Now mind you, my mother still had to do everything else for Thanksgiving dinner, but she wasn’t allowed in the kitchen to do any of it until the turkey was stuffed.  And woe to the child who hadn’t eaten breakfast before Dad commandeered the kitchen, because we were no longer permitted to enter.  One year he actually cordoned off the area with ropes.  So we got pretty hungry on Thanksgiving Day.  This was good planning on his part though, because by the time dinner was served, we would eat almost anything, even his stuffing

The making of the stuffing was quite the production.  My dad would wear an apron, which was an endless source of amusement for us kids.  It wasn’t one of those unisex barbecue aprons; it was always one of mom’s, complete with flower-embroidered pockets.  It looked particularly ridiculous on a bespectacled bald guy wearing a starched shirt and pressed pants.

We didn’t hang around to be amused for long, though….This was due to my father’s almost religious belief in onions, those succulent vegetables remarkable for their pungent odor and taste, and their ability to clear a room.  My dad fervently believed in mass quantities of onion, even for only a small quantity of stuffing.  He would buy 4 or 5 enormous bags of chopped frozen onion, enough to fill seven turkeys, and his intention was to stuff every last one of them into our one unfortunate turkey. I’m surprised we never had a bird get up and run.

Before the stuffing could be made, however, the pungent vegetable matter had to be fried.  My dad would load up the fry pans with butter, and commence the frying process.  Then he would get bored, and decide that - contrary to all proven and established culinary law - they did NOT need to be stirred while frying.  So he’d wander into the other room to watch a little football.   Soon, the heavy “fragrance” of burning onions filled the house, along with the not-so-melodious sounds of my father’s swearing.  On the bright side, we always learned a couple of new word combinations that day.

He would then holler for my mother, and sometimes actually make the overdone onions her fault.  This was truly artful, as she hadn’t even been allowed to enter the kitchen during the frying process.  At this point, however, he was willing to grant her passage to the sink, so that she could wash the fry pan.  He would holler for my brother, and get him to take the cremated mess out to the trash.  He would holler in general, because now he was behind schedule, and the pressure was on.

Fortunately - or unfortunately - depending on your perspective, he always had more onions.  Most years, he went through this process two or three times before it resulted in onions that could actually be used for the stuffing.  I’m sure we all would have been disappointed had it gone well on the first round.

Given this Thanksgiving heritage, is it a big surprise that I’m not interested in learning to cook a turkey - how could I possibly compete with such a rich tradition?   The birds are safe from me - and so are the onions.

Oh how I dread the start of school,

It’s enough to make me act the fool.

Nay, it’s not the empty house I mind, nor even waking kids on time.

It’s not the morning rush to dress, not the carpool with its added stress.

The foulest element of back to class

Is the set of supplies I must amass.

Pencils and pens and binders - oh my!

Paper, erasers and markers to buy.

Oh, what a nightmare!  What a pain!

Oh, how I hate to shop again!

Lo, I spy the crowded aisles!

Behold the lines that stretch for miles!

I gnash my teeth as I hie yonder, wrestling with a cart that wanders.

Woe to me!  I find stock depleted, mostly of the stuff I needed!

I must hence get me out the door, to yet another supply store.

And then with dismay, go out once more, for what the kids forgot before.

This morning, there was a downed phone line in front of our house. My husband suggested that I call the phone company to report it, and I started to hyperventilate.

The last time I called to report a problem with the phone, I found myself kneeling in the rock bed on the side of the house, unscrewing the cover on a little gray box so that I could check the dial tone on the thingy outside - working as fast as I could, because if I didn’t get that cover off and press 1 if there was a dial tone and 2 if there wasn’t, I was going to have to start all over.  Thank goodness the box was the problem, because I was sure that the next automated instruction would be to strap on some climbing boots and shinny up the utility pole to check out everything up there.  I could only imagine what the little voice would want me to do for a downed line.

Seeing my panic, my husband suggested that I try reporting it over the internet.  That sounded much more manageable, so I went in and fired up the computer.

A few screens into it, I realized that this had some similarities to the automated phone process.  One, I would be significantly older before I finished.  Two, by the time I got through their trouble-shooting diagnostic process, I’d be qualified to hang out my own phone repair shingle.

Before the system would yield the top secret e-mail address for my particular problem, I went through eight screens of questions.  Finally, I got to choose ‘repair’.  Excited, I realized I must be almost there.  And then I got these three options:

• Open or check status of repair ticket online
• Help yourself: technical support -High speed internet
• Help yourself: customer support - Wireless Service

Now, do any of these sound like they apply to what I need to report?  I didn’t think so either.  And for crying out loud and heavens to Pete - why, after all this, are two of my three options to ‘help myself’?

Just when I decided that the phone line could stay down for all I cared, I recalled the priceless wisdom of a not-so-ancient philosopher/technician.

“Call the help line and keep pressing “0″ until somebody talks to you.”

It works.