So we were up in the deep dark middle of nowhere for Thanksgiving, where tortoises while away the winter clawing hopelessly in drawers, etc.
(Oh, wait. Update on that: The tortoises — yes, there are now two — are in separate boxes in the closet. They are, ahem, too BIG to fit in the dresser drawers anymore. And, you know, I have mixed feelings about this: First, I’m relieved that hibernating torti are no longer clawing about all stump-like amongst anyone’s delicate underthings. Although, second, I’m concerned about just how large these critters will get and how that might negatively impact meee. I can imagine some Incredible Hulk Tortoise scenario where they fly (uhm, plod?) into a murderous rage one night and pop all gigantic out of their shells whilst I’m fitfully sleeping mere feet away, and, oh! the slow havoc they will wreak upon me in the deep dark middle of nowhere! And just how big is too big for a tortoise or any other such creeping reptilian creature? Shouldn’t they be soup by now? Just think of all that yummy soup crammed carelessly in a box in the closet for six months of every year. Well, okay, you don’t HAVE to think about it, but I sure do. All the time. Especially when the clawing happens. Oh, Lordy, yes, especially then.)
For Thanksgiving dinner, we went to my in-laws’ friends’ house. At their home, I met this lady, a friend of the friends, and for whatever reason, she seemed to develop an instant white-hot hate for me. I’m a polarizing figure, pippa; it’s true. Generally, I have found that people either like me or HAAATE me with not much middle ground. I don’t know why. Well, actually, I have some theories, but who really cares? I’m a polarizing monster is the point I’m trying to make here.
So this lady — let’s randomly call her Sourface Lemonpants — brought all the appetizers and set them up on a side table. She had crackers and cheeses and cheese spreads and all the spreads were in these little jars with tiny toothpick signs detailing what they were, so you’d know which one contained the deadly poison, is what I think now, in retrospect. I loitered around this table, gorging, ignorant of the imminent white-hot hate and thinking, “Wow. How adorable and pretty this all is, mm-mmm, yummy, blahdie blah blah.” Just thinking the best of people, as I am wont to do.
I turned to Sourface Lemonpants, who at that point was just “a human lady,” and said, “Wow. I love this lemon ginger cheese spread. And it’s all so pretty. You’re like Martha Stewart!”
She turned to me and, yamahama, I tell you true, her eyes were like blazing red lasers of death. She did not say a word, not one word, as she tried to bore her crimson gaze into my hapless skull.
Basically, she had a sudden and total RED ASS for me, pippa, and, well, owie, owie, owie.
I spoke fast.
“Oh, uhm, I meant it as a compliment.”
Her eyes were dead and cold. In a split second, I realized the tortoises in the drawer would look just like this when they finally club me to death with their slow stumpy legs.
“It’s not a compliment,” she said.
“But, uh, really, I meant it as a compliment. I did.”
“IT’S NOT A COMPLIMENT! MARTHA STEWART IS A SCUMBAG!”
She proceeded to detail how That Scumbag Martha Stewart was a big fat felon and WENT TO PRISON, YOU KNOW, and what’s more and even worse, pippa, did you know that That Scumbag Martha Stewart said some REALLY MEAN THINGS about Sarah Palin, aka The Virgin Mary?? She did. It’s true. Seriously, off with her head for that one. Surround it with some flowers for a nice centerpiece.
“Listen, Slappy, I’m not complimenting you on your insider trading; I’m just complimenting you on your stupid cheese spread” is what I would have said right then while showing her the door at MY house. Instead, since I was raised right and mostly try to behave in social situations, I just stared gobsmacked and open-mouthed at her while she ranted on and on and, well, as I watched her mouth move and her face become more and more puckered, that’s when she became Sourface Lemonpants. But, again, it was all very random, as you can see.
When she was finally done raving about That Scumbag Martha Stewart, I turned and bolted to the bathroom where I hugged myself and hummed Jesus Loves Me until This Chick Who’s Never Sober announced it was time to eat. She was three rooms away, but, oh, I could hear her. Oh, yes, indeedy.
