Winner, Winner, Turkey Dinner

I suppose all families have stories which become tradition to re-tell every holiday.  This is my annual telling of the year of the great turkey fail:

I was a young bride and decided to host Thanksgiving for both sets of parents. This would be my first time hosting Thanksgiving and I wanted everything to be perfect.  My parents and in-laws traveled from a distance to our house and I had shopped and cooked and baked, making everything from scratch.

The dinner was coming together nicely and the turkey was roasting in the oven.  My then-husband was in the living room entertaining the parents while I worked in the kitchen.  Part way through the roasting of the turkey, I noticed that instead of the wonderful and delicious smell of turkey wafting through the house, a strange chemical odor was emanating from the oven.  I checked the turkey and it appeared to be fine. I thought maybe there was residue from oven cleaner burning off, but I had not cleaned the oven lately so that wasn't the problem.  I checked everything in the oven to try to ascertain the source of the strange odor- with no luck.  I finally stuck my head out of the kitchen door and sweetly asked my husband to come into the kitchen. I explained the strange smell to him and asked whether he knew what the problem could be.  He inquired, " did you wash the roasting pan before you used it?"  I told him that I had not as I had simply retrieved it from the kitchen cabinet and it should have been clean from the last time it was used.  He then informed me that he had used it the last time he changed the oil in the car to drain the old oil into. About this time, my hair was standing on end and I questioned why he had used my roasting pan for car repairs and why he had put a dirty pan back into the cabinet. He said "I thought you would wash it before you used it. I did wipe it out."  OMG, I now had turkey cooking in 10W30 motor oil.

I had to take the turkey out of the oven, toss it in the trash, and then explain to the parents why we now had to go out to eat dinner. I was so embarrassed.

Fast forward to many years later and one morning while I was driving to work and listening to the morning radio show, the DJ's announced a contest for the craziest Thanksgiving turkey story. Of course I had to call in and relate the year of the motor oil turkey.  They agreed that I had the winning story and asked whether I was still married to that husband (no). I won $100 for the story.

So, now every year on Thanksgiving I gather the family around, young and old alike, and re-tell the, now traditional, Thanksgiving turkey story.

I hope your holiday is wonderful and does not contain any traces of motor oil!

Happy Halloween!

 

I was recently visiting my sister when I noticed her lamp grinning at me in preparation for Halloween!  Have a very Happy Halloween!

Spanx---no thanks

                              

 

                                     Spanx? No Thanx.

                                                           

Recently I was enjoying an evening with a few friends at a local establishment when the subject of Spanx came up.  I think it was when we decided that it is wiser to go shopping before imbibing rather than after as drunken shopping can produce unwanted results, i.e. 'why did I buy these purple shoes?'  Or in the case of one of my friends who found she had purchased a pair of the body sculpting Spanx following a few drinks.

For anyone who has been living under a rock, or who is perhaps a male creature who has stumbled upon this blog, Spanx are the new version of a woman's corset.  They are designed out of some type of man made stretchy material intended to squish a woman's body into a more desirable shape. Unfortunately, the material's holding power (relative to putting 20 lbs of stuff into a 5 lb sack) makes putting on a pair of these almost impossible.  My friend admitted that she tried to put them on once but couldn't actually manage to shove herself into them.  I told her that she should consider herself lucky since I did once manage to get into a pair. Putting on a pair included lying on the bed kicking my legs into the air and then standing and jumping up and down while pulling on the top of the Spanx until I was able to wrest them onto my body. I think I qualified for Mexican wrestling by the time I was through.

                     

However, it turned out that putting them on is nothing compared to taking them off.  I found this out when I arrived home from my important evening out and couldn't get out of the damn things.  No amount of kicking or jumping did the trick.  I tried every way possible to peel those suckers off, but was only able to get them down to the point where I couldn't walk as they became lodged between my hips and my knees.  I ended up waddling around my home looking for a way out.  I finally took a pair of scissors to them and cut $55 worth of spandex or lycra or whatever they are made of off my poor body. Thank goodness I hadn't come home with a date who wanted to get intimate since he would have lost patience and left by the time I managed to get out of my Spanx.  "Uh, hang on, almost there, no wait just a bit more, oh damn stuck again, hang on........."

