In Twilight Regalia

I am in a food coma, and that is an end-of-year phase that lasts a month around my office, and would at home too, if it were not for my nearly ascetic husband. But today I really hit it hard.

I just ate 6 chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. I haven’t done that since I was in high school.
And I shouldn’t! REALLY, I shouldn’t. My body hates me. It makes me do things. Terrible things. All my chicken and vitamin water plans of earlier in the day dashed in a 15-minute chocolate smear campaign. Holy daze. It’s worse this year due to my mounting feelings of deprivation.

It all started with how my Thanksgiving plans were dashed.

I did consider a family visit for the holidays. Unfortunately, I have no family that I can afford to fly to see without spending enough for a downpayment on a Mercedes. Secondly, no one I know including my husband eats Thanksgiving food anymore. The days of my childhood are crying in a corner waiting to be told to turn around, while my skinny vegetarian friends are just … I don’t know what they do, actually…

Thanksgiving dinner used to be the best meal I cooked each year (with lasagne or Thai pompano fish running a close second) — a meal with my friends surrounding a few abutted tables with paper party tablecloths, best plates and glasses, candelabras and much munching and snarfing and joking. I would make:

A really juicy turkey, never the wierd steroided brands (not my mom’s; I learned it the right way)
Sage stuffing with just a little lop cheung sausage (yes! it’s excellent — my Chinese influences coming out)
Gravy that was dark and flavorful, not the pale runny kind; (my grandmother’s style)
Mashed garlic potatoes (those new-fangled diners taught me this one)
Parmesan stuffed mushrooms (a coworker Kathy shared this with me and it’s there every year now)
Rolls of two kinds
Baby white corn (the good kind!)
Double-baked cheesey potatos (I learned this from Madine, the best boy’s house cook in all U of I )
Baked Spinach– a slightly oniony spinach souffle sort of thing (My old housemate showed me this one)
Peas with a tweak of honey (Did that by mistake one year it was great)
Green beans that had snap and were not the grey green crud my mom used to provide (thanks ma)
Cranberry sauce made from scratch with orange zest and cinnamon (Joy of Cooking? Can’t recall.)
Knockout strong spiced pumpkin pie with Breyer’s and vanilla whipped cream to mellow it. (My own mad invention.)

This year, far away from all my friends, I tried to give over to happenstance, I really did.
Just release, I thought.
Let go of your holiday expectations.
Let it just be. Things will work out.
You don’t need to have these to have a thankful happy thanksgiving.
Things will just happen.

They didn’t.

Which was puzzling to me, since I really did mentally let go.

I gave up on a Thanksgiving family meal day and thought, ok, we’ll have a Korean BBQ with our one friend who’s in town. I bought some great food at the Korean grocery. My husband would be very happy with this solution, and I felt like, ok, I can adjust.

I have no idea just what he told our friend about what we were going to DO that day (maybe he didn’t say it was dinner?), but when our friend showed up at 3:00pm he was clearly looking green and hungover, having gone out to the typical forced Asian karaoke drinking night with his work buddies the night before. He speaks mostly in Korean to my husband and sometimes in English to me, and since he’s had his head in a pre-med chemistry book for almost three months straight now, his English is sort of falling by the wayside. I am understanding him less these days.

He got up to smoke a couple of times, rubbing his tummy uncomfortably. The more ashen he looked, we just looked at each other and thought, oh just let him go home. He left in an hour, too ill. The food never happened. My husband, food traitor that he is, just whimsically decided to eat something else, since we then didn’t feel like a huge barbecue. I went to Taco Bell, since I was STARVING and just PISSED and quick fixable.

I was MAD not at him and really at no one in particular, but MAD that I couldn’t have my Thanksgiving.

I know it’s probably a fantasy that’s just pretty much selected memories, but I love the idea of family, perhaps because mine was so fragmented and I am hoping against hope. And my family food and the past happy events with my friends take me there. This food is like a roster of my life’s history, each dish coming from a different part of my legacy. I have this great wish to share the “me” part of what I do with …. someone. I miss it.

So the next day we go out and have a nice dinner and that’s that, and I don’t feel bad but I don’t feel quite right either.

Everyone around us has kids at the table with them, and here we are and here we’ll be in years to come, still like this? Or will I turn into America’s second sumo wrestler and will he be gone? Just gone? It’s tough and binding, this strong feeling and my food. It feels like I’m losing and it’s winning and there’s nothing I can shunt my feelings off to this time. A week goes by….Christmas! oh SHIT!.

I try the shopping cure: For a day, it works.
I’m mailing packages to France, to Hong Kong, to Singapore, to Korea…..I wonder if they even care? I wonder if I’ve picked the wrong people to mail to? They don’t really care that much about Christmas either, I think. The postage is a killer, but I swear it should be appreciated anyway.

Right? It is? Isn’t it?

So a week goes by…..

Back at the shopping cure. I noticed it seems like even the stores have all made these sort of subtlely sacrilegious decisions about Christmas. No one’s playing much traditional music anymore because everyone knows we’re sick of it and everyone feels all PC and guilty because about 50% of L.A. is Jewish anyway, so this year they’ve committed to sticking to poppy commercial tunes.

Today I heard played in the stores:

1) Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses (ah, we all know about missed connections)
2) Santa’s Beard by They Might Be Giants (now THAT WAS a surprise coming out of Macy’s ceiling),
3) Paul’s version of Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time (ho hum)
4) Someone else’s version of Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time (ok ok)
5) YET ANOTHER version of Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time, LIKE ACK!!!!
6) Santa Baby by Eartha Kit (yawn)
7) Some warped version of Holly Jolly Christmas. (run screaming) Father Christmas, by The Kinks (wherein Santa gets mugged).

I know it’s probably lame to ask for Silent Night, but I was beginning to feel like all this gangsta bling around me and the ransacking mocking rocking lyrics were ….. well…. suddenly wearing.
I began to chant to myself, I really want a real holiday. I want my holiday. I want something REAL. Where’s my holiday? Where IS it?

My hydra headed grinchy meanness was coming out in the white mall light in front of the 200 Mexican women with strollers I kept stepping around (they seem to ignore the fact that I exist because I’m like a giraffe or a light post to them and they don’t really think I’ll be needing to get past them, I’m so big I must be part of the architecture), and I didn’t find any clothes I liked to wear to the Christmas party because I look like Kirsty Alley pre-Jenny Craig right now. I found a pair of boots that were 7 bucks at payless and that was my small rejoicing. I bought them just to buy something I could feel guiltless about. I don’t even like pink.

I’m putting up the tree now by myself while my husband is passed out after what was, for me, a relatively small Christmas shopping trip.

This is just not right.
Who puts up a tree by themselves?
Where is the rearranging the furniture for the little Charlie Brown tree we searched out?
Where is my mom?
Where’s the FUCKING SNOW? They’re all in shorts…
Where’s the carolling? Yes I even want that.
Where are the corny tacky cards with glitter on them? Have I sent any? (guilty face) NO.
Where is the cookie baking and decorating?

That’s when the Great Cookie Disaster of December 2005 began today,
and I came home and
ATE ALL THOSE COOKIES.

I’m mad.

Mad mad mad mad.

Is there such a thing as a reverse Bah Humbug?

I will give dinner and hugs to the first person who actually sends me a sparkly card.
SNAIL MAIL.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 3rd, 2005 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.