In an attempt to de-crazy myself, and because I’ve often thought it might be interesting although a bit solipsistic– I’ve started seeing a shrink in the office.

Today was the first appointment.

When I was talking to her about my background, I almost started laughing because it sounded like a Jerry Springer Christmas special. It actually popped in my head that she is going to think I’m making all of this shit up.

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“Stuart? What time do we get back Sunday?”

We are going to Rome this weekend. I’d planned on staying in London for the long four-day Easter weekend, but a few weeks ago I came home to find that Stuart had done a drunken Expedia purchase.

“Five.”

“So I won’t have time to make Easter dinner then. Okay. Maybe I’ll do it Monday.”

“Easter dinner?”

“Easter dinner.”

“What do you mean Easter dinner?”

“You know. A meal. On Easter. Where Christians and those that are no longer Christian but still carry on the trappings of Christian celebration get together and eat some form of roast beast.”

“What do you have?”

“I usually make lamb.”

“I’ve never heard of this.”

“You’re kidding. You must be.”

“No.”

“This is a fairly common thing Stuart. A lot of people go home to spend time being tortured by their families.”

“Yeah. No. Never heard of it. Is Al going home?”

“Trying to get out of it. He’s debating between telling them he stepped on a land mine and blew off his leg or food poisoning. I pointed out that the land mine route might not be the best as it would require cutting off his leg at least by Christmas, but he said it was worth it. . . How can you have never heard of Easter dinner? Did you never go home for it?”

“Well, yeah. But just to get my Easter candy.”

* Kinder Surprise is like Cracker Jack. Except different.

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Stuart’s mobile rang. “It’s for you.” He handed it to me.

It was Grey, my soon to be thirteen year old nephew. “What’s wrong?” My brain started imagining the million and one possibilities.

“Nothing. I just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

We chatted about his baseball game. He plays catcher and he had gotten clipped by a ball to the head in his last game. He told me he is about to start track and was worried about the times that it will clash with baseball. Told me about his dad’s girlfriend and that he really likes her and will be happy when she moves in because he and his dad are slobs and she is a neat freak.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s your maid young man.”

“Oh, I know, I know!” He backtracked.

I kept waiting for him to spill some big bad that would make me want to get on a plane and kill someone but after 15 minutes of chatting he said, ‘Ok, I have to go get ready for my game.”

“Have a good day. I love you.”

“I love you too.” He groaned.

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I haven’t talked enough about the Christmas holiday. We had a wonderful time hanging out and we all ate and drank far too much. There were also a few silly moments. This one is brought to you by my mother.

The parentals have 4 cats and 1 loopy black lab named Charlotte. Gary, my step-father has to get up at 5 to get ready for work. One morning I heard Charlotte barking and Gary trying to keep her quiet at ridiculous o’clock. I rolled over to go back to sleep- hadn’t slept well the night before. I was about to drift back off when—

I hear my mother SHRIEKING. (I wish I was exaggerating.) “GUYS!!!! COME DOWNSTAIRS IF YOU WANT TO SEE A RACCOON!!!!! GUYS! THERE’S A RACCOON!!!! GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I roll over and look at Stuart. Stuart rolls over and looks at me. We shake our heads each of us thinking, “What the fuck??? I don’t care about no fucking raccoons.”

She starts wailing again. “NICOLE!!!! THERE’S A RACCOON!!”

I had a sudden flash to growing up when she would be really loud on a Saturday morning- crashing around opening closets and cupboards and singing to herself to wake us up because she wanted to have someone to talk to.

Find out later that morning when we get up at a reasonable hour that two raccoons had gotten in the screen porch and were hanging on the wind chimes. The dog and cats (and my mother) were going ape shit.

Jen, bless her got up when my mum yelled. I however, missed the little beasts. I’m okay with that.

I’ll save it for the next visit.

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. . . was a resounding success. My stuffing was nothing at all like my Mom’s, which was disappointing on one level, but it tasted absolutely amazing so I was pleased.

Ended up cutting the squash, cabbage, green beans and baked apples from the line up.

Libby brought a yummy nut loaf and Amanda covered the pumpkin need with a lowcarb pumpkin cheesecake that was absolutely delish.

(Aussie ex flat-mate) Jen made up a cheese platter and along with Al helped me out in the kitchen with peeling and slicing and carving.

