First, let me apologize to the faithful readers of Poo-Paw. Ole’ grandpa here has been mighty remiss in chronicling the evolution of the grand gnome.
I’d like to tell you I’ve been lying on a beach in some exotic location, or that I had completely recovered from some macho ski accident, but the truth is I’ve been shackled to this keyboard fighting writer’s block and deadlines.
Well, save for those Poo-Paw deadlines, but I already feel bad enough.
So, rather than waste a few dozen words explaining my absence (too late!), let’s cut right to the chase: my grandson has become a bit… well… boring.
Since he’s creeping up on three – in the same frighteningly rapid fashion in which he creeps up on our dog – our little grand gremlin is relegated to doing the same old thing day after day.
The same old thing includes – most notably – declining to take naps and rejecting disciplinary instruction.
Par for the course, I suppose, for those on the backside of the Terrible Twos.
Boring, however, is a term that’s never applied to Thanksgiving celebrations here at The Palace.
In the Murphy’s Law department of Holiday revelry, this household can never seem to escape a Thanksgiving mishap. As late November approaches, the wife and I hazard a guess as to what heinous turkey misadventure will soon befall us.
It’s like the sword of Damocles hanging above our heads. Only in our case, it’s more like a giant Hello Kitty Macy’s Parade balloon.
Two Thanksgivings after we Brady-Bunched this lovely clan of ours, our kitchen stove decided that it, too, deserved a holiday and quit working. The burners we’re fine – which meant the mashed potatoes and gravy portion of the meal would certainly be served, but the main attraction wouldn’t fit in a saucepan.
That marked the first (and only) time that a 20-pound bird was vivisected into sizes suitable for a Toastmaster toaster oven.
It may have taken ten hours and been drier than the Sahara, but by the time the third unidentifiable slab of bird was toasting it had turned into an obsession.
A couple years after what we now call the Feast of the Carnage, my wife went in for a surgical procedure a few weeks prior to Turkey Day.
And while she had sufficiently healed in time for the big dinner, we found ourselves looking at a surplus of pharmaceuticals undigested during the surgical recovery.
Thinking as most normal adults would, we opted to mix a few of those leftover painkillers with our annual Thanksgiving wine.
But while I was finding that year’s vintage particularly pleasing, the wife decided to take over kitchen duties and add our fresh, delicious Bob Evans sausage not to the stuffing, but to the pot of already mashed potatoes.
That was the year our children so enjoyed driving around Thanksgiving afternoon looking for a place that sold potatoes.
The following year our oldest daughter and the alpha son-in-law had settled on a house and just taken possession of the keys in early November. They hadn’t moved in as yet; in fact, they were just getting into painting the walls and all the other prep before taking occupancy.
On that Thanksgiving morning, our stove – a new model that had replaced the one that bailed on the other infamous feast – decided that it, too, qualified for a Thursday off.
But rather than hit the toaster oven for this roasting, we threw our 20-pound bird into the car and drove it to my daughter’s new home. And there it cooked for five hours, with everyone taking turns dropping by and basting it at scheduled intervals.
This year, the oven worked just fine – which helped warm the house given that our furnace stopped working on the Monday before Thanksgiving.
And you thought I was kidding about that parade float hanging over The Palace.
But, thankfully, another celebration of the feast of the Pilgrims is behind us and we look forward to a peaceful Christmas time.
Christmases at The Palace are normally quiet, save for that time our little grand gnome gave us all the flu and my beta son-in-law had to be treated for dehydration.
But I think it was actually New Year’s when he went to the emergency room.
I just love holidays.
By J. Doug Gill