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.

HR Beasties

Today I had a phone interview for an editorial assistant position with a local publishing company. Unlike the last interview I had, this one was with a faceless human resources lackey. Regardless of actually wanting this job and feeling lucky to have gotten an interview, I can’t help complaining about the conversation itself which consisted of The Most Generic Questions Ever which I answered in my usual evasive, political way (thanks presidential candidates for teaching me how to give a 30-second sound bite without giving any semblance of a real answer!). I talked about professional growth, my intellectual curiosity, and my understanding of the words “deadline” and “organization.” Meanwhile, deep in the corners of my mind, my real personality was hog tied and gagged with a tube sock because this is how she wanted to answer these questions:

Why did you leave your last job?

I put eye-drops in my boss’ coffee or, they caught me negotiating with the janitorial staff for a bag of pure, uncut Colombian, or, I got sick of collecting mugs and scrubbing at stubborn tea rings, or I hate answering the switchboard phone, or, I am the lizard king.

What is your understanding of this position?

Despite rereading the job ad 5 minutes ago and actually having it open on my laptop right this very moment, I have very little understanding of what I would do in this position because your advertisement uses the same kind of flowery corporate phrases as are present this interview. I’m aware that I will book flights, send form letters to annoying people that my superiors don’t want to talk to, and go to occasional conferences where more than likely, I will watch a married editor get drunk and tell me he’s gay before vomiting in his briefcase and passing out in an Applebee’s bar.

Why do you think you’d be good at this job?

I’m good at everything that I’ve ever tried except sucking at life.

What are your future goals?

Well, short-term I intend on using this company as a source of income, title, recommendations, and new facebook buddies. Long-term, I hope to flee this country, become a snorkel tour leader in Bermuda or barmaid in a small village pub in Ireland where I’ll own several large Labrador/Shepherds mixes. I do not see myself as part of the intelligentsia and have limited interest in the disciplines covered by your company (literature, anthropology, sociology, political science, etc.) but would be interested in founding a division on crude humor.

How much money do you want?

I need $75K a year, access to the corporate jet on the weekends, and also whatever you have in your wallet right now.

Phew! It feels better to have gotten that out of my system. Anyway, I think the answers I gave out loud were sufficient enough. Fingers doubly crossed for this one and the interview I had last week.

More Projects I Started and Then Forgot About / I Still Have a Blog?!

I’ve made it through almost a month of unemployment and besides a booming social calendar and a dwindling checking account, I have very little to show for my time other than a touch of insomnia. While I wait for this Benadryl to knock me out so I can finally get a good night’s sleep this week, I thought I’d check in. Nothing puts me to sleep so well as listening to myself talk. In the dark. To the Internet.

I’ve had a couple of complaints from my Only Fan that updates have not been coming at their usual frequent pace. For this I apologize and offer the following excuse: I have very little (good) material to share with you. For monetary and liver-tary reasons, I’ve scaled back on drinking (except for last weekend which was a shit show in New Hampshire where I took shots and ate sauerkraut in the same day which is a VERY BAD IDEA) so I have fewer wild and crazy stories to divulge and also I fall down less often. Mostly I putter around the house, read 19th century fiction, water plants, do laundry, and spy on my neighbors.

I also voraciously apply to every publishing house in the Boston area while our economy crumbles and hope that someone employs me soon so I won’t have to start bootlegging gin out of the washing machine (no bathtub – it’s the only option). On that note, I just had my second interview with an awesome company that felt promising but now that I’ve jinxed it and probably won’t get it, I’ll come back and cry to you next week when I hear back. I also crawled back to that grad program that I deferred in the spring and told them I’d be enrolling in the spring (hopefully part-time if this whole getting-a-job thing works out). So, I’m theoretically back on track to get a Masters in Books. We’ll see how that goes.

In my puttering today I discovered that we once again have a mouse which is not unusual in an old Victorian in New England at the onset of cold weather but nonetheless grosses me out when I want a piece of toast and find that something has chewed through the plastic bag and nibbled a circular portion of my whole wheat bread. This happened sometime last year when I left an unprotected loaf on a shelf with a large obvious mouse hole, but this time the food was in a bowl with tall, smooth sides on a counter devoid of holes. This led me to believe I have not just a rodent but indeed a Super Spiderman Ninja Mouse that carries nun chucks and wears a little black mask like Zorro. Bologna (who is visiting for the weekend) disagreed and demonstrated vividly how the villain might climb up the pipes under my sink, through a crack in the stove, hoist itself up on the ledge around the counter and from there jump into the bowl. So, OK, either I have a Super Spiderman Ninja Mouse or a Super Intelligent Mouse with Logistical Powers and Planning Ability Far Exceeding My Own. Neither makes me feel comfortable in my kitchen. But so help me God, if I see that thing crawling around on the ceiling like the baby in Trainspotting, I will spray its ass with Raid faster than you can say “Hey, I think the Benadryl kicked in.”

I Know Exactly How Tom Brady Feels

Hi Internet! Sorry I’ve been ignoring you but I’ve been wallowing in a sea of self-pity and boredom and rabidly applying for jobs. And also acting like a complete teenager by having the following dialogue with myself daily:

Me: Woe is me, I am so bored laying on the couch watching reruns of Will and Grace.

