The Joy of Cooking….and family

Christmas is over. Finally. I spent my last day off from work watching Julia Child make homeade stuffed sausages and take the guts out of fish through their gills – courtesy of the ‘The French Cook’ dvd set my mom gave my grandmother for Christmas.

So much fun family time was had over the holidays that it would take far too long to write it all here. Instead, I’ll just give you a brief overview of some of the high points:

• My grandmother got tipsy on Jim Beam and ginger ale and kept exclaiming “I love the smell of bourbon”
• My mom got the pajamas that she didn’t want
• During a trip to see some Xmas lights, my grandmother turned to me and said, “Let’s talk about assholes. There’s thousands of them.”
• My family did not wait for me to begin eating Christmas dinner – when I showed up (5 minutes early) they were almost done
• My mom made coconut cupcakes especially for my grandmother, to which my grandmother said “I don’t see any coconut on these cupcakes” and then didn’t even eat one

Life Lessons

Today I’ve decided to share a short list of some of the most interesting  things I have learned from my grandmother over the years. Here they are:

1. Bras are optional.
2. You can never have too much laundry detergent.
3. Getting hit with a cane hurts.
4. Save your knees, you will need them when you get old.
5. French people smell and charge you to use their bathrooms.
6. Vodka is the most potent of all alcohols.
7. Re-gifting is perfectly acceptable.
8. Dirty jokes are funny no matter your age.  
9. My mom is grossed out by toenails or a lack thereof.
10. Talking on the phone or watching tv during a storm is basically a death sentence.

Pajama Party

Last week, my grandmother called and asked me if I would pick out and buy a nice pair of warm pajamas for her to give my mother for Christmas. I told her that I would. I failed to mention that I had already bought my mom a pair of pajamas for Christmas because I didn’t want to burst her bubble. So, I decided I would just give my mom the pajamas I had bought her as a gift and tell her they were from my grandmother. No harm no foul. My grandmother would be happy and my mom would never know the difference.

Things didn’t work out how I planned.

The next day, I received this email from my mother:

‘Do you have time to go to the store and pick out a nice pair of warm pajamas that your grandmother can give you as a Christmas present?’

As I laughed out loud, I emailed to tell my mother I would be happy to and informed her that she too would be the recipient of a nice warm pair of pajamas from grandmother. To this she replied that she didn’t want any pajamas because she just bought two new pairs.

Merry Christmas to me.

Catnip….not just for cats?

Last weekend, I went to my grandmother’s house to finish the project I started the previous weekend – removing and changing the mattress pads and bed linens in the upstairs bedroom. If you remember, this is what started my grandmother on her anti-plastic tirade.

This time, my mom decided to bring her new adopted cat, Sally, over to my grandmother’s house to play with her cat Bobby Cheddar – yes, that’s his real name. The extra feline got my grandmother a little worked up because she was roaming all over the house and jumping on things she shouldn’t. My grandmother came up with an ingenious way to fix that problem – drugs.

As I came downstairs from changing the beds, I noticed that both cats were sitting calmly in front of my grandmother, but staring at her intently – almost googly eyed. The scent of catnip was in the air. Then my grandmother said to me, ‘I’m getting them both stoned. That’s the thing to do.’

This reminded me of a time about a year ago when my grandmother asked me the following question, with a straight face:

‘What do you think would happen if I took this catnip and smoked it? You know, like a cigarette?’

I’m not sure what would happen but I would pay to see it.

Maybe it was the paint fumes?

On Saturday, I visited my grandmother and helped her with a few projects around the house. She was in rare form.

My first project was to figure out why the house phones were not working. I had been told earlier in the day that they simply ‘weren’t charging’. Having had years of experience fixing every electronic item in my grandmother’s house I have learned that her description of the problem is rarely accurate. I took a look at the phone on the main base and it was semi-charged but had no dial tone. Investigating further, I found that it was not plugged in to the phone jack – a necessity if you actually want to use your phone.

As I was ‘fixing’ the phone problem, I noticed that my grandmother’s bedroom still reeked of paint. She had a painter come by earlier in the week to re-paint a few areas of the house. I voiced my concern about the fumes and my mom asked my grandmother to let me open a window to air the room out a little. Her response, ‘No. I like to smother.’

My next project was to remove the torn mattress covers off the beds upstairs. This was an easy task and as I went to throw the plastic covers away, my grandmother exclaimed that she ‘hates plastic’ and can’t wait to see ‘what the archaeologists will think’ when they dig up remains from this time period.

