Real Pioneers Caulk It and Float

In the time honored tradition (which began last year) of the Dangerous Family, Thanksgiving simply cannot be held in a reasonable location. Why would anybody want to have dinner in front of a roaring fireplace at their father’s house in temperate South Carolina where one could still at this time of year feasibly walk on the beach? Thanksgiving must be an Adventure. This is to test the family loyalty. Sure you’ll help a relative hide a body, but will you drive cross country to stay in a roach infested motel?

Much to Beau’s disappointment, we won’t be returning to the Liki Tiki in Florida this year. Instead, we’re taking a relatively short drive of five hours to upstate New York, home of T’s entire family. Entire. Like going back a dozen generations to the Mayflower era when people were called hominids and ate ants with sticks. Yes, we’re going to eat Thanksgiving with the descendants of real life pilgrims. To do so, we just need to drive through an area that’s been blanketed with snow for a month to a place that Google informs me is nestled snugly between the Catskills and the Adirondacks. We will be frontiersmen in our own right as we forge through this wilderness where there may not be public restrooms, acceptable fast-food, paved roads or cell service. In just two days, we begin the exodus of The Slightly Abbreviated Oregon Trail.

Culling knowledge from the computer version, I know that the first step involves packing the wagon and similar to the ways of my overzealous ten-year-old self, I am already over packing. But instead of bringing fifteen pounds of cornmeal and twenty chickens (each with a name and an elaborate personal history that was explored in detail via the journal feature which chronicled every time a hen wandered off or had to be killed for food), I’m taking a number of supplies that Beau and I are concerned we may not find at our destination. Among these items are cilantro, comfy pillows, rum, and freshly ground coffee as well as a full arsenal of allergy medications since I’ll be cohabiting with multiple felines, which, though adorable, make me sneeze uncontrollably and my throat swell up in an unattractive and life-debilitating way.

Speaking of bodily weakness, remember how pissed you’d get when Amos, the quote-on-quote doctor, would come down with cholera somewhere in Wyoming and you’d have to rest for two weeks? Like Amos, I am also diseased. The inexplicable disappearing zit that hid before I got to last week’s interview has resurfaced on my chin and it is ANGRY. It looks much less like a pimple and much more like a second chin jutting out to the right. For thematic continuity, we’re going to call it mumps.

So, this is how I am required to prove my loyalty to the family and renew my membership for the coming year. With cornmeal, dysentery, and mountain lions. Pray for us. And Godspeed on your own travels!