Eating at the Grown-Up Table

I was thinking about when it was that I actually felt like an adult for the first time in my life and the answer came to me surprisingly quickly. It was on Thanksgiving, I was twenty-four years old, and I was "alone" on a holiday for the first time. I wasn't really alone, but I was in an unfamiliar place, and instead of being surrounded by family, I was with people I had just met.
I worked in retail back in the mid-seventies, when malls were sprouting like kudzu across the south. I actually worked in a bank by day, but I had to take a part time job in a shoe store in the mall to make ends meet. I was already a single mom and the pittance I got for child support barely covered child care. I quickly found out that most of the chain stores in the mall paid much better than banks did, so I made a strategic career move. I left the bank and went to work as a manager-trainee for a men's store out of California that had already opened in a few locations in the southeast. I was hired to help open a new store in a brand new mall about thirty miles away. It meant that I would have a longer drive to work every day, but it also meant that I could survive on one job. What I didn't take into consideration were the dreaded retail hours, which didn't exactly coincide with being a single parent. Those were tough times. Luckily I had my mother close by to help, but ultimately, although I wasn't ready to admit it, it wasn't a good fit. A few months later, when the company dangled a manager's job in front of my face, I couldn't turn it down. Never mind that it was in another state where I didn't know a soul and would have no family to help me, the money was too sweet for me to pass up. So one week before Thanksgiving I set out on my new "adventure". Sadly, I had to leave my daughter in my mother's care for a few weeks because it was retail and we were going into the Christmas season., and I had to find a place to live and I had to get her enrolled in daycare. And since my hours were not going to be the normal nine to five, I also had to figure out what I would do after the daycare closed for the day. Obviously, it wasn't going to be an easy transition and if I had really thought it through, I probably never would have accepted the job. But I didn't and I did, and that's why I found myself sitting in the apartment of someone I barely knew on Thanksgiving Day, surrounded by strangers. It was a group of single, twenty-somethings who, like me, were fairly recent transplants, and they all seemed to be enjoying life. While the Eagles sang, "New Kid in Town", they were sipping wine, laughing, talking and cooking. And although the traditional Macy's parade was on, the sound was muted for the "cooler" music that we all loved. Everyone did their absolute best to try to make me feel less homesick and sad over missing my daughter and more festive and comfortable about being where I was. And though I didn't feel like smiling very much that day, I was thankful for those kind people and the friendship they so graciously offered. I remember thinking how remarkably adult we all seemed, and that the familiar smell of Thanksgiving floating through the air was a testament to that. And I remember thinking that if I can just survive 'til Christmas, then life will be good again.

It's Never Easy

I swear to God, if I bought the Butterball Turkey in July and put it in the refrigerator to thaw, come November the damn thing would still be frozen. I don't care how "prepared" I think I am, I'm not. The only reason I'm calm enough to blog about this right now is because that bastard is roasting. An hour ago I was fit to be tied. It's not like I don't plan ahead. I do. I take a remedial course in turkey every single year. I buy the magazines. I read them. I scour the WorldWideWeb. I print the shit. I mean, I do my homework.

So, five full days in the fridge to thaw a fifteen pound bird seemed to be the general consensus. At my request Ron stopped by his home-away-from-home (Kroger) and picked up the bird last Friday after golf. He brought it home, and we lovingly deposited it on the middle shelf in the refrigerator in the garage. At that point, I was happy because I was hopeful. Hope is a beautiful thing when you have it. I clung to it like a soft blankie for the rest of the day on Friday. And on Saturday. On Sunday I was still a carefree hopeful child. It was on Monday that I began to change. A tiny bit of fear began to creep into my psyche. What if they were wrong?  By Tuesday, my childhood innocence had given way to teenage angst. I could even feel a pimple on my chin. Ghosts of Thanksgivings past were haunting me. And by Wednesday, I was a full-on adult paranoid schizophrenic. The turkey would never thaw! They were all against me! But still, I did hold out one tiny speck of hope. Maybe this time!

I got up at six a.m. this morning and like a fearless warrior, I marched into that garage, I grabbed that turkey and I schlepped into the kitchen and threw it up on the counter. Damn near busted the counter it was so fucking frozen.

They can beat me down, but they cannot kill me. I unwrapped that sucker and I plunged it into a sink full of cold water. 
"All right, motherfucker, let's see what you got now." 

Thirty minutes later, I was tearfully waking Ron up. "The turkey is still frozen. I need to get it in the oven."
"Okay, I'll do it," he said, like it was nothing.

The first thing he did was to slosh the turkey-thawing water all over the kitchen floor.
The next thing he did was to run hot water over the turkey (the thing they tell you absolutely not to do if you don't want to die) until he could get the little bag of stuff out.
"There. I did it. I'm going back to bed."
At that point I grabbed a couple of pieces of celery, stuck 'em into the cavity, rubbed some oil over the skin, and I threw that ptomaine-infested bird into the oven and shut the door.

If we don't die after we eat it, then I'm gonna call our Thanksgiving a success.

Mark My Word

Just so it won't seem like I'm picking on only one mayoral candidate, I'd like to officially go on record as being more than a little uncomfortable with Mark Padgett. One of his goals is to make Knoxville more user-friendly. And how do you suppose he's going to do that? Could it be with eGovernment Solutions whose"cutting edge software...allows government to work for the people, by making key services more accessible to the public, including being available online"? That all sounds fine and well, except it just so happens that Mark is the CEO of eGovernment Solutions. It smells as rotten as an old broken down mattress in a seedy motel. Does he want to get elected so he can drag the City of Knoxville into a sordid affair with him and his company? Say it with me, Knoxville: CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

Who's The Boss?

I caught a little bit of Knoxville's City Council meeting on channel 12 last night...right after I watched a few restaurant/store owners squirm uncomfortably while grasping at (drinking) straws to straight-forward questions from the Beer Board.  The most popular answer among the under-age alcohol servers was that their employee had missed, not the year, but the month on the child's purchaser's fake i.d. driver's license. People, people. That lie explanation may have actually worked once years ago, but now that every petitioner for the past several years has used it, it just doesn't fly. Why not try the vanity defense?
"My employee is so vain..."
And this is where the Beer Board says in unison (channeling Ed McMahon) "How vain is she?"
"My employee is so vain, she won't wear her glasses, so she can't read the date."

As I said, I watched a few minutes of the City Council meeting before I turned it to Jeopardy, and I thought it was worth mentioning that not only did Marilyn Roddy withdraw her name from consideration for interim mayor, she mandated strongly suggested that any other City Councilperson who might decide to run for mayor should do the same thing. So help me get this straight, Ms. Roddy. You have decided you don't want to be the interim mayor, so therefore, you are the boss of everyone else who might be considering the position? Is that how it works? Or should I say, is that how you work, because if it is, the voters had better beware.