The projects were done and I went to sit with my grandmother while she ironed her pillowcases. The conversation turned to my uncle’s recent trip to Cairo, Egypt via Air France. I now know that the French are a topic I should never discuss with my grandmother – thanks for the heads up mom. My grandmother expressed her distaste for everything French, including the fact that they didn’t fufill my uncle’s request for a vegetarian in-flight meal. And, apparently, the stewardesses refused to speak English even though ‘it is the predominant language of the world’. My mom tried to change the subject but then I chirped in and said, ‘And, I heard they don’t use deodorant.’ My plan worked perfectly. My comment led my grandmother to discuss the downfalls of bidets and that she heard the French ‘go in holes in the ground’.

Grandmother 3 The French 0.

And she's not talking about a chair…

My grandmother’s advice to a woman who has had two illegitimate (this is the word she prefers to use…) children by two different men:

“What she needs to do is take a break. She needs to sit on it.”

I’ll let you interpret that one for yourself.

New meaning to the words 'living will'

My grandmother can be quite the pessimist. Some of her favorite descriptive phrases include ‘worst ever’, ‘absolutely terrible’, ‘worst I’ve ever seen’….you get the drift. So, it’s no surprise that she tells us every year that it’s her last on this earth. According to her, she could be dead at any minute.

It was under this pretense that I was invited to her house for what I shall refer to as the ‘demented home tour’. My grandmother led me from room to room pointing out things she was leaving me in her will. In case you’re curious, I’m getting the silver. The rest is a blur.

My mom learned about the tour and began peppering me with questions. I sensed she was worried. Her overall message: if my grandmother leaves me her diamonds my mom may actually kill me.

Blood diamonds indeed.

Lessons from the Virginia state line

For the past few years, my family has taken a trip to Virginia Beach over Columbus Day weekend. Technically, we are there to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday (which falls at the end of November) regardless of the fact that the trip always seems to fall on the weekend of my actual birthday (October 5).  Nevertheless……these trips have been the setting for endless hilarious antics by my grandmother.

The first trip to VA Beach my grandmother was mesmerized by the ‘container ships’ that floated by each day, one after the other. She sat on the balcony shouting and pointing at them and eventually proclaiming that she needed ‘to call my stockbroker and see if I can buy stock in these containers.’  That was also the trip where she told us all that this was her ‘last birthday’. She’s been saying that every year since.

On our most recent trip, I invited my best friend Kristen to come along. When we arrived at the hotel the first night, my grandmother insisted that Kristen and I play a trivia game to compete to win a ‘mystery prize’. The so-called trivia game consisted of questions my grandmother made up. The first question was to name the 7 dwarves from Snow White. Kristen and I tag-teamed and came up with all 7 names. My grandmother then declared Kristen the winner and gave her a $20 BP gas gift card. The next question was to name the Great Lakes. I only knew 2 but Kristen came out of nowhere and named them all with ease. My grandmother then declared her the winner again, gave her another prize and called me ‘baby dumbo’ for my lack of geographical insight. ‘All you have to do is watch the Weather Channel every once in a while. They’re right there on the map.‘

The best nugget of wisdom my grandmother has dispensed came during our last trip, but at the most unlikely of places. We were headed to the beach and made a stop at the big rest stop right on the NC/VA border. Kristen and I helped my grandmother to the restrooms and as we were holding the door for her she suddenly looked up and said flatly, ‘Girls, live hard and die young.’ 

We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Let them eat bread

This year, I had to work on Thanksgiving day so my mom and grandmother agreed to do the family turkey dinner on Wednesday night. Because, of course, I am the golden child.

The dinner was perfect, thanks mostly to my grandmother’s contributions of homemade mac’n cheese (I even got a special dish to take home and cook myself later…) and stuffing. My mom did pretty well herself with the turkey, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole and sweet potato pie.

As the meal came to an end, my grandmother asked me whether or not ‘those people’ I work with at the restaurant would be feeding us on Thanksgiving Day. I sighed and told her I didn’t think so – I mean, after all, they were already paying us $2.13/hr to spend the ENTIRE holiday serving turkey to everyone else in town. ‘Well’, she said ‘they better at least give you a piece of toast….If not, call me.’ 

My grandmother is like my own Tony Soprano.