"And then we'll get real Irish"

I have to make so very much casseroles today and tomorrow. The weather is *awful* and may have been engineered by Glade Scented Candles, because I have a heretofore unexperienced urge to buy a bunch of candles that smell like pies and allspice, close all the curtains, and bath in warm, inevitably cancerous, olfactory bliss.

Imagine the cans of creamed substances that will be consumed this weekend. Tubs of Country Crock will pass hand to hand; and this year, an actual turkey! Little Sister has brought her fancy LA Ways back to the Midwest and is providing poultry whereas I prefer $6 tubs of 'turkeyish substance.' My favorite part was looking at the "light and dark meat" roll and it was like a big meaty black and white cookie. Ew, barf.

Turkeyish is not like Turkish, and Turkish is a bit like Armenian, and they called this morning! Arpeek and the girls called to wish me a happy birthday, to which I replied "Miss you I do love and thinking often!" I was 24 when I met them...isn't that insane? That is 7 years of being asked if I'm married yet! Oh, they are the greatest. I am thankful that I can blow off the people I love dearly and they still tramp from their village to a freezing phone hut in order to spend their subsistence farming money to call me, St. Renegade. This is the other reason to remember that we do not earn or deserve the love we receive; because there is an anti-theological accountant residing in my psyche that says I could never pay all this goodness back. Plus, what did Lorrie Moore write? You don't give back to the people that gave to you, usually.

And so I say to you, "Schnorhakalutzoun!" I drink a toast for your happiness, health, a green path in a long life, a tub of Country Crock, a game of mafia, a house full of synthetic candle smells and loved ones.