Special challenges threaten holiday hosting

Thanksgiving marks the official start of year’s end holiday celebrations. I use the word “holiday” not to side with the politically neutral or to offend those who decry “Say Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays.” I know the difference between Christ, my Savior, and Hallmark holiday hype, however, the Bible does not address “What would Jesus do” on cooking detail when confronted with holiday housefuls of guests.

About as close as it comes is the story of Martha (clearly foreshadowing the arrival of Martha Stewart 1900 years later!) carping about her sister, Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, while Martha tries to single-handedly prepare a huge meal to feed the Son of God and his disciple buddies.

While Jesus gently chided Martha about being more concerned with works than worship, he made no reference to what was going on with Martha and Mary’s brother, Lazarus. My guess is Lazarus was watching some primitive form of football game, or perhaps seated at the dinner table, fork in one hand, knife in the other, with a cloth napkin tied around his neck, waiting for Christ’s provision. Come thou, long expected Jesus, food in hand. And make it snappy! Half-time’s almost over.

A margin note in the NGHV (New Gender Honest Version) Bible would explain men from that era, not unlike their modern counterparts, saw eating as their central role on special occasions.

As Jesus has annually ignored my prayer requests to perform a turkey and mashed potato version of the loaves and fishes, I go to bed late the night before and get up early on Thanksgiving morning to perform my best version of Martha behavior. However, there is no Lazarus snoozing on my couch, nor Mary listening intently at Jesus’ feet. It is just me, myself and I hustling to prepare for the unruly crowd of 20 that descends, locust-like, upon my hospitality.

I host Thanksgiving every other year. I alternated first with an aunt and now with a nephew’s wife (we have the largest homes for formal gatherings). I highly recommend this approach, as it takes a year to forget just how much work last year’s event was. And by the time you do, it’s too late to back out of this year’s.

Growing up, I witnessed how my aunt and uncle, Kathleen and Bob Collins, flawlessly executed Thanksgiving dinner each year. It was all very pre-mediated and orderly. Never a disaster or even a spilling of a beverage, or running low on butter. But of course, they worked in tandem like the well-oiled team they are. Conversely, I have a few challenges to work around.

First, there is only one of me. That means I need to be twice as pre-mediated and orderly as my aunt and uncle, who, if Thanksgiving dinner were an Olympic event, would score a perfect 10. An unbelievable amount of hand-eye coordination is required to be mashing potatoes with your left hand and using an electric knife to carve a turkey with your right, while simultaneously stirring gravy with a spoon held between your toes.

A cordless phone remains snapped onto my waistband. Just to make it more challenging, the makers of side dishes keep calling to see how I am doing. “Is the turkey done yet?” Ha, ha, ha! Their goal is to give the appearance of being concerned about my cooking of the main menu items and solo-hosting Thanksgiving, short of volunteering to come four hours early and help. I know this routine well, as I spent many years in pseudo-helpful mode.

Then, there’s the mighty issue of my built-in kitchen oven being half the size of a conventional oven. That leads to a network of electric roasters and crockpots to crack-pottedly accomplish full-scale oven work. Try master-minding that while replacing the family one-ply toilet paper with guest two-ply.

Weather also challenges. I sometimes have to abandon my apron to go snow-blow to ensure ample parking and driveway passage for my guests. Once back in the house, I have to gauge just the right amount of wood to load in the furnace so my guests aren’t freezing or driven out by the heat.

Still hungry? My tip: remember to tip your hostess.

Done me wrong songs strike the right chord

The advantage to being a piano player is you get to be the entertainment for your own pity party. It saves money, which comes in especially handy if being broke is part of the reason you are feeling sorry for yourself.