Rational Me: You could get off the couch and do something.

Me: There’s nothing to do.

Rational Me: What about that elaborate page-long list you made when you still had a job? Ya know? The one with fun things like pickle-making, dress-sewing, learning-a-Beatles-song-on-the-piano, etc.?

Me: Why bother? Life is so bleak. Woe is me.

[Fade to black]

I used to get like this when I was bored at work too. I would spend all morning staring at a wall but when someone finally dropped a two-minute task on my desk, I would procrastinate an hour while giving it the stink-eye before I would actually get it done. This is in contrast to the days when I actually was busy, because then the two-minute task would be swept up in my frenzy and completed while I simultaneously did five other things. So the moral of this story is that I’m more likely to accomplish something if I’m already overwhelmed. But now that I am my own boss, I have no whelms. I am whelmless and as such I may not brush my teeth until noon.

Now that you know I am too lazy to voluntarily cross the room to pick up a coloring book for my own amusement, it should not come as a surprise that I haven’t left the apartment by myself in a week. I’ve been out with Beau multiple times but am seemingly incapable of mustering the willpower to leave of my own accord. That is until yesterday when the catalyst of T’s birthday party this weekend provided enough force to launch me onto a Boston-bound train to shop for a dress.

I found almost exactly what I was looking for:


There was only one problem: the tummy region. Despite my best sucking in efforts, it remained… slightly poochy. Luckily, technology has remedied this problem! I hurried off to the underthings department with the dress and belt in tow and found what Bridget Jones referred to as those “scary stomach-holding-in pants very popular with grannies the world over.”

I remained skeptical of corseting undergarments as the laws of physics suggest my body fat might just spill over into other regions creating even weirder bulges. With this doubt in mind, I hustled off to the dressing room. I put on the other portions of the outfit and then looked challengingly at the medieval torture device hanging on the wall. I had selected the largest size possible assuming it would be physically impossible for me to fit into what would be considered my normal size (On a side note, why do they make them in a size small? If you can fit in a pair of small Spanx then there’s absolutely no reason you should be wearing them).

I pulled them off the hanger figuring I would try them on in the same fashion as a new swim suit: quickly and with my existing underwear still in place to block passage of cooties. The garment was safely up my left thigh when it became apparent that there were about three square inches of space left for the rest of me. This wasn’t a complete shock as I already understood the point of this device was to constrict my existing flesh. I was less concerned by the bondage of wearing it than the logistics of actually getting into it. It was like trying to climb into a tin can.

In a burst of energy and unprecedented acrobatics, I attempted to thread my right leg through the remaining hole. To do so, I lifted my foot as close to my belly button as I could and quickly jammed the pointy end into the garment. This movement is not included in my usual range of motions because I don’t do yoga. A searing Charley horse ripped through my left side. I fell sidewise into the wall, howling in pain as the rustles and coughs from adjoining dressing rooms went silent. I stayed with my forehead pressed against the mirror until my left leg stopped twitching enough to put weight on it at which point I realized I was now firmly jammed into the scary stomach-holding-in-pants. I made the best of it and squirmed around until they were in the correction location. Though they did, as promised, make my stomach smaller and my ass higher, I realized I would be drinking at the party and would therefore need to reenact the scene in a small bathroom stall every time I needed to pee. Exasperated, I ditched the entire scheme and left the store. Hobbling.

Half an hour later, I was still in a good deal of pain which was no longer ripping through my entire left side. It was now localized. In my left ass cheek. I pulled an ass muscle trying on a pair of these. My vanity now has the ability to wound not my just my pride but also inflict actual physical damage.

Now, approximately 20 hours after the incident, I’m still limping which provides me an awesome excuse not to leave the couch for another week.

A Sorry Excuse for a Blog Entry

Unemployment wears well on me. I spent four days being a human slug at Beau’s Cape house (mostly having a stomach bug that interfered with my drinking, but otherwise tanning). While there, I spent a bit of quality time with Beau’s sister, She-ra, so named because she very casually does triathlons every few months making me think that she could probably pick me up and throw me if I got too rowdy. Plus she has style flair just like her namesake and if you aren’t impressed with the embellished toga/cape/Uggs combo, then I just don’t know how to reach you.

On Monday night, I found myself on the couch with She-ra and her friends who introduced me to a new substance to go with my ice cream. I’ve never tried it before because I thought it was shameful, detrimental to my overall health, and dangerous. They say you’re hooked after just one dose, and they’re right. I am speaking of course of The Hills which I will more than likely watch next Monday and every Monday thereafter while drooling a little from the side of my mouth.

In other news, I’ve jumped on the housewifery bandwagon to fight the threat of cabin fever. In my first day alone at the apartment, I got up early to pack Beau’s lunch, did all the laundry I could find, exorcised 2 liquefying tomatoes from the kitchen, and did that puttering thing where you find problems you didn’t even know existed when you had a life. Like dusty baseboards. Faced with the prospect of continuing on a cleaning rampage thereby becoming my father, I rounded yesterday afternoon off by reneging on every bad thing I ever said about Corporate America and trolling Craigslist for job openings.