No Actual Fires Were Started

-
As it turns out, Lisa Marie's oven broke at the last second and she had to come over here to finish cooking the turkey, the stuffing, and some potatoes. We were not able to cook the frozen pumpkin pie because neither one of us could figure out how to remove the oven racks. You will likely not find two less qualified people to be attempting to put together a dinner for ten. I did nothing actually except at the end, I suggested we could baste the turkey in some of the juices. We both did this for awhile, wondering if it would do something toxic to the meat, unbeknownst to us. But we made it and turkey was served (though it wasn't cooked all the way through in every place, it was mostly done).

Got to meet baby Ruby who is a dream child--didn't cry or fuss like the rest of us. I suspect she's not fully human; she must be part Sainted baby. I expected her to bless us at any second, holding up two fingers and waving them our way as most baby pope statues do. Didn't help at all at the house, except for being sure that the wine bottles were properly opened. Luckily, no one made us go around and say what we're thankful for because that inevitably turns cheesy and sad. We briefly played charades, but since I cut up all of the tags, I wasn't allowed to guess and could only act out movies. Stephanie's husband got one right away--I forget what it was--but I just did one gesture and he was like, The Fall of the House of Usher! Brilliant.

Comments

Lisa Marie Patzer said…
What is the one thing I was thankful for on Thanksgiving? The fact that I live no more than 7 blocks away from Aimee, that she has a great oven, and is a good friend who I could call in a panic. If it weren't for Aimee and her close proximity, I would have had 10 people over for Thanksgiving with no turkey to serve. Although no one really ate that much of the Turkey, partly because it was under cooked, the effort we put into the whole ordeal made up for it and people seemed to forgive me.
12:50 PM
Aimee said…
Hey, thanks. I'm happy to lend you my oven any time as I seldom use it except to light cigarettes!
2:46 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Candyman: Race, Class, Sexuality, Gender, and Disability

-
Candyman hits on almost all of the sections we discussed over the last six weeks. Let's start from the most obvious and move from there.   Race: A large part of Candyman confronts the anger and rage of the Black community after years and years and years and years of systemic racism. Candyman is an embodiment of all of the men who have suffered at the hands of whites (white police man, the white community, white systems that have set them up to fail such as the housing projects of Cabrini-Green). The monster of Candyman is a tornado of retribution, a hive of bees swirling angrily and containing the men who have been lynched or tortured by whites, starting with the original death of a Black male painter who dared to fall in love with a white woman whose portrait he painted. This monster, like the original, can be summoned by anyone who dares to say his name out loud in front of a mirror five times. Until the very end, the only people who do this are white--and every one of them is
Read more

Short story by Lauren Groff, "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners"

-
Image
You have to maintain a much more focused attention when reading a good short story versus a novel, because if you skim, you might miss something.  For this reason, I find it a little more difficult on my brain to read short stories.  But if you're going to write in the form, you should read in the form (and others--I have yet to memorize a poem as was suggested in my workshop last week), so I've been trying. Lauren Groff has a story called "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" in Best American Short Stories, 2014. You might have read her novel The Monsters of Templeton, or her other short story from a previous Best of collection, "Delicate Edible Birds" (also the name of her book of short stories), I have a vague recollection that that story was about World War II or possibly World War I and a dinner party where the people invited are living it up . I seem to also remember a line about the crunching of tiny bird bones. The Monsters of Templeton
Read more

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

-
Image
It’s all about the recaps. It’s a show made of recaps from previous shows. I purposefully skipped the first 40 minutes. These guys are all a bunch of idiots. They are turning on one another. Wes has not shown up, because he will probably come in at the very end for some kind of surprise. They are all trying to humiliate Jake because he is too perfect and too sweet (however, he just referred to himself in the third person; kind of irritating). I don’t remember any of these guys, to be honest. Who are these women in the audience? Oh, okay time for a short break because the show has been on now for three minutes. You know what, I’m going to go ahead and time the difference between the commercials and the actual airtime of the show. >Show returns at: 8:47 p.m. Don’t forget the 20 minutes of clapping in between the scenes. I can’t tell you how much hair mousse has been used in the making of this show. Dave is the crazy dude who has decided to grow a beard for the recap Juan is being atta
Read more