We had all heard Oprah extolling the virtues of Spanx and wondered how she was able to fit her, um sizable, frame into them and decided that Oprah, with all her money, could afford dressers whose job it is to put her into her Spanx. We then wondered how women who are not in Oprah's tax bracket could manage to get into and out of their Spanx.  I suggested that we could start a service to help these poor women out when they find themselves stuck in their Spanx.  We could be the Spanx removal crew, available for a small fee and on short notice.  I suggested that we obtain our own uniforms for Spanx removal which would look something like this:

                 

We would have to add protective eye covering since unleashing fat under pressure could be dangerous -- look out she's gonna blow!!  Oh and don't call us if you have a husband, boyfriend or other being is amorously awaiting the removal of your Spanx. We can't guarantee that the time needed to remove the offending Spanx wouldn't outlast the interest of said being.

Our advice-- "Just step away from the Spanx".

El Faro

                            

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep;

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,

For those in peril on the sea!

Tragedy struck recently when the container ship, El Faro, whose home port was Jacksonville, Florida, was lost at sea in hurricane Joaquin.  As a sailor and captain, my heart goes out to the families of the lost crew.  While sea duty on ships is generally safe, we are reminded on these occasions of the ferociousness of nature.  Also, this weekend marks the running of the annual Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race. I was aboard one of the schooners three years ago for this race, and unfortunately, it was the only year that a crew member was lost in the history of the race. We experienced a huge wind increase on the first evening on board and during the effort to reduce sail, one of the crew members of another ship fell overboard and drowned. 

People wonder why ships are caught out in hurricanes.  It is a common belief that ships are safer out at sea during a storm than caught in port.  Ships can maneuver around a storm, but being stuck in port on a collision course with a hurricane can mean loss of the ship.  Many years ago I took a sailing vacation on a tall ship, the Fantome, sailing around the Bahama islands.  It was a wonderful excursion and cemented my love of sailing.  Years later, this lovely ship was lost along with all its crew and staff in hurricane Mitch. In anticipation of the storm,  Fantome did pull into port and off loaded her passengers, but chose to return to the sea with the idea of outrunning the storm. Unfortunately, the track of the hurricane changed from what was predicted and that beautiful ship and her wonderful crew were lost forever. All that was found was a life ring from the boat. And, initially, that was what was found from El Faro.

There will be an investigation and a lot of speculation as to how the commercial cargo ship ran afoul of the hurricane, at some point there will be an outcome and blame will be laid somewhere. However, the outcome will not bring back those lost lives nor provide comfort to families who lost loved and cherished members and who never got a chance for a last goodbye, a final hug or a last look.

Men and women will always answer the call of the sea. For those with saltwater in their veins, the pull of the ocean is strong. Some will make sailing a career and some will pursue the passion through sport. No matter how one goes out on a vast body of water and what can be a small boat, there is always a chance that they won't return.

I hope there is some comfort to the families that those who were lost were doing something they loved.

Who writes these things?

I'm sure many of you have seen the new Subaru commercial (you can catch it on youtube).  The ad depicts a father cleaning out the family car and putting things he finds in the car into a box. As he finds things in the car, they invoke memories of his daughter starting with a crayon which reminds him of when she was little.

As this goes on and he finds a hospital bracelet, a corsage and other things.  Each item reminds him of a time in his daughter's life.  Now, may of you may watch this commercial and experience an "awwwww" moment, but I am twisted so instead, I have to ask "How many years has it been since anyone cleaned out that car????"

Seriously, there's at least 13 years of junk in the car.  Some of the things appear to be regular things left in the car, shoes, maps, etc. I'm pretty sure that if this car hasn't been cleaned out in years, there's probably an assortment of fast food wrappers, empty plastic drink bottles, receipts of all kind, unopened mail and a variety of petrified french fries. Well, that's what I THINK would be in the car (not that I personally would ever have any of those things in my car).

So the dad, puts everything in the box and then proceeds to put the box in the back of the car as the daughter comes into the picture, now all grown up, and the dad tosses her the car keys and watches her drive away.

I'm sure she was amazingly thrilled to not only receive an old, worn out car that was filthy but that her dad threw all the junk he picked up into the box and gave it to her.

Really, who writes these commercials? Or is it just me who picks up on the weirdness?

Crappy Day Haiku

People are dead who shouldn't be

People aren't dead who should be.

Life sucks