Later, at the table, Sourface Lemonpants again went off, this time about the outlawing of the incandescent bulb and how we’re all going to have to use only CFLs in just a few years. (This IS true.) And, honestly, I don’t know why I did this, but I spoke up, made a random comment.
“Yeah,” I said, “and the clean-up on those is a huge pain because of the mercury content.”
Oh, dear. Oh, no. Why oh why do you speak, Trace? Why are you engaging Sourface Lemonpants? Have you forgotten the red ass? I mean, it’s sad. It really is. You have SEEN the face of the red ass, Trace, and it’s a horror and yet, yet, you still remain this hopeful idiot who believes in happy endings with crazy people.
Dumbass.
Sourface Lemonpants just looked at me with her lasers and barked, “NO, IT’S NOT! THAT IS TOTAL BULLS**T! YOU JUST READ THAT SOMEWHERE!”
I stared at her, and in my best grade school teacher voice, simply said a clipped, dismissive “all righty” and turned away from her.
Before she finally left, dragging her ex-Marine husband with her, she packed every last jar of spread and every last crumb of cracker and every last schmear of cheese into strange plastic suitcases, like a makeup artist, growling the whole time about how this “didn’t taste good” or that “was too runny” until someone would finally compliment her and she’d bite their head off.
All righty! Happy Thanksgiving!
Later that night, I had some indigestion.
And, yes, I blame Sourface Lemonpants and that lemon ginger cheese spread.
she NEEDS to get over herself ….fast ! in the middle of my craziest days i sometimes wonder if i’m the last sane person on earth….you too ? tongue in cheek here…..my husband thinks i have some sort of strange magnetic field around me that draws the weird ones out. i tell him it’s got to be a spiritual gift…….
Well, she was rather domestic but uncooperative, wasn’t she?
Cullen- you owe me a keyboard
Yay- you’re back! Missed you- thinking about and praying for you.
Okay- I think there is so much free-floating anxiety around now- and I don’t just mean the ‘holiday’ season, but for at least the last couple of years, or so, that people are actually crazier than previously. Or have been so worn down that they have lost whatever residual control over their reactions they might have had.
We discuss this in our family on a regular basis.
Or everyone’s always been like that and we’ve lost the social constraints that kept behavior in check. Not an excuse, just a theory. Anyway, I’m sorry you had an unpleasant Thanksgiving and hope your Christmas is way better.
On the appetizer front: my sil brought a platter of Keebler Stackers, a block of white cheddar, thin slices of Granny Smith apples and a honeycomb. You can use a little bowl of honey- but the comb makes it all about the presentation.
My mission is to spread the wonderfulness of this everywhere.
Ugh. What horrible behavior.
Thankfully, Cullen doesn’t owe me a keyboard because I’ve finished my coffee. But I snorfled, I did.
That domesticity is almost a weapon in the hands of the bitter, you know? They do a good job, not from the desire to spread happiness, or because they have pride in their own work, but to stick it to everyone else and make them feel like the peons they are; and when it backfires they can’t handle it.
cindy — Yes, I think it is a spiritual gift or something. Not a useful one, but there nonetheless.
Cullen — Hahahahahahahaha.
Sal — Well, luckily, Thanksgiving wasn’t unpleasant. SHE was unpleasant, but I managed to enjoy myself in spite of her. Not gonna let Sourface Lemonpants ruin the whole weekend.
NF — You know, I’ve known so many of these types — the kind that, yes, want to stick it to you because of their domestic skill. It’s not for the joy of doing it; it’s for spite. Weird. Like, why bother? You stage this whole production just to make others feel crappy? Just how insecure are you? The other thing hard to miss with SFLP was the way she sniped at anyone who tried to compliment her. She’d fish for the compliment, then shoot you down. It was as if the more you tried to be nice to her, encourage her, the more contempt she had for you. To me, that’s just someone who REALLY hates herself and, by extension, others too.