Everyone brought wine and beer and I think we drank it all along with the vanilla extract.*

The turkey was too dry I am afraid. I didn’t take it out when I wanted to because the meat thermometer made it look like it needed a bit more. I think it lied to me. Still, I would rather serve over cooked turkey than kill my guests.

Even more important than the food was the company. Was a good laugh.

When Chris and Libby arrived, it was so cute. . . Chris said, “Happy Thanksgiving! . . . That is what you say right?”

Al wanted us to go around after dinner and say what we were thankful for but it got lost in the vino and a competitive game of Cranium.

One funny moment that I missed: The meeting of American Jen and Aussie Jen.

Aussie Jen to American Jen: It’s Jen is it?

American Jen: Yes.

Aussie Jen. I actually prefer Jennifer.

American Jen: That would be nice if it was your name.

Aussie Jen: Actually it is.

Last night the kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off in it and I was really not looking forward to the washing up. This morning I let myself have a lay-in, which I deserved after cooking and not going to bed until 1:30 and with all the red wine floating in my blood. Got up at 11:45, shuffled down the stairs and I saw a shocking, shocking sight.

Stuart doing the dishes.

I gave him an enormous hug and kiss. He has no idea how much I appreciate that he did that.

Jen took photo’s of the drunken Cranium madness and I can’t get over how fat I look. Going for a long walk right after I eat a platter of leftovers.

* Family Ties reference. Tom Hanks (before he was Tom Hanks) plays the visting alcoholic Uncle and he is so desperate for the sauce, he drinks an entire bottle of vanilla extract.

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For those of you that read my mother’s comments on the last post, I’s got some s’plainen’ to-do.

First, for my friends that know me. . .  you can see my tendency to forget to give context when telling an anecdote is clearly a genetic trait.

Second, my mother has always been incredibly supportive of me. This has been aided by the fact that I earned a high GPA in High School, graduated Undergrad in four years rather than the seven or never plan, went on to earn two Masters degrees, mostly paid her back money that I have borrowed, and never got knocked up or arrested. One of my old jokes about my mother– (which I have probably already used here. Sue me. You try writing one of these things for a few years and come up with new material every flippen day. It’s hard.) One of my old jokes is, if I told my mother I was thinking of becoming a prostitute, she would say, “Well, you go out there and be the best little crack whore that you can be.”

Third. What she going on about?

Alright. I think I have already talked about this (see above comment regarding recycled material).

I loved The Pink Panther movies as a kid and I adored the slap stick genius of Peter Sellers. I would pay homage to his comedy genius by painting on a fake mustache, putting on my mother’s trench coat and my father’s hat, pop into a closet and then spring out saying one of the lines from the movie in the best bad French accent my 11 year old self could do.

If I had been born ten years later they would have put me on medication.

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Saturday Night instead of going to a party I decided to be a hermit and hide out in my hotel room and work on a photo book for my sets of grandparents. Since they aren’t online, I can’t share my flickr stream with them and I wanted them to see a few of the places I’ve been the last couple of years.

I like the way it looks online- hope the hard copy translates. I’m sure there are some massive typos that I missed at two in the morning, but what can you do.

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I am working from home today so that I can throw stuff in the slow cooker in a couple of hours as Stuart has asked me to make chili.

My chili is a variation of Fran McCullough’s Bowl of Red in The Low-Carb Cookbook but I add other stuff to it that makes it hurt so good. The problem is I can never really remember my variations so each time it is a little different. It is always good however. I prefer the slow cooker to the stove. It takes longer but it is ultimately much less trouble.

It was a bit of a mistake making my chili for Stuart because he loves it.

I know that sounds strange but he wants me to make it all the time because he loves it and while I like it, it really isn’t any sort of culinary challenge.

But I am making it today for him because it was a special request. It has nothing to do with it being a certain day. . . a milestone that he doesn’t celebrate because he doesn’t like gifts.

Nothing at all to do with him being a year older.

I love you sweetheart.

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Eighth grade. Burkholder Junior High. 1983-84. That’s a long time ago. It’s so long ago, Michael Jackson hadn’t become a freak yet.

Time has smoothed out most of my memories and the only thing I remember about that year, besides being generally miserable, is I didn’t have breasts yet and everyone else seemed to, I didn’t go see Van Halen in concert and everyone else seemed to and I didn’t have a Flashdance shirt and everyone else did.

