Things I Have Learned Over the Turkey Holiday

Always yearning for knowledge? That's me! Especially odd, trivial, "how and why does she know that?" knowledge.  This Thanksgiving holiday turned out to be a virtual bounty of new information to cram into my brain for future reference.  Like, did you know....

1.  That if you bake a pumpkin pie and then after slicing it into beautiful, perfectly portioned pieces you take the first bite only to discover that, oh, you forgot to put the sugar in? Well, you can then scrape it all back into a bowl, add the forgotten sugar and another egg, blend it into mush and re-bake it into the glorious pie it was meant to be?  Yah, me either. I learned this from Matt's sister (see pre-Thanksgiving blog for some insight on this cooking wonder of a weekend).

2.  The metal stairs on a 1940-era U.S. battleship are both wicked steep and not designed for today's modern shoes of choice for stylish young ladies.  Man, my right shin is still killing me.

3.    Apparently, it is not unusual at all for the locals in Hurley, Mississippi, to see three people hanging out next to their various "trucks and vehicles" around 9:00 p.m. in the parking lot outside the local Family Dollar and Sub-Mart...with two of those people being men swapping a bowie knife for cash and the third being an undercover cover-model holding a half full glass of chardonnay in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and favoring her right shin.

4.   Long haired chihauhaus LOVE Matt...and he loves them back. 

5.   Throwing a chihauhau's miniature dog bone into a trampoline full of your frenzily jumping friends may sound like a funny idea to a 9 year old, but it can result in serious trauma (or at least pretend, over-the-top drama kind of trauma) should the aforesaid dog bone become a sudden projectile of death headed towards someone's ankle. Seriously...

6.   If you mix up a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies and about 5 minutes into the baking-in-the-oven process realize that you, uh, forgot to put in the FLOUR--well, you can scream "Oh Shit!" while grabbing the cookies out of the oven, scrape the melted goo off of the cookie sheet (resulting in a melted-chocolate-chip-brown-gluelike substance), add the flour in, mix it all up again, and re-bake it for perfectly good "melted chocolate cookies."  Seriously, Matt's sister discovered this little secret the night following the pumpkin pie re-bake incident. We laughed so hard I nearly spilled my chardonnay...which would have been bad, because I needed it to take along for the ride to Hurley, Mississippi.

7.    3-D glasses for movies are now like, real little black 80's Ray-Ban looking things and not those paper pieces of crap with the red and blue saran wrap lenses like they used to give you when I saw Jaws 3D back in the day.  AND they have the magical power of making kids virtually speechless!  Thank you Disney!

8.   Eating a movie theatre hot dog, small popcorn, half of your sister's nachos and a pack of Sour Kids for "lunch" can make a 9 year old boy simply pass out from exhaustion...but you have to look closely behind the 3-D RayBans to tell...

9.   My father has apparently invented what Matt has lovingly termed the "Missouri Quick Start" on his little piece-o-shit Nissan so that in order to get it started  you turn the key while simultaneously contorting your body to also flip a hidden "toggle switch" of my father's own invention which then causes the "engine to turn"...HOWEVER, immediately upon hearing the turning of the hamster in the ball you must then immediately flip the magic "toggle switch" off to keep the hamsters, ahem, I mean the engine running.  I know this because Matt's car just died on him today for no apparent reason and while we await for the dawn to bring us the opening of the mechanic's and towing to ensue, my dad has graciously lent him the hamster-mobile for his personal use.  Last I had heard, dad had sold it off for like $500 to some recent immigrants (if you get my drift) or had set it on fire just for the Hell of it.  But no, it is still around...more specifically, it is parked behind my house right now where the hamsters will no doubt have a good night's rest.  

10.    The time it takes to go get the Hamster Mobile and master it's toggle switch magic? This is the same exact time it takes for the sweet potatoes you left roasting in the oven to turn into little black sweet potato charcoal. Mmmmm mmmmm! Nothing smells quite like that!

11.     Lola the Wonder Corgi thinks sweet potato charcoal ROCKS!

12.   So do the hamsters.

Ok, so I have to go now. Matt keeps coming in here to tell me that Rock of Love Charm School is on and he is waiting for me to come watch it with him. Seriously--some days I think he loves this stuff more than I do!