Depressing week. Depressing weather. Depressing life. It was nearly that five-o’clock on a Saturday that Billy Joel croons about in his song “Piano Man,” with me coming up at least one piano bar short of giving a darn. About anything and anyone. While I’m the least depression-prone person I know, I still have my moments. Saturday was one really long moment.
Bad things have been happening to my friends at an alarming rate. One is trapped in a long-term, unfulfilling marriage; another is having his legitimate workman’s compensation claim disputed; and several of my former residential treatment program co-workers just learned they’ll be losing their jobs due to a string of selfish management decisions. With all this manure, there must be a bull somewhere.
In addition to the crapstorm raining down upon my friends, I have been ruminating lately about my own circumstances and allowing a margin of self-pity to overtake. While I’ve soldiered on over the months since my husband left, I still feel pretty humanly lonely at times, especially looking in from the outside at happily coupled people and resisting the urge to assault them. No offense intended, it’s just my patience and resolve have worn thin. Jesus may comfort, but he doesn’t cuddle.
Abandonment is unsettling and makes a person question the fairness and permanence of life as she thought she knew it. To quell my angst, I intentionally exhausted myself at the gym Saturday and decided afterward to also deplete my mind. A wine-tasting community benefit event was slated, but I was feeling anti-social. Plus, I assumed the wine steward would think it bad manners when I wrested the bottle from his hands and drank directly from it. Not to mention wine sounded too civilized for what was brewing up inside me. Nope, it was definitely a stronger brew occasion.
I checked my stash: Rolling Rock? Too cheerful. Craft brew? Too expensive to waste on inebriation. Amaretto? Too sissy. Spiced rum? Still not potent enough. Then I remembered the fifth of Jack Daniels single barrel Tennessee Whiskey special label I’d won on a bet. That was the ticket! I used it to fill my flask labeled, “First Aid.” Definitely for emotional pain.
Sad music is the other necessary ingredient for throwing a proper pity party. I searched youtube and found that B.J. Thomas classic, “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” Hey, if it was good enough to win a 1976 Grammy Award for Best Country Song of the Year, it could be my guest of honor for the evening.
“So please play for me . . . a sad melody . . . So sad that it makes everybody cry-y-y-y. A real hurtin’ song about a love that’s gone wrong . . . ’cause I don’t want to cry all alone. Hey, wontcha play another somebody done somebody wrong song. And make me feel at home while I miss my baby.”
Wontcha play another somebody done somebody wrong song? Great idea! In fact, the library had a sheet music book called “Done Me Wrong Songs.” I checked it out, sat my First Aid flask atop my baby grand (which would be my only “baby” for both the night and the foreseeable future) and started drowning my memories with musical liquidity.
“Am I Blue? You’d be, too. If each plan with your man done fell through.” I rinsed down the chorus with swig of Jack and moved on to other painful gems, including, “How Do I Live Without You?” “The Man That Got Away,” and “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues.” My long overdue pity party was rockin’. I picked up the tempo.
“I’m still standin’ after all this time. Pickin’ up the pieces of my life without you on my mind.” Elton John had it right, except I wasn’t standing very steadily by that point. I staggered to the bathroom and back for the baby grand finale.
“It’s My Party (and I’ll cry if I want to),” “Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week,” and “Un-break my Heart,” and finally, “Kiss This” with a “Great is Thy Faithfulness” chaser. New mercies (Lamentations 3:23) and a lot of Excedrin would be needed come morning.

“Mommageddon” is son’s real biggest threat

APOCALYPTIC SUPPLIES – At least my son was content on his last birthday to receive such low-tech gifts as canned food for his apocalypse supply stash.

Ever since I can remember, my son has been interested in apocalyptic scenarios. Whether books, movies, television shows, computer games, music – you name it, from the start, he’s been interested in the end – the end of civilization as we know it.

Connor fancies himself a survivalist. While he doesn’t use that term, it’s obvious to anyone watching him, whether here or from outer space. Along with that, everything and everyone is viewed in terms of end game usefulness.

Would homemade venison jerky outlast its beef counterpart during the final days of the world? Might his sister’s new fast pitch softball bat make an effective weapon against others who foolishly tried to seek refuge in what will be our converted farmhouse basement bomb shelter?

Once, my son seriously asked my help in weighing the merits of a fast car against those of a crotch rocket as potential getaway vehicles, then became angry when I took too long deliberating between the four-wheeled vehicle’s larger car seat capacity versus the motorcycle’s better gas mileage.

“Mom, it’s the end of the world, for crying out loud!” he shouted at me. “Who cares about little kids and economy at a time like that.”

“Geez!” I yelled back. “I’m thinking species preservation and resource conservation. Give your old mother a break!”

While he begrudgingly respected my logic, he informed time was a luxury I wouldn’t have in the post-apocalyptic scenario he envisioned. Still, my parenting-honed McGyver qualities would be useful when the going got treacherous. Mom got game. Survival game. He’d sporadically test my mettle with bombshell questions designed for reactivity.

“You wouldn’t have an issue, would you, ‘taking one for the team’ if it meant we’d be able to get our hands on hard-to-acquire medical supplies?” he questioned one Sunday on the way to church. Mistaking my stunned silence as proof of solidarity, he moved to the next item on his futuristic crisis planning list.

“Mom, if an actual zombie apocalypse were to occur, would you be willing to shelter Dad if he survived initial destruction, even though you two aren’t on the best of terms?” That question was far worse than anything he had come up with at age four, going through the requisite Mike Wallace/60 Minutes million questions stage.

“Sure, your dad can share our bunker accommodations,” I said without hesitation, eyeing the softball bat. “In all the zombie movies I’ve seen, they always have at least one basically expendable character that gets sacrificed early on for the greater good. Good thinking, son.”