Exactly, Tracey. It’s self-hatred. They do unto others what they long to do to themselves. The nearest they can get is to provoke it in others.
It’s a chilling dark hole that goes way down into a rat’s nest of other madnesses; which tunnel gets taken depends a lot on which kind of person is trying to flee the light of day. Let’s not talk right now about how I know this…
Good Lord, lady, what is your issue?
Congrats. You are missing the entire point of life.
Wait. My MIL didn’t have Thanksgiving in California!
OR DID SHE?
You were set up. Just as you were dealing with the trauma of one tortoise, they got another! And threw in Sourface Lasereyes Lemonpants for good measure!
Are you being taped for a reality show?
(Or was it just Lisa’s MIL at the wrong house?)
Lisa — ACK! Tell me your MIL is not like this! No no no no NO!
Kate P — I don’t know what happened on the tortoise front. They’re multiplying and it’s freaking me out.
Yes, she is JUST like that.
You’d think people with obvious* self-esteem issues, like your lady and my MIL, would soak up praise like a sponge. I mean, OBVIOUSLY, if you think you suck, then someone telling you DON’T suck would be good, right? Right?
But no. Because they are a sucking chest wound of need, no praise is good enough. So they beat away our meaningless, faint praise because why bother? It won’t be enough.
(*I have a doctorate in diagnosis from the University of Google with a minor in Intervention.)
If you’ve ever read “Lake Wobegon Days,” he has a story in there about this sort of thing. Here’s Garrison Keillor saying it better than I ever could:
For fear of what it might do to me, you never paid a compliment, and when other people did, you beat it away from me with a stick. “He certainly is looking nice and grown up.” He’d look a lot nicer if be did something about his skin. “That’s wonderful that he got that job.” Yeah, well, we’ll see bow long it lasts. You trained me so well, I now perform this service for myself. I deflect every kind word directed to me, and my denials are much more extravagant than the praise. “Good speech.” Oh, it was way too long, I didn’t know What I was talking about, I was just blathering on and on, I was glad when it was over. I do this under the impression that it is humility, a becoming quality in a person. Actually, I am starved for a good word, but after the long drought of my youth, no word is quite good enough. “Good” isn’t enough. Under this thin veneer of modesty lies a monster of greed. I drive away faint praise, beating my little chest, waiting to be named Sun-God, King of America, Idol of Millions, Bringer of Fire, The Great Haji, Thun-Dar The Boy Giant. I don’t want to, say, “Thanks, glad you liked it.” I want to say, “Rise, my people. Remove your faces from the carpet, stand, look me in the face.”
Here’s the link with the whole story. I highly recommend it — ’til hilarious.
(And that concludes the “Lisa Dominates
The Comments” portion of our day. Carry on.)
Wow. That is insane! Thank goodness it’s all over, right?
And I have a sneaky suspicion that your turtles can reproduce asexually…perhaps you can get that checked?
Lisa — /(*I have a doctorate in diagnosis from the University of Google with a minor in Intervention.)/
Hahahahahahaha! You crack me up! And you need to dominate the comments every day.
Also: Thanks for the Garrison Keillor bit. I love it. So insightful.
Diedra — Hi! Welcome! (I love your name.) Also, I know nothing about the sex life of tortoises. Do they really reproduce asexually? Little tramps.
Sourface Lemonpants would make a good name for a band (channeling Dave Barry).
It amazes me that even though you were trying to HELP her in her tirade against CFLs, she STILL disagreed with you.
As for me, I don’t see mercury in the environment as a big deal. Heck, I used to break thermometers and 9 volt batteries when I was a kid just so we could play with the mercury, and it never had any effect on me!…
…okay, maybe this DOES explain a lot of things about me.
JFH — I know. That’s part of what was so weird. I couldn’t figure out her politics, and yet, she seemed very political. Or perhaps more accurately, she seemed very POSITIONAL and it went like this: Whatever my position was, hers was the opposite.
A delightful little sprite she was, really.
I think there are people out there who just want to be angry. She sounds like one of them.