Happy Turkey

My husband Alex just learned that he will spend three weeks in Germany for his job which will cover the Thanksgiving holiday. Just peachy! I had already invited my daughter and her husband and their two kids to come and stay for the occasion and they had accepted. I called this morning to un-invite them. I’ll be damned if I’m going to go to all that trouble without Alex even being home. When I told my daughter, Sheila, that I was canceling, she said “Bummer,” and then said she was going to get on Expedia to check out some tickets to the Bahamas over the holiday. In other words, she kind of kicked me to the curb.

My husband travels a lot. I hate it. Still, one of us has to make some money, and at this point it’s him, not me.

Because I complain about his absence to anyone who will listen, I was bitching about it to my mother-in-law not long ago. Her advise to me was “Linda, you just stay put!” Words to live by, I swear. And stay put I do. We actually discussed me going to Germany with him briefly. Briefly, since we have two big monster dogs (Harry and Honey), and both of them are “sensitive” and “finicky” and spoiled rotten, a kennel is not the answer. Also, friends hesitate to offer dog-sitting services because they are somewhat unruly at times. Okay, they’re fine with us, but “drop that cat” or “drop that baby” has to be said with just the right inflection, if you catch my drift. Honey and Harry and the cat Smokey are just too set in their ways for me to go off gallivanting to Europe right now.

There is another issue too. We really don’t have the money. We seriously do not have the money. We most definitely do not have the money. Case closed.

Alex is Navajo Indian. Not part, all. I sometimes call him “The little injun who could” because of his amazing success in life, in his education and in his career! Alex is a very successful guy. Oh, he is short though. I tell friends he’s about 5’ 4”, but he swears he’s 5’9”. All short men say they are 5’9”. Whatever.

Alex took the news of the trip better than I did. He said to me “Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday I really like anyway. It’s just a time to thank the white guys for not killing all of us.” I think he got that from reading “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, but it could be his own too. With Alex, I never really know. He sometimes tells people he’s FBI and then surprises them when he says that stands for “fat-bellied Indian.” FBI, Alex? Not so much.

To tell the truth, I don’t even like turkey. I’ll cook it and I might eat some of it, but I don’t like it very much. Turkeys seem kind of pitiful undressed like that with their legs up in the air and holes where their other stuff used to be.