Looky, Daddy!

40 is the New Hot

"How about a weekend away at a spa with your girlfriends?" I asked Sharon about how she wanted to celebrate her 40th birthday.

"No, I want to do something as a family," she replied. Only someone who leaves the house everyday before the kids wake up could say something like this and mean it. Sharon meant it.

So that's why Friday afternoon found the five of us driving north to the Catskills, chasing an ice storm, to spend the weekend with four other families in the cabins of Big Indian, New York, a town so named because apparently a large Native American man was found dead there long ago, too far from the ass end of anything to survive alone. As a favor to us, Victoria waited until we were on the Interstate before she horked all over herself. The birthday girl grabbed a box of tissues, unfastened her safety belt, and climbed into the back seat, saying "Keep driving. Just keep driving," as she went.

It was a rocky start to what turned out to be a fantastic weekend. It was my job to bring the food, and every one else's to bring the alcohol. "Bring enough for everybody," I told each person separately, and they did. I think. It's all pretty blurry now. We ate, played, drank, hooted, and hollered for the whole three days, pausing only rarely to wipe tiny bottoms and noses. The child-ridden among us tried to pretend we were childless and the childless tried to pretend they were charmed by our small people's dirty faces and unkempt hair.

And everybody simply kept their distance from Victoria.

The birthday girl, all forty years of her, was toasted every which way but up, and topped the weekend off the last night by cooking for us her signature dish: Assorted vegetables boiled in kelp broth. It tastes much better than it sounds, but how could it not?

On our way out of town Sunday, we drove to the only hill nearby that we were told would enough snow for sledding, and it did, just barely, but what it had in greater numbers were "No Sledding" signs and, after thirty minutes or so, security guards. And let me just say that, if you are ever wondering how to make a newly-middle-aged woman feel twenty-years younger almost instantly, you should arrange to get her kicked off private property by a security guard. She made us all high-five her before we got back in the car.

Running from the Man

In fact, the whole weekend was such an unparalleled delight that, on our way home, Sharon challenged me to come up with a better plan for my own 40th birthday, less than a year away. She had to speak her challenge loudly to be heard over Victoria singing Christmas carols into the puke bucket we tied around her neck, but I didn't need to think long on my reply.

"I want a weekend away at a spa with your girlfriends," I yelled back.

Author's note: I am bothered by the inequities of the English language. As a male working within a predominately female sphere, it irks me that women can say, "I went to the spa with my girlfriend," and nobody thinks anything about it, but when I say, "I put my penis inside my boyfriend," everybody assumes I'm gay.

Easily Clearing the Thanksgiving Bar

My wife and I are lucky that our first Thanksgiving together ended with a small party of foreign nationals vomiting just outside of our apartment. It kind of set the bar that all future Thanksgivings had to clear really, really low.

It was 1992 and Sharon and I were living in New Orleans but we weren't planning on staying much longer. Earlier that year, she and I had decided that we were going to travel the world together and teach English in foreign schools for a living. As such, we both went about pursuing that dream in our own ways. Sharon began volunteering as an English instructor for various organizations around the New Orleans, hoping to gain valuable teaching experience needed to land a good job overseas. I, a young, white man fresh out of college, knew that simply informing the world of my plans would be enough to get me what I wanted, so I spent my last few months there learning how to prepare as many authentic New Orleans recipes I could find that could be consumed through a straw and contained bourbon. And I still use those recipes today, so you decide who used their time more wisely, why don't you?

I don't talk too much about my wife in this site, mainly because I never see her and have no idea what she's up to these days, but from what little I do write, it should come as no surprise that she is insane.

Her volunteering efforts led her to a large Vietnamese family living in a small apartment, non-English speakers all, and thus began our association with the people that we would later shoot full of sick on our uniquely American Thanksgiving holiday. But first Sharon made them shop for the bullets. So to speak.

There were about ten members of the family and all morning I've searched for a picture of them that I could post here or at least help me remember names, but I've found nothing. I remember a few children, many adults, and an elderly couple that liked to laugh and were older than I thought people could ever be, which since I was just out of college probably put them in their mid-40s. My wife visited them in their apartment once a week for English lessons, and when November came, she decided to turn Thanksgiving into what educators call a 'teachable moment' by dividing up the family into teams, giving them each a list, and taking them down to Schweggman's to buy groceries for our Thanksgiving dinner. Because for a family trying to adjust to a new life in the US, there exists no better English phrase to learn than, "Pardon me, on which aisle will I find the Cheez Whiz?"

When Thanksgiving day came, we carpooled the family out to our apartment, which was even smaller than theirs, and we crowded around borrowed card tables and sat on borrowed chairs. We feasted on turkey and cornbread stuffing and broccoli casserole. We had asparagus and squash and pies and pies and pies. We smiled and laughed and communicated poorly and gestured wildly. And then they went outside and threw up.

All of the sixteen subsequent Thanksgivings Sharon and I have celebrated together since then have been measured by that yardstick: the did-more-people-vomit-than-in-1992 yardstick. If the answer is no, then Thanksgiving was a success.

The answer has yet to be yes.