Nostalgia is for Shit! (Says Mary Anne)

Freedom

And happy Thanksgiving to you too!

When I was a kid, my dad would sometimes come for Thanksgiving. My mom made chicken because she said turkey was too dry and we’d choke on it. But sometimes the chicken didn’t get cooked all the way through; my mother called this ‘al dente.’ It’s a wonder she didn’t kill us. The McCormick chicken gravy was always loaded with lumps I would squish against my plate; it was one of those gross things you can’t resist doing. Then there was the frozen brick of Bird’s Eye creamed onions that would become a congealed mess with a little hit of ice at the center, Bird’s Eye cut green beans with freezer burn because they were bought back in February when they were on sale, a wobbly cranberry sauce wearing the impression from the inside of the can— this was strictly for the grown-ups, stuffing— sometimes it was ‘homemade’ with Wonder Bread, sometimes it was Stove Top. We only got Bird’s Eye or Stove Top on Thanksgiving, the rest of the year it was Econo Buy and Montco. The only thing homemade here was the mashed yellow turnips (rutabagas nowadays)—despite the acrid dried parsley. This is the only part of of this space-age convenience meal I still make. With fresh parsley. Italian flat-leaf parsley. Organic Italian flat-leaf parsley. Purchased after the grower tells me a charming story about how his great, great grandmother came over from Italy with one parsley seed in her pocket and how he honors the earth buy planting only when the earth is in energy alignment with the spirits of the rootsayers.

All this ‘pilgrim’s bounty’ landed on a vinyl tablecloth with a turkey print all over it: the chicken on the good china platter inherited from my grandmother, the ‘blue plate’ dishes from the Americana promotion at the A&P, various flatware from promotions at the Grand Union, goldenrod colored plastic glasses made To look like logs from god only knows where. Then it would all go to hell. My mother would start with my dad. I would just keep eating and hope it would blow over. Sometimes, I would try to add small talk about stuff like the price food going up or gas or some pertinent economic issue, but that didn’t help, the argument was like a rolling stone that bounced over any obstacle in its path. Finally, my dad would put his napkin on the table and get up and leave. “Well, it’s just you and me now,” my mother would say defiantly. Sometimes there was a ham instead of chicken. This was suctioned out of a candy corn shaped can for the gourmet treatment: a lattice pattern of knife slashes across the top dotted by cloves so it looked quilted, finished with pineapple ring, and soaked in a brown sugar sauce. This would pair with canned candied yams and, in a nod to our German heritage, Bird’s Eye German-style green bean and spaetzle; for dessert, a Hostess apple pie a la mode (my mother took French in high school, of which she remembered exactly two phrases: a la mode and merci beaucoup).

When my father couldn’t visit, Thanksgiving took a strange turn. Sometimes we would join my Nana, who was not my grandmother but a lady who used to babysit me. We would celebrate with her fortysomething daughter (who still lived with her), her fiftysomething son (because his grown kids by his ex-wife weren’t speaking to him), and his girlfriend. The first time we went, I remember I was impressed with the table setting: gleaming silverware, china plates with gold trim, crystal glasses, a lace tablecloth, real candles, and a real flower centerpiece. Nana showed me a dish she was making: sweet potatoes with mini marshmallows on top. Wow. Marshmallows for dinner! I told her I wanted a lot of that. It is still one of the top ten worst things I ever put in my mouth. Then BAM! Dinner is served! Her son is clearly loaded and now he’s waving an electric knife back and forth over the turkey and god only knows what he’s talking about. His girlfriend’s wig is askew and she apparently subsists on little bottles of Jim Beam. Is she trying to limit her intake? Nana’s daughter has been slacking off on the lithium again and tells everyone “you need to be careful because they can hear you.” Who’s they? But the real entertainment is when, out of nowhere, a black cat jumped onto the table. I watch as cat hair, highlighted by the light from the chandelier, slowly settles on everything. I’m full. Amazingly, this scene would repeat itself almost exactly every time we had Thanksgiving there. Strange.

