Sassy Black Friend

5 Things I Learned at Thanksgiving

1. There is a limit to how much mashed potatoes you should eat. It doesn’t matter how delicious they are. That limit is well short of where I stopped. Ouch. Goat cheese mashed potatoes are not my friend anymore.
2. Babies of family members that don’t like you are going to love you. In my case, it was a cousin who has always hated me, for reasons I’m not aware of. She acts like I slapped her in a past life. But, her 18 month old loved me. He followed me around for over an hour, then screamed and clung to my leg when they were leaving.
3. There’s no limit to the crazy things your stranger relatives will do. My father’s youngest sister lives in Boston, and she drove a rented truck to Thanksgiving. She told us it was full of stuff she’d forgotten in a self storage facility. She was 6 months late on the bill, and had to take everything out or they were going to sell it. So, she’s going to drive around with it until she figures out what to do with it.
4. Cleavage is a dangerous thing at family holidays. My uncle’s new girlfriend was wearing a dress cut down almost to her waist. She’s a lovely woman, but come on. No one talked about anything else when she left the room, and my cousins were daring each other to throw things in there. Not wise.
5. Constant drunkenness is the way to go. Dragging fake Little Sister around all weekend to bars with my old friends was great. They thought it was adorable to see her drink, and paid less attention to me, so I could concentrate on my drinking. The family is also much nicer when they know you’re hung over. Who knew.

Pre-Thanksgiving Hangover and Home Depot

My first mistake was going to Home Depot with a hangover. It’s big and loud and full of people. None of those are ideal conditions for someone in that state. Especially me. I’ve been getting hangovers for a few years now, and I know how to deal with them. Eggs, water, Advil, a sofa, and some bad television. But with the family hovering, that just wasn’t happening this morning. So, off I went with my dad to find some weird thing he needed to fix something that didn’t seem broken at the house. It started out so well.

I napped in the car, because he drives like he’s pushing the car up a hill, so it took 30 minutes to get a few miles. We get a good parking space (everyone else was at the grocery store I guess), and shuffle inside. Well, I shuffled. He was so giddy there might have been skipping. That man loves a home project. Normally, so do I. our happiest times in recent years have involved paining, putting together furniture, and hanging things. Finding the perfect thing to fiddle with, a fire pit, vertical blinds, gutters, an a/c compressor, deadbolt locks, a shop-vac, whatever, can be therapeutic.

As soon as we got in the store I realized this was a huge mistake. The place wasn’t full, but everyone there was frantic. Half were looking for chairs or tables or plywood – somewhere to put their relatives for Thanksgiving, and the other half seemed to be looking for supplies to deep fry turkeys. Jeebus. I couldn’t deal. Too much yelling, and I almost got smacked in the head with a ladder – twice. I whimpered for a while and my dad let me go stand by the pain swatches. It was soothing until that stupid mixing machine started. Like a jackhammer in my brain.

Dad got his big bag of whatever and we scampered out of there as quickly as possible. I was traumatized and pissy. Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, please!

I’ve never seen Doctor Who, though I’ve heard it’s good. However, if this is true, I could be a loyal viewer for a long, long time. I remember seeing him in Neverwhere, and like I said in the post title, yes, please! Not because he’s really, really, breathtakingly hot… well, okay, yes because of that.

Via The Angry Black Woman:

This may all come to nothing, but it’s being widely reported that Patterson Joseph has been asked to play the lead in Doctor Who and he’s either thinking hard or has accepted the role.

I’m sure this will be hard for some to accept. First the president of the United States, now this? Heh. What’s next?

Thanksgiving Driving Songs

These were the first three songs that came on in the car on the way home for Thanksgiving. Weird and wonderful. I hope the rest of my, and everyone’s holiday is the same. Less weird than wonderful would be nice, though.

Black Star – Definition

Salt-N-Pepa – Shoop

Yo La Tengo – Our Way to Fall

Who needs CVS?

I had dinner with some professional acquaintances recently, and it was a strange experience. First of all, it’s odd (for me) to be in the home of someone I sually only communicate with via email. This woman has been great about connecting me with new clients, so obviously I’m a fan. But I’ve only met her twice before, and we’ve been working together for two years. So I was nervous, but willing.

The dinner itself was fine. Everyone was a writer or a techie, so we just talked shop the whole time. But then something interesting happened. One of the guests (a guy I’ve been working on a project with for a few weeks now) got a headache. Our hostess was busy, so she told me to (this is a direct quote), “go look in the medicine cabinet. You should be able to find a few things that might help.”

Weird, right? Most people would just say “there’s Tylenol in the medicine cabinet.” Once I opened it, I got it. The woman had a private pharmacy in her bathroom. She had ten headache medicines (3 that were prescriptions), four different antibiotics, six sleep aids, and a bunch of things I’d never even heard of before like Phentermine, Prednicen-M and Lodine.

I laughed for a while, then grabbed some Advil. She didn’t say anything, so neither did I. But I am curious what’s going on there. She obviously didn’t forget about all that stuff, and didn’t mind that I saw it. I really wish I could get the story.

Tagged? Yikes, the pressure!

From A Yellow House in England (great blog, you should read it) tagged me. I had no idea what that meant, but now I do. So…

7 Weird/Random Facts About Me:

1. I have mixed-handedness, also known as cross-dominance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-dominance I write with my left hand, but in almost every other task my right hand is stronger and more precise.
2. I can’t whistle. Not even a little. Dozens of people have tried to show me how, and I just can’t do it.
3. I never tasted peanut butter and jelly together until I was in college. For some reason as a child I got it in my head that I wouldn’t like it, and then used to pretend to be allergic to avoid it. I’m still not a big fan, but I have no idea why I thought it would be so bad.
4. My father’s nickname for me is “Bull.” He swears that was my first word, spoken when we were alone. According to my mother, it was dog. Both are weird, since bull is random, and we didn’t have a dog.
5. There are twins in the last four generations of my mother’s family, but none in mine. I have 4 first cousins, and only 2 of us even have siblings.
6. A friend of mine and I both lost a significant amount of hearing in our left ears from sports injuries as children. I knew her for 6 months before discovering this. I had a serious case of swimmer’s ear that went untreated, and she got hurt during a lacrosse game.
7. I don’t have a middle name. Apparently there was some quite argument between my parents about what it should be, so they decided not to give me one.

I’m going to tag some of my top Entrecard droppers, because I’d love to know a bit more about them:

1. 60 Were Enough
2. Black Woman Thinks…
3. Brady Bunch Repeat… I Don’t Think So
4. Doug’s Missoula Blog
5. Mature Not Senile
6. Raging Rev
7. Rants, Thoughts, and Other Things