My pal Judy sent me a link to a petition seeking to enact legislation that will prevent health insurers from forcing women to have "drive-through" mastectomies. It's appalling that women are sent home hours after this surgery with a couple of Tylenol and the answering service phone number. The bill doesn't require hospital stays, but allows a woman and her doctor to decide whether it's in her best interests to spend up to 48 hours in the hospital or recuperate at home. Okay, the link is sponsored by Lifetime TV ("Mother, May I Sleep With Breast Cancer?") but it's a good cause, so if you're so inclined, you can add your support.
Festivities
We are spending Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle's, located about 90 miles (and fifty years) away from our house. In attendance will be my parents (the born-again and the alcoholic), my brother and his wife (the alcoholic-in-training and the unmedicated manic-depressive), my sister-in-law's Aunt Mary (who freaked us out the last time we saw her, at my nephew's baptism, by walking around muttering "Now he's a soldier of Christ! soldier of Christ!"), and various and sundry other crazy* relatives. I'm sure I'll come home with lots of entertaining stories.
Or at least a mighty hangover.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
*The funny part is that they think I am crazy. Go figure.
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I am spending Thanksgiving for the first time in many years with the agressive paranoid schizophrenic brother-in-law, the pickled sociopath brother-in-law, the pickled ignoramus father-in-law, the Munchausen's sister-in-law, the cheerleading sister-in-law who has to bob her head up and down to talk, and the antisocial personality in training nephew.
They think I'm crazy too.
Oh Happy Day.
Crap. WITHOUT the in-laws.
WITHOUT.
Yeah, but I'll bet you don't have anyone in your family who wrote a musical about Nietzsche. Yes, *that* Nietzsche. (And was sober the whole time ...)
Happy Thanksgiving!
My grandmother translated the entire Mikado into Yiddish - der Yiddisher Mikado - there's one in every tree!
You must take pictures!
Have a happy Turkey Day - I'm sure there will be a lot of inspiration for BBF color names - Cranberry Soldiers, Blue AA Chip, Purple Prozac . . .
Wendy
Oooh, sounds like you need you paint chickenpox on a kidlet or two with lipstick as soonas dinner is over!
Have I mentioned before how much I love you guys?
Holidays and relatives... I suggest lots and lots of wine.
You could memorize all the Robert Service poems, like the Cremation of Sam McGee, http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1841.html
and then of course The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill
http://litterature.historique.net/service/bill.html
in which the hero saws off Blasphemous Bill McKie's legs to fit him in the coffin when he freezes to death, the one that starts out "I had to kill that neighbour of mine, honest to God I do" etc. Then walk around mumbling them under your breath. Teach the poems to the kids.
If it doesn't give you a peaceful day, it should give you a different day at least.
Barb
I just had this vision of you knitting them all muzzles.
Oh Carol. If there was enough time, we would band together and stage an intervention at your house. We'd show up with lots of food and drink and not let you, Tom or the kids out of the house until Thanksgiving was over. Not that you'd want to leave once we began performing "The Mikado" in Yiddish.
Have a safe trip and as good a time as you possibly can.
Hen, "Mother May I Sleep With Breast Cancer" is very funny.
Unless you didn't mean for it to be funny. Then it's not.
Of course, love! How can you not intend to be funny when mocking a Tori Spelling movie called "Mother May I Sleep with Danger?"
And I'm glad someone got the joke....
Mwah.
You know, Elly had a double mastectomy four years ago, at 79. They sent her home in two days. I was so pissed. She, on the other hand, was sitting up in a chair the day after surgery, knitting, with no morphine, no Percs, no nothing. Still.
For a family fraught with mental illness, you'd think we'd all get crazy on each other. I am truly fortunate to have the sanest loonies in the world as relatives. Tomorrow, it will be Elly, brother Rich, daughter Jenn and boyfriend Norm plus my grandson Ian, who gets little press from me and should get more, cause I loves him. My sissyboo has her own wacko in-laws to deal with.
You must be hugely grateful to have Tom at your side when feasting with your cracked family. Because I know he has to be good for pithy comments during the meal and on the ride home. That's what love is all about. Ain't it?
Apparently there is an upside to being the only child of parent no longer living, married to a man with one brother who lives 500 miles away and whose parents are also no longer with us. We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner tonight (Wednesday; said husband is a psych nurse who ALWAYS works on holidays -- double and triple pay, ya know) with our 2 sons. Good food, lots of talk and laughter and afterwards we went around the table saying what we were grateful for and 17-yo said "Family and friends" and meant it. Yeah.
and I thought I was the only one with fucked-up, toxic relatives....
happy thanksgiving, carol!
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