Sometimes Nana was abducted by her family in New York, so my mother took another stab at Thanksgiving. It would be a trendy Friendsgiving now. She would invite Nana’s daughter and some people she met around town who didn’t have anywhere to go. Normally, this would seem like a very nice thing to do, except these particular people didn’t have anywhere to go because they were living in hotels and they were living in hotels because that’s where the state put them when the state closed down all the mental institutions. Thomas, my mother said, was a real American Indian, a fact that he advertised by wearing lots of turquoise jewelry over his polyester three piece suit. Every chance he got, I got a BIG hug from Thomas. My mom said Thomas told her this was the best Thanksgiving ever. No shit. Then there was Judy, she used to be a nurse at Massachusetts General. She was already lit when she arrived and staggered up the stairs, so my mother paired her with Billy who was so drunk he had wet his pants and didn’t even notice. Maybe he spilled something. It was hard to tell. Then Isabelle and her little dog. She wasn’t a former mental patient but she was deaf and very, very, extremely, loud; at least she was sort of normal. She had a it tough and worked her whole life in some lace factory. Then there was Betty Boop (not her real name). She had been a Rockette and on national TV with the June Taylor Dancers on the Jackie Gleason Show. My mother loved Jackie Gleason and would talk endlessly about him like she knew him, which was kind of strange. Anyhow, Betty went nuts after the birth of her second kid and spent many years in and out of mental institutions and getting shock therapy. Now she spent all day wheeling her dog around town in a baby carriage while drinking coffee, smoking, and wearing way too much make-up. And then there was Harold. Ugh. He wanted to get it on with my mom and kept grabbing her and trying to kiss her. My mom was always like, “Oh, he’s harmless.” I would have just the worst spinning feeling from all this. Please Dear Lord let it be over.

With the cast assembled, my mom loved to play dictator, everyone had their little job. We put a little pressed wood table together with a rickety card table and threw a stained tablecloth over the whole thing. The tables weren’t the same height, a fact that no one seemed to notice since everyone tried to place something across the ledge only to have it tip over and exclaim, “Oh my goodness! What happened?”.  My mother set this all to music. She had only two records: one was Mario Lanza’s The Student Prince and Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker by Boston Pops. Once the food hit the table, it looked like a bunch of raccoons had gotten into the trash. Isabelle sat her dog on her lap feeding him the whole time until he finally puked. My mother was like, “Oh don’t worry, let me get you a napkin.” Dog puke stinks. Everyone made sure to compliment my mother profusely; this was the best meal they ever had. And I was the ungrateful little snot sitting in the middle of this. Future organic flat-leaf parsley using snot.

Once, I was looking at Norman Rockwell’s famous Freedom from Want painting on my mom’s calendar— my mom loooooved Norman Rockwell and would buy anything with his stuff on it— and I told my mom’s friend Mary Anne I wished my Thanksgivings were like that and Mary Anne, who was one of twelve in a big Irish Catholic family, looked at me like I had three heads and twelve eyes and said, and I quote: “Are ya kiddin’ me! Rockwell is a goddamn twisted sadist. Nobody’s goddamn Thanksgiving is like dat, he’s like fucking Walt Disney and everything’s all fine an dandy. Let me tell ya: nostalgia is for shit and you can take that to the bank.”

