Author Archives: Michelle

Turkey Day Stress? I Have Life Hacks for Next Year

Posted on by under Humor

First, I want to express my gratitude in that I have a wonderful family. We sail through holidays with hardly a blip.

I’m not going to say there has never once been drama in decades, but it’s never been high drama and it was few and far between. I know how lucky I am.

That being said.

I know that for many people, large holiday gatherings can be stressful.

If you want to see the perfect example, watch the fishes episode of The Bear. Holy shit. That was some family drama. Jamie Lee Curtis is amazing. 

Anyway, I know holidays can be stressful, so I have suggestions on how to make it less stressful.

SUGGESTION ONE

Get the norovirus the Sunday before Thanksgiving and tell 17 people that they’re on their own for the holiday.

That really does cut down on the “is my house clean enough?” and the “I hope this new dressing recipe turns out” stress. Because you won’t care about how clean your house is and, for all that is holy, don’t even fucking talk about food.

I will spare you the details of my personal experience with norovirus. I will just say the Sunday before Thanksgiving was the sickest I have ever been in my life. If not the sickest, at least top 3. And easily the most disgusting.

By Sunday evening, we cancelled all the out of town guests, which took the number of people in my house from 20 to 9.

By Monday afternoon, we finally admitted that no one should set foot anywhere near our house, much less eat food that I prepared. My parents are elderly. I didn’t want to kill them with turkey.

Super funny side note. That wouldn’t have happened anyway! More on that in a moment. 

You all, I was so bummed. I looked forward to seeing all the kids and grandkids. Our youngest, Mae, has turned out to be a Young Frankenstein fan and all I wanted to do on Thanksgiving evening was to curl up with her and watch it.

Shit happens. haha. Plans change. I can be flexible. The situation was disappointing, but not the end of the world.

I didn’t feel great, but I was able retain a can or two of ginger ale, so you know, I was ready to prepare food meant for 20 people for 3 people. I had all the stuff. Why let it go to waste? Besides, I was on no one’s time table. I’d be done when I was done. I would get Randy and Joey to do some of the heavy lifting.

Maybe, I wouldn’t get to see 75% of our kids, but I could still make dinner. I make a good Thanksgiving dinner. I wanted nothing more than feel better enough to eat at least some solid foods by Thursday.

This brings me to:

SUGGESTION TWO

Save time and energy by not cooking. You don’t have to worry about dry turkey if you just don’t cook the turkey! And not worrying is always good!

I mean, sure, you don’t get the delicious end result, but think of the time savings!

I admit, my goal was to actually cook dinner. In fact, I spent the whole day before putting things together so that onThursday, I would need to bake a few things and cook the turkey. Easy peasy.

I baked an apple pie, prepped the turkey, and into the oven the turkey went.

It doesn’t seem like a lot of work, but just putting on my bathrobe got me winded and dizzy. I was pretty worn out. I decided on a long bath and afterwards, I’d start basting the bird.

My bath time went on a little longer than expected. I might have even dozed off for a few minutes. Which is weird. I don’t ever take naps. I can’t fall asleep sitting up. I am certainly not one to fall asleep in water.

I got dressed and told Randy that I was still worn out and that I’d probably need his help with everything else. I was just going to baste the turkey and then lay down for a while.

The first thing I noticed was that the foil I had used as a tent wasn’t really hot at all.

Odd. 

And the disposable roasting pan? Also not hot.

My brain was jumping to the only logical conclusion and trust me when I tell you, I was not prepared for that to be the conclusion.

I put my fingers on the wire rack. It was slightly warm. Perhaps a bit above lukewarm.

frozen turkey

My reaction was not reasonable.

I had a lip sticking out, foot stomping baby fit.

My fucking oven fucking died.

What I wanted to do, was take a nap. What I ended up doing, is laying on the floor with a flashlight in one hand and a lighter in the other while Randy watched a how-to video on his phone.

We have a gas stove. Randy and I are not handy people and I was really worried about blowing up our house. Our range is probably 40 years old, so I felt iffy on the old school safety features they had back then.

I had one of those long ended lighters where you have to depress a button before lighting it which was difficult because of my arthritis recently coming in. Getting old is so much fucking fun. Yay. 

I gingerly lit the lighter in the general direction that sort of looked like the thingy on Randy’s phone. I didn’t know for sure because, you know, I just don’t see that well anymore.

After 20 minutes of trying, I was literally jabbing that flame in any crevice I could. There? How about there? Is it there? Do you smell smoke or gas? No? Well, how about there? 

We had to admit that the oven was dead. The stove top still works, but the oven is dead.

Currently, we are currently ovenless folk. Persons without an oven. Which, you know, is fine.

I tried making the dressing and sweet potato casserole in the air fryer. The green bean casserole got pitched. The gravy was too thin, but really, by the time Randy got the turkey on the grill outside, it was going to be way past dinner time. We weren’t eating that on Thanksgiving day anyway.

My plan was to cobble together a sort of “do-over” on Friday.

We ordered Chinese food for our Thanksgiving dinner.

The “do-over” wasn’t great. Turns out that new dressing recipe I tried out?

Sucked.

Randy promises me that sooner or later I will find  my sense of humor about last week.

I mean, I guess he might be right. Seems pretty far down the road right now.

I know the obvious silver lining is, at least, my oven didn’t crap out with 20 people in  my house waiting for food. That would have been worse. So at least that didn’t happen. And I have been wanting a new range since we moved in this house over 5 years ago. Randy has been looking into new ranges all morning.

