You’re welcome.
(Courtesy of my cousin, Emily.)

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Right?

The same could also probably be be said of a girl’s relationship to her brother.

Now, you all may think you know me. You know I like dogs, and that I sing, and that have a unhealthy fascination with ugly food photographs. You know I like birthdays, and that I like to do almost anything that involves laughter. But you don’t really know me. You don’t know what kind of a person I really am.

Well, if the men in a girl’s life influence her development into an adult, then I think this picture of my father and brother will help you gain some insight into who I really am.

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I am now the proud owner of a Meyer Lemon tree, which I have named Uncle Jeff.

The goal with this tree, as with my actual Uncle Jeff, is to prevent it from languishing and eventually dying on my porch. My secondary goal would be to use the fruit it provides. (Please note that my secondary goal only applies to the tree. The notion of my human uncle bearing usable fruit leaves me feeling not at all settled.)

I promise to update you on the status of Uncle Jeff, as well as the statuses of the tomato, the surely ill-fated rose bush, and the wildly photosynthetic amaryllis. Check in often!

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Of course, my brother and I are much more deranged than they are. As you can see from the 3D Kitty Cake we made for my mom this week:

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1) The Weird Activity:

Despite what the above photo may seem to imply, the weird activity was NOT making my father haul out every bottle of alcohol he has in his house while my mom stood, hands clasped, staring at a bottle of EVOO. We asked that my dad drink a shot from each of those bottles to relieve the stress he was feeling following the repeated malfunction of his Traeger outdoor smoker. If you’ve never been around a man who is determined to smoke some damned salmon when the fan in his freaking smoker isn’t freaking working, consider yourself lucky.

The booze helped.

No, the activity that even MY family would consider weird involves PVC pipe and horrible candy. My dad, keeper of many traditions, set up a birthday treasure hunt, something he’s done for my brother and I for years and years. He hid clues around the house and yard that ultimately led to my present. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t answer most of the questions and had to either use the Encyclopedia or ask Paul. Hockey stars from the 1950s and capitals of foreign countries? Nope. BUT, if the answers are “BBQ” and “The Toilet,” I’m your guy!

The hunt eventually led me to my prize: a crisp two-dollar bill and a bag of Brach’s marshmallow Circus Peanuts, which are the most horrifying confection on the planet earth (a close second are Peeps, followed by Turkish Delights). “Gee, thanks dad!” I said, as I passed the opened bag around for everyone to sniff. Louie took a bite of one, gagged, and put the rest of the now-moist “nut” back in the bag. Then, he had a stroke of genius: “Liz. LIZ. Let’s shoot these out of the potato cannon! You wanna?”

The obvious answer was yes.

Unfortunately, there is no photographic evidence because it was already dark, so you’ll have to take my word for it when I say that Brach’s marshmallow Circus Peanuts do not make a satisfying projectile. On our first attempt, the Circus Peanuts plerped out of the end of the cannon with all the force of healthy bowel movement and landed on the grass in a sad heap. On the second attempt, we wadded in some wet paper towels before we put the nuts in (that sentence has probably never been written before). When we fired the cannon they went a little further, but didn’t clear the edge of the yard. Further tests will be necessary to see if we will ever be able to weaponize Circus Peanuts, but for now, I do not recommend them for anything more than scaring little bunnies away from your vegetable garden.

2) Louie’s Card:

Louie’s cards feature his particularly brilliant drawing style. Often, they feature moving parts. This year’s was probably his best work ever.

It features the front view of an enormous deep sea fish. A tab at the top was meant to be pulled upward, which would reveal the gift sitting inside the fish’s mouth, like this:

Isn’t that amazing??! (Please note that we drank 1% milk from Ralphs that night.)

Louis is also responsible for part of the decorations:

3) Awesome Gifts:

I got a lot of really nice things that night. But my favorite, by far, was from Genevieve, Louis’ girlfriend.

No. She didn’t make this. It was given to her by a kid she taught at a music camp awhile back. To me, this is actual treasure. That she felt I was worthy of owning it makes it a very special gift. I’m currently looking for a frame so I can hang it in my kitchen.

4) My Mom’s Fully Excellent Cake

As I mentioned before, I HATE peeps. HATE them. They make me feel like my teeth are sponges and my lips are extra sticky. My family loves to remind me how much I hate Peeps by incorporating them into my birthday cake each year. This year was the opposite of an exception.

BEHOLD

KING OF PEEPS!

BEHOLD

HIS TERRIFYING PRUNE EYES.

BOW

BEFORE HIS CROWN OF FLAMES!

Seriously, though. Isn’t is just the absolute most? She got every detail right, even the crooked beak part!

