TaLKiN TuRKeY WiTH BJ

Happy Day before Christmas Eve Day Chickens! Today's guest blogger is the vivacious and verbose B.J. With this special Christmas tale....

When I still had 'in-laws', the MIL, who we will lovingly call Cruella, was a piece of work all year, but really shined during the holidays. She pretty much started at Halloween, that slow, silent, crawl toward demanding audience participation over the next two months. She planned everthing, Tgiving, Christmas Eve & Day, and didn't leave room for you to have other activities or life. She was, you know, self appointedly IN CHARGE. Did you know that everything stops, including the World Clock and Global warming, if you DON'T HAVE TINY LESEUR PEAS?????????? Someone's 'oversight' by bringing a different brand almost caused a smack down in the kitchen one year.

M2 was about 1 1/2, and we go walking into C's for the Thanksgiving meal, and the f-in oven was on fire. Full blown, call the Red Truck, kind of fire. So I just turned around and walked back out, thinking 'me and my toddler are not going down with this freaky ship'. AND I had Vodka in the car. People were screaming instructions and all kinds of shit was going on and my NORMAL niece walked over and threw flour or baking soda or fireplace ashes on the f=in fire and put it out. But it was also all over the turkey.

SO, turkey goes into the sink to be washed off, I fix a drink in the driveway, me and M2 go in to find the Ranch Hand, who has settled into his football watching/eating chair. He's messing with the remote, while the f=in kitchen was on fire! Nothing gets to him, or he doesn't react to anything like a normal person. Meanwhile, the scene in the kitchen was high drama, about the turkey being ruined, the entire meal being ruined, Cruella's life being ruined, and on and on and on. Then my sister in law, 'little Cruella in training', said 'oh shut up" and everyones eyebrows in the LR went 5 inches up but no one said anything. Cruella Sr. went downstairs (weird split level house) and smoked about 90 cigarettes, reapplied lipstick, and came back up. She probably had Vodka down there too. We managed to get through the meal. God,I wished I had written down what went through my head while sitting around that table. If was Southern Style Uncomfortable Silence, which southern and silence don't go together.

I called these people The Adamms Family, just so you know.....

SO, in the kitchen cleaning up with my two SIL's by marriage, I say "do you think we could all get together for Christmas the Sunday before so the R family could go to Oklahoma? They both said YES for various reasons, but thought that was a great idea! **ie, they had been chained to C'ruellas cmas schedule for years, and welcomed the change. So I bring it up, thinking my SIL's will so back me up, and the look on C's face is imprinted in my memory FOR-EVAH. Then she say's 'Well,what the hell are WE supposed to Do CEve and Cmas? Sit around and look at each other?? Silence. My chicken shit SIL's say NOTHING, and the Ranch Hand stands up and say's 'you ready to go?' and I said SURE, and picked up M2 grabbed my purse and we left. Oddly, the next door neighbor was stomping out of her house into the driveway and digging through her car for something. Probably Vodka.

I won't bore you with the crying phone calls, notes, etc, we got right after that. Don't sit there and think 'oh how sad' because she promptly booked a trip to Vegas and her ass was parked at a slot machine singing Jingle Bells All The Way that year.

The next year was even better.