I also remember getting caught changing the grades on my report card because my name wasn’t in the newspaper.

I’ve always been a lazy student and was able to get by because I still got good grades. That all changed in Eighth grade. A few weeks before the first quarter report card came out, I discovered I had three C’s. I couldn’t have C’s! I wasn’t a C student! How was I going to tell my mother?

One afternoon, I somehow got the courage to tell her about one class to gauge her reaction. Would I be killed, seriously maimed or just not spoken to for a very long time?

She was. . . shall we say. . . not pleased.

After, I knew the smart move would have been to tell her about all three C’s at the same time rather than drag out the torture. I also knew there was no way in hell I could tell her about the remaining classes.

Being a creative girl, the answer presented itself clearly. All I needed to do was to change the grades.

In those days, the report card was given to us on a flimsy bit of paper and the grades were printed with a light dot matrix. I took a pencil and lightly ran it over all of the lines on the entire report. The C’s became B’s.

My death was avoided.

How my parents didn’t see the report card wasn’t sound, I don’t know. Foolish trust? I was a ridiculously good kid. It bought me some currency.

You would imagine that I buckled down and made sure my grades went up. That would have been the smart move. The next quarter, I earned C’s in the same three classes and I decided to change all three C’s to B’s this time. The problem was if this were my actual report card, I would have been on the honor roll.

I knew my mom. She would be telling my grandparents, the neighbors and random strangers in bathrooms that I was on the honor roll. The accomplishment of your children was serious currency. This in itself would not pose a problem. The problem was where we lived.

Henderson is a small town just outside Las Vegas, Nevada. Now, Las Vegas sprawl bleeds into Henderson, but in the 1980’s city lines were much more distinct. It was like living in a small town with one Catholic Church, one high school, one junior high, one elementary school and one little local paper called The Henderson Home News. The HHN would print such note worthy articles about the turnout at the rodeo, the minutes of the American Legion and Burkholder Junior High’s Honor Roll students.

For weeks after the second forged report card, I grabbed the paper and scanned it for the honor roll. It wasn’t there. I started to breath a bit easier. I had gotten away with it.

One morning, my sister and I were running a bit late and my mom drove us to school. I was in the front passenger seat and there on the floor was the latest edition of The Henderson Home News. I thought about trying to take it with me when I got out of the car but I didn’t see how I could do it without getting caught and having to explain why I wanted it. I ran the odds in my head. What was the likelihood that the article detailing the honor roll students was in this paper?

I knew I was seven out when I was called out of my first class to go to the office. The councilor sat me in a corner. I can’t remember his name, but I remember we saw him and his family at Mass each Sunday.

“Nicole. Do you know why you’re here?”

“No.”

“Your mother called this morning–”

Fuck.

“—and she wanted to know why your name wasn’t on the list of honor roll students printed in the paper. So we pulled your report card—“

Fuckidty-fuck.

“–and told her your grades and it was a complete surprise to her. Do you have any idea why that is?”

I did what any reasonable person would do. Deny, deny, deny, deny. I kept that up for a good hour until my mother showed up.

Not a good scene.

Later at home she told me what really upset her was all this time I had been taking communion while I had been living this lie. I suspect that this was the beginning of my leaving the Catholic Church, but that’s another story altogether.

The next year, my freshman year in High School when I received my first report card, I earned five A’s and one D. The D was in Math. I would be a liar if I didn’t say there was a part of me that didn’t want to try out my art skills on that D but I didn’t.

It was a good thing, because my High School Councilor called my house after seeing the report card. Five A’s and a D was a bit of a red flag and he wanted to make sure there wasn’t a problem.

My mom and I told him no. I just really sucked at Math.

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I curse. I like to throw out the occasional f-bomb. I am a bit better now, but I still do it.

Not sure why. When I was a kid and when my mom was angry, she was so very talented at stringing words together that even David Mamet hadn’t thought of. Now she says ‘fetch’ and ’shoot’ which is good because her blood pressure is much lower and she is generally a much happier person, which isn’t due to her not swearing. I think it is due to the fact that she has been retired for over ten years.

I’m not an angry swearer. I mean, I do swear when angry, but I am more of a punctuation swearer.

Like when Stu forgot the keys and I said, “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” If I had said, “You gotta be kidding me” it just isn’t the same.

So I curse.

Fucking sue me.

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