Exhaling (Part Two)
Back at work. It's quiet so far. A lot of people have taken the rest of the week off.
I'm still processing the last 24 hours. It was a whirlwind. Families are so weird. And, wonderful. All at the same time.
Christmas morning began with a strange text message on my cell phone. It was on vibrate, so I'm not even sure how long it had been there before I noticed it. All it said was "Merry Christmas", but when I looked to see from whom it came, it gave the name of the Chinese restaurant I order lunch from.
My first reaction was "How nice!" Nice, but a little strange. I mean, did they send this to all their customers? That would mean hundreds, perhaps thousands of text messages. Nice idea but that's got to cost a lot of money.
And how would they do it? Manually? I couldn't get over the technology that would have to be involved. A mass e-mailing would have been simpler (though no less unexpected.)
It slowly began to dawn on me that this was a malfunction of my cell phone. For reasons I have yet to understand, it occasionally shuffles the labels in my phone number list. Entire listings disappear from time to time. And, if such a "ghost" party calls or leaves a text message, instead of reviving the old label the phone will shuffle to the next available one, in this case, my Chinese restaurant.
With that in mind, I had followed a hunch and fished out my St. Michaels' directory and, sure enough, the number from that morning's text message matched the one under Pale Male's entry. It was Christmas greeting from him. It also served to remind me that he had been one of many numbers that had disappeared from my cell phone directory.
After I replied, I carefully reentered Pale Male's number.
Everything else was proceeding smoothly: the turkey was browning and apparently slowly cooking "through and through". I took Lynette's advice and just left it in the oven "until the meat was hanging off the bones".
I think I made a mistake with the pork loin. I tried to kill two birds with one stone by throwing some vegetables into the crock pot. In this case it was cauliflower which has a strong odor and taste. By the time it had reached full steam, sometime in the middle of the night, the cauliflower was all you could smell in the apartment.
Still, the meat was awfully tender when done and had an interesting taste and aroma. No one asked, "Were you cooking cauliflower last night?"
In fact, the only disturbing thing about the entire day was just the sheer volume of merchandise, tupperware, and human cargo that had to be hoisted up and down the elevator; I'd say, it took close to forty-five minutes just to assemble evryone at the dinner table.
It has dawned on me that at some point in the years since Mom's decline in health, that our family's center of gravity has slowly shifted from her shoulders to that of her children. My sister and I now host most of the family get-togethers. And, between the three of us, my brother still owns the only car. So, he does most of the shipping and hauling.
You have no idea how complicated it is to get five overweight, middle-aged black people, even a short distance across town (my sister only lives ten block away from me) along with enough Christmas gifts -- all given pretty much laterally (that is to say, to each other) -- to make sure no one feels left out. It took my brother two trips because they all could not fit into the car at the same time.
That was just the beginning.
Because my resistance was low this year I surrendered to the usual offers of pot luck entrees.
You have to understand my frame of mind, here. I have been to literally dozens of pot-luck dinners at St. Michael's people's homes. White people, by and large, do not bring food to someone's house and then immedately ask if they can use their microwave or stove to heat it up. They bring it, they hand it over to the host and it lays in its container until ready to be served.
If it's cold, it's cold.
Do you see where I'm going here? All cooking stopped from the moment I got the first call from my brother that he was "on his way" and would need help carrying things. That was forty-five minutes ago; the turkey was for all intents and purposes -- cold. The pork loin was cold. Even, the cauliflower was probably cold. So, why in the hell was it so important that everything else be warmed up again?
I didn't get it. But, that wasn't even the point. The point was that from the moment they took off their coats, the other cooks had only one thing on their minds: their particular contribution to the feast. They swarmed over the kitchen; popped things into my microwave; went around opening cupboards and drawers. Basically, they had, in two seconds, what had taken VRaptor a year and half to gain: complete control of my kitchen.
I was pretty much in a state of shock the rest of dinner.
The one bright spot was the phone call from California. It was from Nephew.
He seems to be surviving his divorce; he has a new girlfriend, a new house. His old job is a source of pride and stability.
Among the boxes hauled up the elevator was one giant one with Nephew's return address stenciled in the corner. It was addressed to his dad, but inside, there were presents for everybody.
They were dvds. Big, lovely, deluxe, boxed sets of everything you could imagine. Nephew is an art director at Warner Brothers Home Video (pardon me while my chest pops a couple of vest buttons, here) and was responsible for quite a few of the covers. I imagine he got a break on the cost, too. At least I hope so.
Brother got a complete boxed set of Errol Flynn movies, plus, a bunch of others; Sis got the complete William Powell/Myrna Loy "Thin Man" series. All excellent choices, I thought.
And, what did I get? Tun-tatata: a complete, deluxe, boxed edition of all the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals, including, "The Barkleys of Broadway" which is the only one that wasn't filmed at RKO.
That was it. I was *verklempt*. I could barely speak in complete sentences by the time the phone was passed my way. Families are so weird.