But she didn’t stop there, she pointed to the picture: “Lemme see here. Ok, ya see Gramma back there? She look like some nice old lady, right? She’s serving da turkey like it the goddamn baby Jesus an the damn thing is drier than kindlin’. Granpa? He’s stickin’ close to her so he can maybe get a leg. All he thinks about ‘gotta get a leg, gotta get a leg’ over and over like a dog. ‘Cause that’s what she trained him to be, her goddamn dog. My folks ain’t here ‘cause they on the back porch fightin’, cousin Billy ain’t in the picture cause he’s passed out on the couch, cause there was three pubs between his apartment and Gramma’s house, my sister Margaret, she ain’t here cause she away at a ‘school’ for pregger girls and Gramma says God is gonna to punish her good. My brother Billy ain’t there ‘cause he a fag and Gramma says he goin’ to hell. Patty ain’t here cause she got divorced and Gramma says she goin’ to hell too. Cousin Danny, the guy in the bottom right, he divorced too, but he gives Gramma special candy so apparently he ain’t gonna go to hell. Ya see that old lady behind Danny, that’s Gramma’s sister Betty. She ain’t never been married. She doesn’t give a shit a bout nothin’ so long as she gets dessert. Behind her, ders my sister Catherine, she fuckin’ perfect, she go to mass every day, everybody go on and on and on ‘why can’t youse be like Catherine.’ All dat church don’t do her no good ‘cause she’s the meanest bitch I ever seen. And Gramma is gonna leave her all her jewelry; well who cares! Ain’t nobody want all her ugly shit anyways. That young guy up by Gramma— I‘m jus smushing all together like 20 years or somethin’— anyways he’s my brother, he’s up front cause he told Gramma he was thinking about goin’ in the priesthood; Gramma looked like she had a hit a dope, ya know what I mean? So now he’s her favorite. If he gonna be a priest I’m fuckin’ Einstein, ya know what I mean? No way he’s gonna be a priest, he fucks everything he sees. Gina tells me he’s been giving everyone the clap an he got fired at A&P for sticky fingers. Dat guy behind him, dat could be Uncle Jerry; I don’t know too much about him; he might been a nice guy; his wife died now he practically lives at the pub. He practically lived dare before, but now it’s full-time. Oh, and dat couple on the bottom right, I’m gonna make them my Aunt Jean and her husband, I forgets what his name was, anyways they take the cake! They talked Gramma into getting a loan on her house for ten grand. Very, very, very big money, you hear me? Hey were gettin’ in on the ground floor of some deal that was gonna make Gramma rich, everybody rich. I dunno what happened, but six months later they was vamoose. Gone. Many years later, I heard they was maybe in Florida, but we ain’t never seen them again. An get dis, the goddamn hairy Labriola family down the block? Everybody say, ‘Oh why can’t we be like those people, they love, love, love, each other. Nobody ain’t never passed out on thems front steps. Family, family, family, all about family. Everybody love. Even when they fight. When they fight, it sound like a goddamn opera, when we fight, it sound like animals.’ Well, you guess what? Two days before Christmas what happens? Angelo Jr. stabs to death he’s father Angelo Sr.! Well he had a heart attack at the hospital, but it was cause he got stabbed. Nobody ain’t never got stabbed at my house! Thanksgivin’ ain’t like that picture for nobody, dat’s made up shit to make us people feel like crap. Oh, and den, after Joe and me got married and we’s went to his house….don’t get me started. So dare’s your happy fucking Thanksgivin’. Jus be glad youse ain’t dead. Everythin’ else is gravy, GRAVY! Ya hear me!”

“Oh, and Merry Fuckin’ Christmas, don’t even get me goin’ on that one!”

“You makin’ me hungry talkin’ about Thanksgivin’. Lemme see what you has in the fridge here.”

Copyright © 2015 MRStrauss • All rights reserved

Coupon Cut

So food is really expensive. I spent like $270 plus dollars yesterday and I didn’t even fill up the cart. I remember the first time I spent over $50 and I was like ‘whoa! that can’t happen again!’

But ya gotta eat right? We can’t live on Ramen noodles and mac n’ cheese forever.

So my husband is looking at this receipt and he’s like why can’t you do what those coupon people do?

“What coupon people?”

“The ones on TV they get $500 of stuff for a $1.”

“Oh, I get you now you’re talking about those Extreme Coupon people.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m sayin’. Do that.”