Also, he just called. Turns out we can’t just buy a new stove and replace the old one. We have some electrical issues. He’s currently looking for an electrician. We’re in our sixties and we’ve never hired an electrician.

It sounds expensive.

Here’s to Christmas!

Try to never get the norovirus. 0/10.

He could have been famous. You don’t know.

Posted on by under Life

So, a few local Kia dealerships were offering an anti-theft upgrade to the computer system. As we own a Kia and would prefer that it not get stolen, we decided to take advantage of the offer.

By “we”, I mean Randy took care of it.

He drove 30 miles north, but it’s all expressway on a Sunday morning, so you know, not bad.

I guess they made a big thing out of this. Randy said there were heated tents with drinks, chips, and fresh fruit. He called me while he waited in the tent.

Randy: So, this absolutely stunning woman just walked up to me and started talking to me.

Me: Nice!

Randy: She asked me if I was worried about our car getting stolen. I told her that we were planning a trip soon and since Kia’s get stolen a lot, we didn’t want to have to walk home. And that made her laugh.

Me: Uh huh.

Randy: Really. It wasn’t polite laughter or anything.

Me: Uh huh.

Randy: I thought she must work for Kia, so I asked. She said no and that she wanted to interview me for the news. I asked her who she was with and she said “Fox”. I told her no.

Me: Hahaha

Randy: She asked me why and I said, because it’s Fox. She said they were local and not affiliated with the national network. I told her it was still Fox and no.

Me: Good.

Randy: She was taken aback. I guess she figured most people want to be on TV.

Me: True. And to be fair, there is a good chance you would have said no anyway.

Randy: I probably would have said no anyway.

So, my husband had a shot to make his television debut in the greater Cincinnati area and he blew it.

On the plus side, we now have less of a chance of our car being stolen.

 

That was bracing

Posted on by under Life

Summer is over.

Thank the stars, it’s been a difficult one. We’re all good. Everyone is intact. And that is very nearly true!

I am intact, but my mental health has taken a beating.

My physical health has been a big part of the mental health issues. I had been feeling bad for months, but then COVID came along, everything blew up. My heart rate was wonky. It went from way too low to way too high and kind of bounced between the two for a while.

After a few visits to the ER, we concluded that a change of medicine and getting over COVID would probably fix the issue. I feel like the issues are fixed. My last test came back good and my pulse is back it’s normal rate. I feel better. I was on a beta blocker and I think it just kicked my ass for months. I’m just waiting for my brain to catch up with the news that I’m not actually on the verge of a stroke or a heart attack. As of now, my brain remains skeptical.

At least we ended summer on a good note.

Randy and I took an eight day car trip together at the end of September. In 29 years, we have taken one vacation with just the two of us. This was our second.

We went to the beaches of South Haven, Michigan for a few days, then went further north to North Port. The weather was perfect and the coast was beautiful.

Randy took this picture of me, sitting under a streetlamp just after sunset, on North Beach in South Haven. I’m not usually a fan of pictures of me, but this is stunning.

South Haven MI beach sunset

 

We ended our trip in Chicago. We saw Nick Cave with his piano and Colin Greenwood, the bassist from Radiohead. We were in the most nose bleediest of seats, but it didn’t matter. What an amazing show.

I could continue telling you about the beauty of Lake Michigan or how gorgeous the Nick Cave show was, but I would rather tell you about the dispensaries.

Michigan is a recreational state and we were there to recreate so one of our first orders of business was to google “Dispensary near me”.

I picked the first one on the list, which was 9 miles away.

It doesn’t take many miles to leave the beach town of South Haven to get to some secluded county roads.

We came upon this compound looking place. Ramshackle house, out buildings, vans and campers. There were multiple hand painted signs at the top of the dirt driveway. I was about to mention to Randy that it reminded me a little of an X Files episode when the nice lady in my phone said “You have arrived.”

Randy: I’m not going in there.

Me: I am totally going in there.

The first building on the dirt driveway was basically a shed with a deck and a sliding glass door. I told Randy I’d just run in and see what was what.

I was not prepared, y’all.

There was a single employee in the shed. He looked like a more morose Adam Driver and wore a full on Tigger costume. Like a onsie type thing with a hood.

I said the first thing I could think of, “Love the outfit, Tigger!”

He said “Okay? Thanks?” in a manner that said “Why would you even mention it?”

To be fair, I don’t live in Michigan. Perhaps, it is typical for dispensary employees to dress in 100 Acre Wood costumes.

I purchased a few items and stepped back outside. There was a couple coming up the deck steps carrying a basket of fruit and vegetables. The dude said “This is the best place ever, isn’t it?”

I did have to agree. It was a highlight of the trip up to that point.

They offered me tomatoes and apples. I thanked them, but declined. We were on vacation, I wouldn’t be doing any cooking, and I didn’t want their food to go to waste.

So, the dude says “Okay, instead I will give you a comic book. I draw these by hand and give them away.”

He gave me a hand drawn comic book filled mostly with porn cartoons.

home made comic book

Hands down the best dispensary experience of my life.

We went to a second dispensary up the coast and, while similar in size, it did appear to be operating in a manner one expects in a dispensary. Also, no Winnie the Pooh characters anywhere.

There was, however, an enormous statue of a woman in a red bikini by the building. You will notice the inner thighs look a little bruised. Randy and I assume they look bruised from all the hands on her legs for pervy photo opportunities.

20 foot statue standing next to a North Port MI dispensary

All in all, my experience with dispensaries in Michigan were a little trippy.

Appropriate, I guess.

It feels good to write down some words after not for so long. I hope you all are well.