Thanks be to ye, oh Jesus sandal

My mother had the terribly annoying habit of wanting to ready the house before company arrived.  You know, dusting, cleaning the floors, scrubbing the toilet and a general round of top notch straightening.  A few days before one particular Thanksgiving, she decided to re-do the entire kitchen.  This involved removing wall paper from the wall, sanding, painting ceilings and walls; tasks that a normal person might not undertake two days before expecting a house full of guests.  Amazingly, she accomplished all of this in time for our holiday company, minus returning the fan blades to the ceiling fan above the kitchen table.  This is where me, my brother and, most importantly, my father came in.

From the bathroom, where I was busy praying to the porcelain god (after having spent most of the previous night celebrating Thanksgiving Eve), I heard my mother beckoning.  I emerged, bleary-eyed and attempting to reacquaint my tongue with inside of my mouth (it seemed to weigh fifty pounds and to be in need of a good shave) to find my mother motioning to the kitchen table and the fan blades lying atop it.  As I understood, I was to climb on table and replace the blades.  Shakily, I crawled on the table and pressed my sweaty cheeks upon it before attempting a vertical stance.  Once I steadied myself, I placed one blade in its slot and tightened the screws.  The weight of the blade caused the entire fan to move slowly in a circular fashion (as fans are known to do); you can imagine that this is not exactly the situation someone with a fifty pound tongue and a vise around their brain wants to find themselves in.  Moving faster than someone in my condition should be able, I jumped from the table top, ran into the bathroom and remained there for unaccountable amounts of time.  It's at this point that my brother made his appearance and my mother asked him to resume the job I'd started.  While he was too young to drink excessive amounts of anything but Mountain Dew, my brother soon found himself also overcome by the dizziness and nausea of the slow moving fan blade.  Two down.

Completely disgusted, my mother continued preparing our Thanksgiving feast all the while cursing and muttering about the utter uselessness of her children.  It is here that my father made his appearance, pretending that he had come to see what the fuss was all about when we all know he had come into the kitchen searching for beer and snacks.  She quickly brought him up to speed on the situation, at which point he offered to hop up on the table himself and get the whole damned thing done.  It should be mentioned here that my father was not a small man - neither in stature or weight.  My mother scoffed at the idea and continued her cooking.  Mere moments passed and I swear I heard the low whine of protest from the hardware that held together the solid wood kitchen table followed by what I imagined to be the sound of a sonic boom.  The next sound was that of a wounded animal; low moaning and whimpering. One never imagines the day will come when they will find their father lying amidst the rubble of the kitchen table while his Birkenstocks sit neatly by bearing witness (as any good Jesus sandal would); but this is exactly what I found when I entered the kitchen, my hangover pushed aside out of curiosity.  My mother was standing by, spoon in hand, with a look of equal parts fascination and irritation.  "I told you you couldn't get up there" she said as she turned back to the stovetop.

We managed to get my father into the living room and clean up his feet which were cut up and bleeding.  After the moaning subsided, we laughed our asses off.  We wondered aloud what would possess such an intelligent man, of his size, to attempt to stand on the kitchen table.  In fact, tears were streaming down our faces as we watched him hobble into the kitchen to fix the table before company arrived.  Yep, my mother insisted that the table be fixed, as soon as his feet were tightly bandaged and could hold him up.  He assessed the damage and decided that the only thing that saved him were his Jesus sandals. After some considerable time, and the utilization of power tools, all was well by the time our guests arrived - if well means that there are screws sticking about an inch out of the top of your kitchen table while one lone fan blade remains in constant slow motion (not unlike the Eternal Flame).

We had obtained some semblance of normalcy as a family unit and promised my father we would not mention his earlier lapse in judgement, his ensuing injuries, nor his wonder at the saving properties of his sandals(we managed to keep these promises until Christmas).  Shortly after our company had arrived, my mother went to check on the bird and side dishes only to find that the oven had quit working at some point, and that dinner was no where near done.  Another person might have considered the day completely ruined and gone back to bed at this point, but not my mother.  She promptly put the turkey into the microwave and refreshed the drinks and snacks for everyone.  It is here she proves that she is unflappable: one fan blade spinning around in a mocking fashion, a kitchen table a little worse for the wear, children who have proved useless and an underdone bird will not put a damper on her day.  We ate dinner somewhere before bedtime and chuckled to ourselves on this day of thanks.  It is interesting to note that I don't believe that those blades were ever returned to the fan as no one was ever brave enough to attempt replacing them again.

This weeks tip:
My mother's kitchen savvy saved her meal that day.  The use of the microwave oven was genius on my mother's part and the turkey emerged from it fully cooked and quite tasty.  Whenever my mother has had to buy a new microwave in subsequent years, she has made sure that they were big enough to accommodate a turkey, because as she says "You never know".  In order to fully cook a turkey in the microwave, it is highly recommended that you place the bird breast side down for juiciness purposes.  The turkey can be cooked at full power for six minutes per pound.  A twenty to twenty-five pound turkey should be at approximately 180 degrees (farenheit) internal temperature when fully cooked; this can be measured with a meat thermometer, but make sure not to touch bone when you put thermometer in as it will give you an inaccurate reading.