Whatever. Sure. So I watched a couple of episodes and I found it very inspirational. So I thought to myself, I’m gonna try this! I’m an intelligent person, I can do this. So I signed up for all these coupon sites online— one link leads to another, there’s forums, there’s chats— and printed out all these incredible savings. I must have used like 4 or 5 printer cartridges and a whole box of paper. But hey, I’m like basically printing money. Right? Let me tell you, I had a treasure chest of coupons. And I got a coupla extra Sunday papers, so that cost a little more, but they had some really, really good ones. So hey, what’s another $10 bucks? Oh, and I brought a little table-top paper cutter for $25. Naturally, I got it with a coupon at Michael’s or it would have been like $50. You gotta have the proper tools for something like this. And I also got an extra-large three-ring binder and the large economy pak of heavy-duty plastic sleeves. I forget how much that was. But anyways. Then I burned the midnight oil making my ‘plan o’ attack’. Yeah, sure, electricity costs money even at 3am, but that’s what it takes to match up the coupons to the store sales to maximize your savings. You know, like if something is buy one get one free and then you have a coupon for a free one and so you get both of them free. It’s brilliant really. So I did this and I had two carts of stuff that was almost $400 dollars and in the end it was $37. $37! Isn’t that incredible? I would tell you what percent savings that is if I was better at math. So I show my husband the receipt and he cannot believe it. He says it’s like we robbed the store. I mean for real! So we’re talking and he asks “hey, what’s for dinner” and I said “well, how many Tic Tacs do ya want?” and he says “that’s it we’re just having Tic Tacs for dinner?” so I say “well no, I got three cases of Crystal Light so we can have some of that too and I got pudding paks.” We ain’t gonna starve. Next week there’s a super deal on Hormel Compleats.

But seriously. Have you ever watched this show? Do you see what’s coming down the conveyor belt and ask yourself what do these folks eat for dinner? Or how much body wash can a person use?

To hell with it. No more coupons. I’m just going to get the $144 Berti Foraging Knife and then my food bill will be zero and my family will have all these super healthy wild greens to eat and wash ourselves with. If I don’t accidentally pick some poisonous ones. They all look the same to me.

But anyways, I’ll always have my lifetime supply of free travel size deodorants to remember my special time with coupons.

Copyright © 2015 MRStrauss • All rights reserved

It’s Snowtime!

Snow Globe

I originally wanted to call this ‘The Son of a B!t*h is Done @ I F&%king Hate Crafts,’ but thankfully a more civilized mood has returned. This was a simple project to create a beautiful snow globe well before the holiday season and which, at mid-January, is now as finished as it will ever be. My plan was to create a snow globe with a snowflake inside. The snowflake was to have interior cut-outs through which the snow could pass to and fro. For this I purchased Sculpey, a product which has served me well through all my children’s insane projects. First, I tried to cut out the snowflake using an Exacto knife, however, the result looked as if I had used a machete on the thing— Sculpey can be surprisingly difficult to manipulate. Then I had brilliant idea: I would purchase small snowflake cookie cutters. Everything went well, except for some unforeseen physics problems. The first was a gross misunderstanding of the magnifying power of water resulting in Godzilla’s snowflake. There were other difficulties as well: ‘snow’ that gathered at the top— casting an ominous shadow on the overgrown snowflake, errant air bubbles, general kitchen destruction, I could go on. If it wasn’t for the possibility of the glass cutting me, I would have crushed the thing with my bare hands. Okay. Fine. I made a little pillow with the Sculpey— you can sort of see it in the photo— and planted a lilliputian glass ornament in the center. I sealed this up using glitter, as I had gone through the entire package of snow during the ‘testing’ phase, and skipped the glycerin because I suspected it played a role in the earlier gravity-defiant snow. Amazingly, I did not get a bubble this time— although one may yet still develop. Practically perfect in every way. Except that the glitter settles so quickly, I almost gave myself a seizure trying to photograph it. And so, wishing everyone a lovely, if belated, holiday. Cheers.

Copyright © 2015 MRStrauss • All rights reserved

Don’t Sugar with Me!

