it was like an acid flashback. Or a scene from The Dark Crystal. Either way, after chasing the turkey halfway to the train station and almost pursuing it into someone’s backyard, I realized that maybe I don’t get out of the house enough anymore. Mostly because I’m busy peeking out from behind a curtain waiting for more skeksis.

III. Vermin

Ninja Mouse is still terrorizing the household. While this is a useful diet aid since it makes me afraid of my own kitchen, I have come to find troublesome droppings on my counters like the trail of an overzealous 5th-grader with a bottle of jimmies. Clearly, we can no longer share this apartment. The other inhabitants work on an honor code built around not defecating on food preparation surfaces. If Ninja Mouse can’t abide by that rule, then I’m afraid it has to go.

But how to get rid of a critter whose intellect and acrobatic skills far surpass my own? As an animal-hugger, I was inclined to purchase a humane trap so I could catch it and re-release it into the wild. Unfortunately for Ninja Mouse, those traps are costly and I remain, yes, unemployed. Beau even drove me around to the local hardware stores looking for options other than the snappy-break-your-neck type traps without success. Once home, we found out that estrogen and mouse-genocide do not mix well together. I pouted and fought back tears while Beau was forced to set the traps alone. But it doesn’t matter, because after two nights of attempted murder, we haven’t caught the damn thing. It’s been eating the bait WITHOUT SETTING OFF THE TRAPS. Pitted against each other in a game of chess, I’m 90% certain that I would lose to Ninja Mouse.