So, to recap: Airborne Circus Peanuts, giant fish card, butt salad, wiener balloon, giant Peep cake. Perfect birthday.

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Usually they are scowling. And tossing back strong drinks and asking me when I’m going to get a real job. So, as you can see, Eric is VERY good.

But, because he wanted it to seem less jarringly unlike my parents, he asked them to knock it off:

So they shut their mouths (which is what they’re always telling my brother and me to do).

No. I’m kidding. My parents are lovely, wonderful people, who deserve whatever the hell this award they’re getting is. I think it might be the Award For Best Use Of Weird Souvenir Gag Gift Their Friends Brought Back From Saudi Arabia Like 20 Years Ago:

Congratulations, Mother and Father!

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Trust me, the whole story is boring. All you need to know is that I’ve been having pain in the, ahem, soft tissue of my leg ever since I started going to the gym. Then, last Thursday, my leg started to look like this:

My dad checked it out and told me to take some of these and some of those:

But by Saturday night, I was having trouble straightening my leg, so Paul convinced me to go to Urgent Care. (It was kind of an argument because I didn’t want to be a weenie and he didn’t want me to die.)  They did a test and found that it wasn’t a blood clot, which, you know, duh, because 1) I’m not a thousand and 2) I don’t spend my days taking intercontinental flights. (Yes, I’m being flippant. Shut up and let me tell me story.)

The next day, after I called my dad to apologize for second guessing his diagnosis, he suggested that, even though it was his day off, I meet him at his Emergency Room. So I spent almost all of Sunday being prodded and interviewed and ultra-sounded. The inside of my leg looked like this:

Which apparently is normal. Whatever.

The whole ER experience was actually kind of fun, except for the fact that I had to wear one of those awful blue gowns that washes me out, which is a total bummer.

After my blood had been removed and tested, I was given a 90 minute course of IV antibiotics. My dad split before that mess got going because it was his day off and he didn’t want to be at work a second longer than he had to be.  I don’t blame him. He’d already spent two hours there, messing around with my horrible leg

and he wanted to go home and be human for awhile. Then I fell asleep. Which I’m proud of, because the fluorescent lights were on right over my face, and there were a bunch of old people moaning in the hallway.

Bla bla bla, now I have to take forty million pills every day and it’s still a mystery. Do I have Lyme Disease? (No, I found out today.) Pin worms? The vapors? No one can say! Which is exciting, I think. Or deadly…?

Fast forward to Wednesday. I’m minding my own business, adjusting to life as a pill-popper and walking to my car, when all of a sudden I fall down the stairs.

WHAT?

Hey! HOA! Stone staircases are slippery when wet, and very sharp when fallen on! I have a major bruise on my left buttock now, which is preventing me from sitting normally and sleeping for more than 20 minutes at a time. It looks like this (not an exaggeration):

(Now do you see why I drew all these pictures. I’m not showing you all my actual butt. That’s weird!)

My dad said I should buy a lottery ticket, since things really can’t get much worse.

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That’s my grandma, Dovie. Isn’t she a damned knockout? Look at her, maintaining her perfect hair, excellent posture and beautiful smile while my terrible imp of a mother howls in her ear. Yesterday would have been Dovie’s birthday. In this photo, Dovie had just turned 26. FUN FACT: 26 is how old I am.  If I was holding a shrieking infant, I would look like was holding a shrieking infant. But that’s Dovie. She was glamorous at all times.

I was too busy writing about filthy song lyrics yesterday (the opposite of glamor), and I forgot to give her a shout out. So here ’tis:

Happy Birthday, Dovie! I miss you, and the way you always wrote your “y’s” backwards, but only when you were doing the crossword.

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As crazy as my living room may have looked in the past, I actually have highly developed organizational skills. I have a system for my finances. I stick to time tables. Mostly, I make lists for every occasion. And Thanksgiving is the listiest of all days. There are menus, daily schedules and hourly schedules, and shopping lists for foods both perishable and un.

This is my fourth year doing a full Thanksgiving meal for five people, and I’ve got it down to a science. And nothing stands in the way of science.

Except, I learned, for faulty appliances.

Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve, my dishwasher broke. Now, I’ve never had the luxury of owning a dishwasher while preparing a Thanksgiving dinner, and dammit was I looking forward to this. Do you have any idea how much FASTER I could execute my feast with this new machine in my arsenal?

A lot faster.

Unfortunately, that night I opened the dishwasher to find three inches of water sitting in the bottom. Our landlady sent a repair guy out that evening, which was really nice and efficient of her. Sadly, the only guy working at that hour was an air conditioning specialist.

Okay, a minor annoyance. I’d made do without a dishwasher for years. I could handle this. But Thursday morning, things got even worse.