I’m really beginning to hate my diet, sorry, ‘lifestyle change’
That’s the word they use for a diet that never ends
It’s the new thing

So here’s what happened, so far:

The handy chart showed my height and weight converged in the red zone
Obesity territory
No way!
Now I’m in orange territory
I’m just fat
Not obese
But I may be again one day
Nothing is forever
I feel it lurking, the obesity
You know 35.1 percent of Americans are obese and I was counted in on that
I was a minority, that’s always bad
I thought obese people were the majority now?
Maybe it’s fat people
I really didn’t notice being obese
It’s not like I couldn’t get through the door or something
But my blood contained millions of microscopic buttered sesame bagels
And that one day they would get all gummy from the wet blood, get stuck together and kill me
My blood should ideally contain millions of microscopic kale leaves, which are waterproof
And garlic
Which will keep anyone that might offer me a pastry, far, far away

So I went on a lifestyle change
Which involved buying books, DVD’s, oh, and I haven’t gotten that tracker thing yet
It’s too dystopian, don’t you think?
They’re gonna track all the slow people and disappear them
I tell you this will happen
Or you’ll go to a job interview
And they’ll say “so it seems you were sleeping and eating all day yesterday”
They’ll know
Anyone who reads or watches movies, knows they’ll know

But these ‘fitness personalities’ have unusual facial expressions
Like the expression I guess I would have if I thought about a big, giant pile of money
That’s the Tony Robbins thing isn’t it? Envisioning money piles
And they use large amounts of repetition
To repeatedly state that on their plan
I will never feel hungry
Because I would be in the ER with water poisoning
And ER food makes you lose your appetite
Just kidding
When you’re hungry, everything is good
But sixty-four ounces of water? A day?
Wouldn’t that like contribute to global warming somehow if we all did that?

You know what my lifestyle change has made me do?
Ok
I can have a salad for lunch
I can have as much spinach, romaine, red onions, red cabbage, cucumbers and tomatoes
Well maybe not a ton of tomatoes, but as much of the other stuff as I want
Giant heaps!
But I can only have 2 tablespoons of dressing
So I measure out the dressing using a measuring tablespoon
Not one of those giant tablespoons that come with the silverware
I’m not stupid, I know how to measure something
So I measure it out and there is some of the dressing stuck to the measuring spoon
I’m looking at that and thinking: that’s mine I get to have that
So I take 2 spinach leaves and I layer them together
One leaf is too thin
I use this ‘tool’ to get the rest of the dressing that is stuck to the spoon
I also use this same technique to get any dressing that gets stuck to the bowl
Because I can have that
That’s part of my two tablespoons
I want to make sure if I’m going to write these calories in my ‘food journey’ that I have in fact had all of them, the calories
Accuracy is very important

For my ‘snack’
I can have a quarter cup of popcorn
That’s a measure of the uncooked kernels
Now as we know, some of the kernels do not pop
So what I did was count the unpopped kernels over the course of the week and then took the average number of unpopped kernels and added those as extra to the next bowl I made so that I would come pretty close to having my rightful quarter cup of popped popcorn
Now someone from some popcorn company will probably tell me that they calculated the calories of a quarter cup of popped popcorn figuring that a certain percentage would not pop and that if I did have an actual quarter cup popped with every single kernel popped I would actually have more calories and as we know it’s that one extra that starts the whole gain it all back thing

I used to peel the shells of my hard boiled eggs
It says 80 calories per hard boiled egg
It doesn’t say 80 calories per hard boiled egg without the shell
I’m not gonna let that go, that’s included
I’m gonna have that shell
And surprise! There’s a whole group of people out there on the internet doing exactly this and
exchanging helpful time-consuming tips on how to work these into your lifestyle
Adds a little crunch like flax seeds or something
Speaking of flaxseed, is that a miracle or what? Or is quinoa the miracle?
I forget
Maybe spirulina?

Sometimes, I get really hungry and I try to negotiate with myself:
if I can have this cupcake, I won’t eat anything else. Ever.

So many interesting changes in the way my mind works.

Q: If my arm weighs 10 pounds and I cut it off and eat it, how many pounds would I gain?

A: 20. 10 would be the weight I gain back from the arm and 10 would be because there was a carbohydrate molecule under one of the fingernails.

That’s morbid.

Oh, here’s a good one:

It’s not fat, it’s my FDS (Famine Defense System)

Copyright © 2014 MRStrauss • All rights reserved