Tough Turkey

I just wrote something, then I thought about it, and I will start again with a story from yesterday afternoon.  When I went to my mother's, before we ate, I opened a bottle of champagne and poured two glasses.  

"Let's sit outside for a minute and drink this."

As we sat down, the woman from across the street saw us and headed our way.  This was unwanted as we were to finish the champagne and then go in to eat.  But here she came, ambling with her two small dogs looking a hot mess.  

"I just got up," she said.  "Don's in the kitchen.  The two of us can't be in the kitchen together, so I said, 'Go ahead,' and I lay down on the couch and fell asleep.  I've been sleeping all day."

The little dogs were jumping up and down on mom for treats.  She likes to feed all the dogs that come by.  

"I saw the woman who gave me Ruby yesterday.  I can't stand her.  She just talks about herself the whole time.  She'll tell me about all her pains and illnesses, and I just want to say, 'Get over it.  Everybody has that.'"

"Does she live alone?" I asked.  

"Yes."

"There you go.  She needs to tell someone."

The neighbor is one to call the kettle black.  She talks about her problems all the time.  

"Have you eaten dinner yet?" I asked.  

"We will in a minute.  Have you?"

"We were just getting ready to," I said.  

"I hate to cook," my mother chimed in.  "I have never liked it, really."

"And this is what I grew up with," I laughed.  

"Is that why you became such a good cook?"

"I guess it is.  It began when my father was in a bad accident and was in the hospital for a lot of my senior year in high school."

I launched into a story about cooking for myself, then for him when he came home, and that led to my stories of going to college, becoming a vegetarian, growing food in our garden plots, hippie cookbooks. . . ."

"C'mon girls," she told the dogs.  "We need to go."  

The dogs did not want to go.  She had to drag them.  Once we were inside, I told my mother, "That's how you get rid of her.  She doesn't want to hear about anyone else.  If the conversation isn't about her, she'll leave."

"Yes," my mother agreed.

So this is why my post today has changed.  It was a long story about my day.  Of course, I should tell my mother's neighbor to start a blog. . . but yea.  I'm not going to narrate the sorrows of yesterday.  But in summary, it didn't go well.  I cooked the turkey too long and it was tough and dry and unappealing.  And my mother demonstrated how much she hates to cook.  In brief, our dinner was lousy.  I tried to watch both the Macy's Day Parade and the Lions/Bears football game, but commercial t.v. did me in.  I only lasted about ten minutes.  The voices, they hype. . . . 

I'll illustrate my physical pain rather than describe it. . . but there is not a part of my body left that isn't a wreck.  

In the morning, I put the turkey in the oven and went for a walk.  I've fucked up my "good" knee so that it is now worse than the "bad" one.  My back was hurting so badly that I had to walk like a corkscrew.  I walked slowly, every now and again screaming out in pain as my "good" knee collapsed.  

Whatever. 

When I came to the Boulevard, I saw the carousel pictured at the top of the page.  I took a bunch of photos of it, but none of them were any good.  I've tried photographing carousels before, but they never look as spooky or menacing as I want them to.  I just can't seem to nail it.  The one I took in Paris in the Tuileries Gardens was the best, I think.  You remember that one, right?

😂

I felt I was walking OK, but once in awhile I would step wrong or turn and . . . lightning!  This was usually when I saw an attractive girl, of course.  But I caught glimpses of myself in window reflections and I seemed to have gotten a bit thinner.  I didn't look so bad at all, I thought. 

"Ahhhhhhh!!!!!  Fuck me!!!!!  Owww."

Yea, turning to look at my reflection was a bad idea.  

I walked to the end of the avenue behind a group, probably family, with one of the most attractive women you might ever see in a flouncy dress that the wind would catch and lift to show her legs and sometimes behind.  Strong legs.  Natural blonde.  Maybe I was walking more quickly to keep up with the view, so when I reached the far end at the Catholic Church, and turned to return home, the pain in my knees and back overwhelmed me, and for the first time in my life, I had to take a bench.  As I sat there waiting for the pain to subside, a woman walked very slowly up the empty Boulevard toward me.  There couldn't have been more than twenty people walking the sidewalks just then.  She would take a few steps and stop, look around, then come a few more.  

"Hello," she offered.  

"Hello to you."

"Nice day."

"Yes it is."

"I see you've got a camera."

I held it up.  "I do." 

"I have one, too," she said reaching into her bag.  She pulled out her iPhone.  "Here, let me take a photo of you," she said.  

"Sure.  And I'll take one of you."

She hesitated.  "Oh. . . I'm not as photogenic as you are."

"Ho!  I'm not at all.  You'll see when you look at the picture." 

And it is true, too, if the difference between what the mirror sees and what the camera sees is any indication.

She began to muss with herself, straightening her clothes and fluffing her hair.  Then she stood very straight the way people used to stand for pictures in the old Kodak days.  

"What's your name?" she asked.  I told her.  "I'm Nancy."

"It's nice to meet you, Nancy.  I hope you have a nice Thanksgiving." 

"I'm a vegetarian," she said.  "I am having Cold Duck."

It took me a minute, then I laughed. 

"There is not much to prepare there," I said.  

"The shops are starting to open," she said.  "Have you been to the chocolate store?  I just came from there.  They have some good chocolate."

"Chocolate and Cold Duck sounds like a good Thanksgiving to me."

"Alright," she said. She hesitated for a moment, then, reluctantly, she wandered on down the block.  

"I must look like a fellow nut," I thought, "sitting on a park bench on an empty Boulevard.  Just another lost and lonely soul."  It was a sobering thought.  

People have troubles, though.  I read them on the Nextdoor Neighbor email thing I get many times a day.  People are both troubled and disturbed and mostly undereducated if that vehicle is any indication.  Too many times I am moved to copy the posts and send them to my friends, but lately I have thought it might be a good idea to copy them and write vignettes around them that I invent.  I feel I could make an entire book of that, maybe interconnecting stories and l recurring characters.  I mean, really, the shit would seem to just write itself.  

I came home from my mother's as the sun was setting.  I poured a drink and lit a cheroot and sat out on the deck.  The air was quiet, the street empty.  My "good" knee stiffened and when I moved it, I screamed out in pain.  That's the kind of day it was.  

"Next year we'll do take out," I told my mother.  

"O.K."