I'm still processing the last 24 hours. It was a whirlwind. Families are so weird. And, wonderful. All at the same time.
Christmas morning began with a strange text message on my cell phone. It was on vibrate, so I'm not even sure how long it had been there before I noticed it. All it said was "Merry Christmas", but when I looked to see from whom it came, it gave the name of the Chinese restaurant I order lunch from.
My first reaction was "How nice!" Nice, but a little strange. I mean, did they send this to all their customers? That would mean hundreds, perhaps thousands of text messages. Nice idea but that's got to cost a lot of money.
And how would they do it? Manually? I couldn't get over the technology that would have to be involved. A mass e-mailing would have been simpler (though no less unexpected.)
It slowly began to dawn on me that this was a malfunction of my cell phone. For reasons I have yet to understand, it occasionally shuffles the labels in my phone number list. Entire listings disappear from time to time. And, if such a "ghost" party calls or leaves a text message, instead of reviving the old label the phone will shuffle to the next available one, in this case, my Chinese restaurant.
With that in mind, I had followed a hunch and fished out my St. Michaels' directory and, sure enough, the number from that morning's text message matched the one under Pale Male's entry. It was Christmas greeting from him. It also served to remind me that he had been one of many numbers that had disappeared from my cell phone directory.
After I replied, I carefully reentered Pale Male's number.
Everything else was proceeding smoothly: the turkey was browning and apparently slowly cooking "through and through". I took Lynette's advice and just left it in the oven "until the meat was hanging off the bones".
I think I made a mistake with the pork loin. I tried to kill two birds with one stone by throwing some vegetables into the crock pot. In this case it was cauliflower which has a strong odor and taste. By the time it had reached full steam, sometime in the middle of the night, the cauliflower was all you could smell in the apartment.
Still, the meat was awfully tender when done and had an interesting taste and aroma. No one asked, "Were you cooking cauliflower last night?"
In fact, the only disturbing thing about the entire day was just the sheer volume of merchandise, tupperware, and human cargo that had to be hoisted up and down the elevator; I'd say, it took close to forty-five minutes just to assemble evryone at the dinner table.
It has dawned on me that at some point in the years since Mom's decline in health, that our family's center of gravity has slowly shifted from her shoulders to that of her children. My sister and I now host most of the family get-togethers. And, between the three of us, my brother still owns the only car. So, he does most of the shipping and hauling.
You have no idea how complicated it is to get five overweight, middle-aged black people, even a short distance across town (my sister only lives ten block away from me) along with enough Christmas gifts -- all given pretty much laterally (that is to say, to each other) -- to make sure no one feels left out. It took my brother two trips because they all could not fit into the car at the same time.
That was just the beginning.
Because my resistance was low this year I surrendered to the usual offers of pot luck entrees.
You have to understand my frame of mind, here. I have been to literally dozens of pot-luck dinners at St. Michael's people's homes. White people, by and large, do not bring food to someone's house and then immedately ask if they can use their microwave or stove to heat it up. They bring it, they hand it over to the host and it lays in its container until ready to be served.
If it's cold, it's cold.
Do you see where I'm going here? All cooking stopped from the moment I got the first call from my brother that he was "on his way" and would need help carrying things. That was forty-five minutes ago; the turkey was for all intents and purposes -- cold. The pork loin was cold. Even, the cauliflower was probably cold. So, why in the hell was it so important that everything else be warmed up again?
I didn't get it. But, that wasn't even the point. The point was that from the moment they took off their coats, the other cooks had only one thing on their minds: their particular contribution to the feast. They swarmed over the kitchen; popped things into my microwave; went around opening cupboards and drawers. Basically, they had, in two seconds, what had taken VRaptor a year and half to gain: complete control of my kitchen.
I was pretty much in a state of shock the rest of dinner.
The one bright spot was the phone call from California. It was from Nephew.
He seems to be surviving his divorce; he has a new girlfriend, a new house. His old job is a source of pride and stability.
Among the boxes hauled up the elevator was one giant one with Nephew's return address stenciled in the corner. It was addressed to his dad, but inside, there were presents for everybody.
They were dvds. Big, lovely, deluxe, boxed sets of everything you could imagine. Nephew is an art director at Warner Brothers Home Video (pardon me while my chest pops a couple of vest buttons, here) and was responsible for quite a few of the covers. I imagine he got a break on the cost, too. At least I hope so.
Brother got a complete boxed set of Errol Flynn movies, plus, a bunch of others; Sis got the complete William Powell/Myrna Loy "Thin Man" series. All excellent choices, I thought.
And, what did I get? Tun-tatata: a complete, deluxe, boxed edition of all the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals, including, "The Barkleys of Broadway" which is the only one that wasn't filmed at RKO.
That was it. I was *verklempt*. I could barely speak in complete sentences by the time the phone was passed my way. Families are so weird.