Thursday morning is where my obsessive-compulsive hourly schedule comes into play. I set my alarm for a precise time, and I’m in the kitchen by 9:30 am, baking pies. The pies have to be in the oven by 11:00, which is when I take the turkey out of the fridge to let it come to room temperature. I have to be finished with the pies by 12:30 pm so that I can heat the oven to the right temperature and get the the turkey in by 1:00.

The turkey itself represents enormous amounts of stress. It’s giant and unwieldy, and my sink is tiny, making rinsing that stupid thing off a slippery adventure. Plus, I believe that all raw poultry is a bacterial time bomb, capable of turning my kitchen into a massive bio-hazard area. Any errant bird juices must be neutralized immediately and thricely. The entire process can broken down as follows: 18 minutes to stare at the bird and prepare myself. 10 minutes to rinse, dry, and place the turkey into the roasting pan. 45 minutes to clean the sink and counters and floor afterward. (This is all reflected in the hourly schedule, in case you were wondering.)

It is usually at this point that I can begin to relax. I’ll vacuum a little, run some crap upstairs, set the table, watch a little football with Paul. I only have to wait for the bird to roast. Then (from 4:30 to 5:45) I can heat my sides and serve!

But this year, after jabbing the thermometer into the thigh area and shoving the thing in the oven, I, in the interest of preventing heat leakage, slid the lock on the oven to the right. The oven turned itself off. The lock, it turns out, is only for the self cleaning feature, and the oven will not cook food while it is in that mode. “How stupid of me!” I said, looking at the fancy, self-cleaning oven, thinking about how thankful I was to have access to such a high-end appliance. I punched the “OFF” button and went to unlock the oven. It wouldn’t budge.

What. The. Hell.

I tried it again.

Nothing.

…

[Insert full blown meltdown sequence (which Paul has been ordered to never speak of again) here. ]

Shaking with rage and disappointment and betrayal and shame, I called my parents to tell them about the situation. “Hello, Family. Our turkey, today’s featured food item, is locked in the oven and is still raw. I hope you like potatoes.” (That was the gist of it anyway; there were a lot more swear words.) (Also I was crying.)

My mom suggested I set the timer for ten seconds to try to trick the oven into thinking it was unlocking after a self-cleaning cycle. And it worked! But, given the age of the mechanism, the lock handle just detached from the actual latch, leaving the door firmly stuck in place, without any possible method of release.

[More freaking out, not to be discussed, here.]

The theory was that maybe it would automatically unlock after it cooled down a little. “I’m giving this piece of shit oven until 4:30 and then I’m drilling it,” said Louis. Then he added, “GOD! What a piece of shit.” He ultimately didn’t take any power tools to it (since it’s not mine to break), but as soon as I heard my brother say that, I started feeling much better about the holiday. Thanksgiving isn’t about showing everyone what I can do with a dead bird and some yams. It’s about getting together with the people you like the best and sharing a common experience. For many families this year, that shared experience was a home-roasted turkey. For us, it was a deviant oven and some emergency poultry purchased from Whole Foods and then microwaved.

Isn’t that nice? I could probably end there and we’d all leave my website feeling warm and fuzzy and craving turkey. But I can’t stop there.

Despite the rotting turkey indefinitely stuck in our oven, we managed to maintain a positive outlook. “We’ll just call someone tomorrow, have them free the turkey,” I said, becoming sleepy. “Great idea,” replied Paul. “GREHHHHHHHHHHH,” added the fridge.

“Um, what?” Paul and I both said.”GREHHHHHHHHHHHHHNnnn,” the fridge insisted. We jumped up to see what was wrong with our only remaining functional appliance.

It was making horrible noises, trying to convince us it was hard at work. But when we opened the freezer we found that all of our Otter Pops were melted. The fridge was WARM. Then, after several minutes, the motor stopped all together.

I called a 24 hour appliance repair place, left a message (because “midnight” isn’t one of the 24 hours, I guess) and went to bed. The next morning at 8:00am, the appliance guy called back to inform me that, despite what it said on their website, they didn’t service the Pasadena area. As I was finishing the conversation, I noticed my cruel bastard of a fridge was humming away merrily, as though nothing had ever happened.

The happy ending came a couple of hours later, when I was able to reach a nice man who came out and in one quick swipe, freed the turkey. Paul rushed the thing out to the trash like it was about to explode, and I suppressed the urge to throw away the roasting pan. And also the urge to hug the repairman. Instead, I had a giant piece of fridge-chilled chocolate pie.

None of my carefully crafted lists could have prepared me for this. But you can be sure that next year’s lists will allow ample time for disasters.

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