Thankstaking Day

It's my fault. Mine and [My Attorney]'s. We had to go see Rah at Doctor Funacular's

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="283" caption="Music is my life, man."][/caption]

University for Advanced Sneering and Home for Wayward Girls in North Carolina. Like all highly intelligent people, we tried to buy plane tickets the day before we left—you know, the day before Thanksgiving—when the tickets were the cost of a small house in Chicago made entirely of Adamantium. Instead, we drove.

I drove.

And drove. And drove. And. . .where the hell is North Carolina anyway?  I visited every state that seceded and still couldn't find it. Only after we'd gotten a speeding ticket and paid bridge tolls exceeding the GNP of Bolivia did we finally enter the magical world of North Carolina.

As a former Alabamian, I am reluctant to cast aspirations on those with the good sense to be born in the south, but seriously, everyone in North Carolina, West Virginia, and Kentucky, allow me to introduce you to the Garlingtonian Theory of  Motion: The Faster You Go, the Sooner I Get There!

I attempted to explain this to West Virginia but they couldn't hear me over the sound of their state trooper writing me a ticket for going 14 miles an hour over the speed limit. Kudos to Officer Glare for only writing 69 on the ticket, thus avoiding a mountain of paper work and putting me in jail with all the people who stopped at any rest stop within 50 miles of Point Pleasant while displaying the egregious audacity of declining their expensive handcrafted native Mothman DVDs.

It only took us 342 hours of tailgating to get there and back. Had a wonderful time. More on that later. We arrived back in Chicago to find our son, Squatch, had decided to make a controversial decision to turn our house into a participatory exhibit on the cave-keeping habits of unmarried neanderthals.

We were careful to let him know he was being left at home at the tender age of 14 because he had proven his remarkable maturity in the past. We should have been more specific about a few things. The house was  . . . Askew? Tilted? Pukey? Phlegmatic? Words fail me.

But bulleted lists do not:

• Feed the dogs




• Every. Day.




• When we say feed the dogs, we mean the cat too.




• But not on the stairs and maybe throw the cans away. And the lids. Oh my God I just threw up.




• Let the dogs out to pee.




• Every. Day.




• Check the cat sand.




• But remember to leave the door to the bathroom open or the cat will relieve himself on my favorite—JESUS OH MY GOD!




• If the dogs pee in the house, please clean it up.




• As soon as you see i—  At least the same d— Before we get h—Sweet Jesus!




• Please go to school.




• Every. Day.




• Eat the food we left for you.




• A little at a time. Not all in the first hour.




• Here's $100 for emergencies.




• Call of Duty Three is not an emergency.