Overall, though, I was sick to death of all communication centering on the upcoming Armageddon. Why couldn’t we have a normal mother-teenage son conversation, where I warned him about the evils of mood-altering drugs, disease-spreading sex, and mind-warping music? The steady diet of survival against surreal evil preparation had my own brain feeling half-eaten, zombie-style, from the repeated, inane questioning. Was it too much to ask that the walking dead bypass a meal?

When I encouraged Connor to put together his Christmas wish list during the annual pre-gift-giving season, he was already on it. From a bullet-proof vest pocket he produced a bullet-pointed string of survivalist gear, including waterproof matches, a substantial length of rope, flares, assorted low-tech weaponry, and a multitude of canned food.

Really? Absolutely! His list was specific to the point he had supplied photographs of several shelf-stable, MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) dishes, sure to delight even the most discerning diner during the darkest days to come.

I checked his bedroom and discovered several items he had pilfered from our household larder, presumably after I ignored the canned goods items he’d been penciling on my weekly grocery list. Connor seemed genuinely disappointed this reluctant Mommageddon planner continued to prefer and purchase fresh and frozen vegetables over canned, despite the end of the world so near.

“Do you have any idea how disgusting canned veggies taste?” I quizzed my junior survivalist.

“You say that now, Mom, but those canned peas will be looking pretty good when it comes down to eating them versus one of our neighbors.”

“Can’t argue that,” I said. And I tossed him my back-up set of salt and pepper shakers.

Great day wasted on crappy outdoor projects

This was the donated to an auction dinner we were getting ready for when we should have been putting on storm windows.

Last Sunday had to be the most beautiful day in recent history. It also violated the apparent rule those kinds of days typically fall on a Wednesday, where they can’t be put to good use because you have to be at work. And they never fall on a Monday or Friday, with weekend-extending possibilities.

But this gorgeous day of near 60-degree temperatures that felt more like 70, with just enough of a breeze to rustle the falling leaves, was ideal for accomplishing highly-necessary outdoor stuff, namely taking out the window air conditioners and putting on the storm windows.

Better yet, my kids were home that Sunday afternoon on which all my winterization expectations rode. Friday had been shot in the butt with a middle school dance and high school football game, while Saturday required non-stop cooking and cleaning for an in-our-home benefit dinner party we were hosting that night, except for the midday “break” from 10 AM-3 PM where the kids escaped to work with the Young Marines an alternative trick-or-treat event at Battle Creek’s Kingman Museum. Later, we stayed up past bedtime cleaning up post-party paraphernalia.

Sunday started out with working the 7 AM shift at a Fredonia Grange pancake brunch in Marshall, followed by playing piano at church, then back to the pancake brunch. I drove home by way of Battle Creek to return something at Sam’s Club. By the time we landed home, nobody was in the mood to capitalize on the wonderful weather.

“C’mon guys, I need your help,” I started out in a nice tone.

“I don’t want to have to move things around to remove the air conditioner in my room,” my son said.

“But this is the only time when we’ve been home together lately and we need to take advantage of the weather,” I countered.

“I’m the one who’s getting taken advantage of,” he replied and refused to budge from where he had plunked and was gaming on his laptop. But he experienced a change of heart after I blackmailed him with money for a late afternoon movie he wanted to see with friends.

My daughter flitted around, distracted, so I handed her a broom and sent her outside to sweep leaves, cobwebs, lady beetles and box elder bugs underneath where the storm windows would go. You would have thought I’d asked her to donate a kidney, or possibly even an organ like her liver, of which she only has one.

“But mom, I am already tired and hate doing jobs like this,” she protested. “Are you going to be paying us?” Her brother agreed they should be paid (and well!) for winterization work.

“Yes,” I agreed. “I will pay each of you 50% of what I am earning for doing these thankless jobs.” They must not have been using their ears or brains, for they agreed to help.

With considerable complaining, Connor hauled the eight-foot stepladder out of the basement. I carried up individually all the storm windows, mostly because I would have killed anyone who broke one. The job was made easier through the blue painter’s tape designation labels I had placed on the windows when I’d put them away in spring. They’re all slightly different.

My least favorite storm window (I have no “favorite”) is the one with hooks on top that have to be eased over two brackets. Precision alignment is required while contortionally balancing one foot on ladder leaned against the house, with another precariously treading the moving trunk of a large shrub. You would swear it impossible if you hadn’t personally removed those very hooks from those brackets back in April.

“You are a crappy parent to make us do crappy jobs!” my son accused. My memory revisited the mandated childhood role I played in my dad’s annual pre-winter ritual: the cleaning of the septic tank. I had to go down inside of it. Crappiest job ever!

“Let me take you on a little gratitude-lined stroll down my memory lane,” I started to say. But my son was already booking back to his bedroom and the virtual reality land of no smell, mess or stress.

“Take me along,” I begged. “I need it worse than you.”