I’m at my parents’ house. All evening we’ve been watching old home videos that I coaxed my brother to get out of the safe. So far we’ve covered 1992 and 1993. I have been rolling in the floor laughing until I couldn’t breathe and tears streamed down my face. There is a Fourth of July clip in which all you can see is some fireworks going off in the yard and our stupid fire-eating dog…
From one of many e-mails I’ve received from someone in my family who really, really does not want me to vote for Barack Obama: Voting records show that he is also the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate. He is an ardent supporter of killing unborn babies. I have heard that he even favors killings babies after they are born. But that is okay because (1) he is a good speaker, (3) he is…
I drove down to Hickory Hill to do some quality rubbernecking this morning (what? it’s citizen journalism), but my efforts were thwarted by the Memphis PD, which had all the streets around the mall blocked off. Everyone else in the city seemed to have had the same idea as I had, though, as the streets were choked with traffic — the kind of traffic that doesn’t really have any place to be in particular, but…
My 13-year-old cousin Tyler: Aunt Fran could barely talk last night! She was slurring her words together and dancing around the Christmas tree! Mom: I was not! I was fully coherent. [pause] I was trashed. :::::::::::: Aunt Cindy: Keri bought this birdhouse that, y’all, I swear, the front door to it looks exactly like a vagina. Dad: So you know every time that bird comes home he feels like a pussy. :::::::::::: Mom: I have…
I want my mom’s shirt, jeans, fingernails and hair. Oh wait. I’ve got the fingernails. Except I can’t get mine to grow out that long. And check out my dad, with the awesome trucker hat (before trucker hats were kitschy-cool) and that Grizzly Adams beard. And my sister with her sweet blonde hair and evil glowing retinas. Happy anniversary!
I got off the phone with my mom a little bit ago. She said she had just been talking to my dad a minute earlier as he was driving home from work. She said she had rushed to get off the phone because, as she told him, it was cold and clear so deer were likely to be everywhere, and she didn’t want him to be distracted if one ran out in front of him.…
[for Thursday, Nov. 22] Every year, it’s different. Last year, we nearly burned the kitchen down with fiery turkey grease. This year, both my parents were sick. My mom hobbled around in her pajamas, barely stomaching the rich and ripe smells of a dozen different dishes mingling. She was a good sport, and ate a bit of turkey and fixins. She even drank a glass of wine later in the evening. My dad kept to…
Top two quotes from the afternoon: “Gosh, it seems like every time I tell a story, it’s about poop.” “Didn’t you go to college so you could get a good job and not have to work holidays?”
I’m about to go wash up a bunch of berries and peel a couple of pomegranates in preparation for tomorrow. I don’t have any big serving trays, though; it’s probably best to just cart everything — washed and cut — to the parents’ and then commandeer some of their many stray serving platters. I was thinking today about a memory I have of a Thanksgiving Day back when I was, gosh, I had to be…
[for Tuesday, Nov. 20] Just got back from the grocery. Picked up lots of salad ingredients and fruit and cheese (note: nothing cookable) to take to the parents’ Thursday. Sometimes I wonder if my mother feels like a failure for raising a daughter who can’t cook for shit. Well, she shouldn’t. That’s all on me. I hope my mom will be okay. She’s been fighting a stomach virus of some sort for four days now.…
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