Chronicle of a Thanksgiving

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[Jenny points at a large piece of driftwood on the beach - it is a good six feet tall]

Jenny - What's that?
Mom & Dad - [simultaneous] Pizza box.

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[we are staying in an A-frame house. Jenny got the loft, which has five twin beds in a row]

Jenny - How come you all get bedrooms, while I have to sleep in the Tenement Museum?
Me - It's a hard knock life.

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[Jenny is studying abroad in Bulgaria in the spring]

Me - Are you taking Bulgarian?
Jenny - You think SUNY New Paltz offers Bulgarian? No one offers Bulgarian. Even Harvard doesn't offer Bulgarian.
Me - I bet they do.
Jenny - I bet they don't.
Me - Five dollars says Harvard offers Bulgarian.
Jenny - You're on.

[ten minutes later, from the other room]

Jenny - Son of a... There's a goddamn Bulgarian dance team!

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Jenny - I accidentally said one of our strange family expressions to a stranger yesterday.
Us - Uh oh.
Jenny - I told a lady in the restroom that she's a better man than I, Gunga Din. She left muttering to herself "Gunga Din?" This was at the therapist's office, by the way.

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Mom - I see, said the hammer.

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Jenny - I told JRB about the time you played Mama Rose when you were 8. He said that he was writing a himself note to call Arthur Laurents tomorrow and tell him.
Me - That's awesome! I have to tell Ben.
Jenny - He'll just be pissed that Arthur Laurents knows who you are and not him.
Daddy - Not if Arthur Laurents sues you for performing Gypsy without the rights...

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And a re-post of the classic, from Thanksgiving 2006:

Mom: The Salvation Army is coming at noon to take the sofas.
Me: What?
Mom: The sofas in the living room. They smell like the dog, it's time to
get rid of them. So the Salvation Army's going to come get them.
Me: But... we have 14 people coming for Thanksgiving tomorrow...
Mom: Right. Can't have them sitting on smelly couches.
Me: So instead they'll stand?
Mom: We have folding chairs.

- one hour later -

Salvation Army guy: The big sofa is too stained, sorry.
Me: Mom, why don't you give them twenty bucks and ask them to carry the
sofa outside so the city can come take it?
Mom: I don't want a sofa on the front lawn when we have people coming.

- two hours later -

Me: Mom, what are you doing with the sofa?
Mom: I changed my mind.
Me: We'll never get it through the door ourselves.
Mom: Your father will be home in an hour.

- one hour later -

Dad: #$^$%&@#$%@!

- one hour later -

Dad: Wait, tilt it towards me... no tilt the top... now pull the bottom
left towards you...
Me: We're gonna die.

(Jenny: Keep it down, I'm sleeping.
Mom: It's four in the afternoon!
Me: We're gonna die.)

- one hour later -

Dad: Maybe if we saw the legs off...

- one hour later -

Buttons: ::finally notices we're taking his sofa::
Buttons: ::freaks out::
Buttons: ::goes back to sleep::

- finally -

Mom: We did it! The couch is gone!
::everyone does the "Friends" couch pile-on::

- later -

Neighbor: Do you guys know there's a couch on your lawn?

as Napoleon never said...

Jenny and I were having a very serious discussion about the class system in England and the USA… as relates to Bertie Wooster.

Jenny: I love that Bertie never has money problems. It just makes him so innocent and free to have relation-induced mishaps

Liz: I love that class of British people who just have income without doing anything, like the Darcys. We don't have that in America. Even the absurdly rich, their money comes from somewhere. Generally some scrappy great-grandfather who invested in trains or somesuch.

Jenny: Whereas in England, money coming from somewhere is a low-class idea.

Liz: Right.

Jenny: Money, like wine, gets better with age.

Well, that is a fine aphorism, is it not?

Liz: Did you just make that up?

Jenny: I think so

Liz: You should embroider it on something, or start using it as an aphorism and see if it gets picked up.

Jenny: You mean I should just drop it into conversations?

Liz: Yes.

Jenny: All those conversations I have about old versus new money?

Liz: No, just irrelevantly. And, introduce it with "as they say.”

Jenny: See if it gets picked up as conventional wisdom.

Liz: Or give a different citation every time! Like, “as the Good Book says, money like wine gets better with age.”

Jenny: Or "as the Bard tells us..."

And then we got a little carried away…

Liz: As we’ve seen with President Obama...

Jenny: As I learned from Sesame Street...

Liz: as my grand-pappy Old Reliable used to say...

Jenny: as the Eskimos teach us...

Liz: as can be inferred from a close reading of Durkheim...

Jenny: as it says on Mount Rushmore...

Liz: as Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and the Marquis de Sade all said at one point or another...

Jenny: as I learned on my first day at Hahvahd...

Liz: as my years in the circus taught me,

Jenny: according to the great clown himself...

Liz: as the prophet speaketh to me...

Jenny: as you yourself have noted...

Liz: as the ancient runes translate...

as is scribbled on this cocktail napkin that I'm waving in your face...

Jenny: as Dumbledore said to Harry on page 519 of the Half-Blood Prince, 12.2 lines from the top...

Liz: As Justice Brandeis noted in the fourth footnote of the Carolene decision...

Jenny: As Joan of Arc herself was about to say...

Liz: as Napoleon never said...

as was viciously mauled in the substandard translation of Hugo's Miserables...

Jenny: as Madame de Pompadour probably said, before everyone forgot why she was famous...

Liz: fanTAStic gardener.

(that will be funny after you watch Doctor Who)

as my alphabet soup spelled last night...

as Jim Marvin once said while demonstrating the proper distance between Mars and Spain...

Jenny: as it probably says in Doctor Who, but I couldn't tell you because I still haven't watched it even though I have this friend, see, who makes references to it all the time, and I think I'm going to have to watch it soon or she's going to come after me with a broadsword in my sleep, and maybe like cut off my ANKLES, or something, or possibly my entire lower half, and anyway, I think there was an aphorism in here somewhere...

Liz: as the negative infractions of the patient's pituitary gland suggest...

as it says on the manufacturer's label, which you really shouldn't have removed, really, that was a bad idea...

Jenny: as the surgeon general might warn you...

Liz: as she said....

You get the idea. And that’s right, folks - this is the duo that’s spending two weeks together in Europe. By the end of which we will either have begun speaking entirely in an incomprehensible invented language of inside jokes and Buffy references, or will have jumped off the train somewhere in Spain and run screaming in opposite directions across the plain. In the rain. Mainly.

Liz: Jenny, why are we SO AWESOME?

Jenny: I don't know, Liz, but I think we just can't help it. It is our burden to bear.