Slumgullion

Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that never made any sense to me. Not even one little bit. First of all, I never saw anybody dressed up like a pilgrim and I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed somebody wandering around in an ugly brown outfit with square-toed black shoes wearing a wastepaper basket for a hat. Outfits like that tend to stand out in a crowd.  Then, everybody’s busy committing turkey-cide all over the place when the pilgrims never even saw a turkey for Thanksgiving – they ate fish and eel.  Yep, you heard it first here – no turkey, just a very nice piece of stuffed eel. And your basic corn on the cob. Which, in honor of, I suppose, my mom always creamed.    But then, during the holiday season Mom creamed everything in sight. We had creamed corn. Creamed peas. Creamed onions. Creamed string beans. She even creamed some spuds one year and tried to tell us it was some newfangled dish called “scalloped potatoes”. No way, pal. I can spot a creamed ...

  It was Sunday, Ann was gone and, still recovering from knee replacement surgery and twice-a-week tortuous rehab sessions, I was on a sleep-in experiment to see if the world would stop spinning if I just napped it out for a while. It didn't -- and then it did. I'd been up -- not the same as cogent -- for 5 minutes and 12 seconds when my daughter called. Erica: "There's a starving juvenile cormorant in the driveway." Me thinking, "I GOTTA cut back on the Oxy." Me speaking, "Huh? Where are you?" Erica: "In the driveway with the bird who's slowly advancing on me." The last time something like this happened it was 2 a.m., she was eight years old and shaking me awake yelling, "Dad, there's a bird flying around in my room." Me thinking then, "We GOTTA stop giving her Vicks Formula 44." There WAS a bird, courtesy of her cat dragging it in through the pet door, so the odds were pretty good she was now in a stand...