Happy (Dead) Turkey Day

Today is the day that so many Americans look forward to. It is also the day that so many turkeys say goodbye to life on the farm and end up on a platter next to some Stove Top stuffing, English Pea Salad and cranberry sauce out of a can. It's Thanksgiving, y'all so unbutton the top of your pants and get ready to give thanks by eating way too much fucking food. This year I am not working which is a Christmas miracle four weeks early. Usually I am serving in the home of someone who is willing to pay me $75 an hour to warm up the dinner they ordered from Whole Foods, but not this year. I said "no thanks " just as quickly as I do when someone offers me a virgin pina colada, a verbal tip or a serving of vegetables.

I did get an offer to work a Thanksgiving dinner this year in the home of none other than Joan Rivers. Joan and I go way back; we shared an elevator in 1995. I thought about taking the gig for a quick second sensing it could be a great blog post with some even better pictures, but then saw that it required a full tuxedo and deleted that shit from my email. I don't do full tuxedo jobs anymore. Besides, what if I showed up and I had to talk to Melissa Rivers? I wouldn't have been able to handle the banality of it all and my face may have exploded and then upon seeing my eyelids plastered on her wall, Joan would then peel them off, stick them in a Ziplock baggie and call her plastic surgeon for an emergency eye lift. Awkward and not my idea of a good Thanksgiving. Instead, I got up to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I was in the parade a few years ago, so I have a special place in my heart for it. It was one of the finest moments in my acting career, walking down Broadway in a trash can costume for the New York City Department of Sanitation. That's me in the green can:



Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there. Enjoy your day and carry on your traditions. And this will be the third year that I offer my very own Bitchy Waiter tradition of this video of Paula Deen trying to catch a ham with her mouth and failing. I think the reason she was unable to snatch that ham with her teeths is because she had on too much of her butter flavored lip balm and it slipped right out her grasp. Oh, Paula. I still love you. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!






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Frazzled But Happy Stay-at-Home Mom

Seeing that it is Saturday, and no one reads this shit on the weekend, I shall continue with the adventures of The Frazzled but Happy Stay-at-Home Mom:

Oh my goodness gracious, dear readers, I am exhausted. Is it just me or does Thanksgiving sap away your energy too? I got up on Turkey Day (gobble gobble) at 4:00 AM because I had so many things to do. All of it cooking! I made a turkey but I also baked a ham, made a pot roast and created my first ever Tofurkey Meatloaf because we had so many people come over and I wanted everyone to have their choice of food to give thanks over. Of course my husband was there and the kiddos, but we also had 12 guests. That made for 16 people. Whew! We were going to have my parents over as well as my sister and her family but my sweet husband had the best idea ever. He wanted to have something called an "Orphan Thanksgiving" which shows you how caring and sweet that darling precious man of mine is. An Orphan Thanksgiving is when you extend an invitiation to anyone else who may not have someplace else to go for Thanksgiving. Not actual orphans I suppose, but just people who don't have any family nearby. Since we have place settings for 16, we decided that we could invite a dozen people. I was going to invite the homeless man who washes the windows at the church, but my dear sweet husband filled up those slots so quickly that I had to rescind my invite to Wally the Window Washer. I also wanted to invite our neighbor who lost her husband three weeks ago, but Hubby was insistent that his guests were more in need. So his guest list is what we had.

All twelve of the young girls he invited were so sweet. Various women from his job and his volunteer work and they were all very gracious. Dinner was set for 3:00, so from the time I got up, I had eleven hours to get everything ready. It was a challenge, because two of the girls had a gluten allergy, four were vegetarian one was vegan and eleven of them were "watching their weight." One girl was fine with anything I served and seemed a bit depressed the whole day. I noticed that she kept giving my hubby an odd look, so she must be very sad that she can't be with her family at this time of year. I don't know why any of them needed to watch their figure because all of them were about a size 2 and pretty as a picture. They all loved my cooking. And you know how they say that the tryptophan in turkey makes you sleepy? It does! Within minutes of finishing dinner, all of the girls needed a nap right away. Some of them hadn't even had turkey so it must have been contagious, LOL. They all went down to the basement into my husband's office for a nap and hubby even joined them while I cleaned up the dishes. (I do wish he would give me a key to his office so I could clean it once in a while. Who knows how much dust is in there and I can't believe the company might think I'm not a good housekeeper!) The 13 of them stayed in there for two and a half hours sleeping off dinner. One girl came up to get some Gatorade because she said the Tofurkey meatloaf made her thirsty, but she hurried right back in as soon as she was finished. Now before you think I am completely naive, let me say something: I know they weren't sleeping in there. I heard one of them say something about new underwear so I am pretty sure that my husband was enlisting their help for my Christmas present. He knows that the best way to find out what a woman wants for a gift is to ask another woman, so I let him stay in there and devise the perfect plan for his Christmas shopping. Last year, the poor dear was so busy with work, he only had time to make me a handmade gift certificate good for one free kiss whenever I wanted it. (I still have it, Hubby. LOL!!)

Well, readers, I must go. I did all my Christmas shopping yesterday and I am ready to start wrapping gifts. I love the holidays almost as much as I love my Hubby and kids. LOL.



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Traditions of Thanksgiving

I got up early today to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade because it is a fine tradition that must be upheld. Plus, I feel close to the event since I walked in the parade a few years ago when I was playing one of my finest roles ever, trash can:



Around the country, the smell of turkey and dressing is wafting through the air and mouths are watering for the first bite of pumpkin pie. Families are gathering around the table in anticipation of giving thanks and stuffing themselves with food until they can no longer move. Here in my house, the only food aroma that is happening is that of the Crunchy Peanut Butter Cliff bar that I bought for myself to serve as a snack when I go to work. I was scheduled to work at the new job seeing that they had about 525,600 reservations, but things changed. I will now be serving in the home of some rich folks on the Upper West Side. I say rich because if they can afford to live on the Upper West Side and they can spend money to have someone like me come in and be their maid for five hours, then they must have money to burn. I don't mind. The expected tip for something like that is about a hundred bucks and the entire thing will go into my pocket. There will be no busser, food runner, host, barista, bartender or barback to split it with leaving me only $35. It will be all mine. When you factor in the hourly wage, it makes for a keen day of earning indeed. Basically I will be warming up their food, putting it on serving plates and then cleaning up afterwards. It's very glamorous. Actually, I don't mind at all. When the family drama starts happening and Aunt Judy has too much wine and gets all handsy with her niece's boyfriend, I can turn a blind eye and just go wash a plate.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there. Enjoy your day and carry on your traditions. And there is one more tradition that I must acknowledge. It is a new one that started last year. It's the one where you throw a big ass frozen ham into the face of Paula Deen. It's a damn good tradition. Every time I watch the video, it brings a smile to my face. I am also utterly surprised that Paula didn't just catch that ham with her teeth in mid air and swallow it whole. Watch the video and give thanks. Happy Thanksgiving.

The Seasons Turn

Today in New York City there is a definite feeling of fall floating in the air. The gray skies and drizzle accompanied with the cooler temperatures tells me that autumn is right around the corner which means that winter is right behind. I hate winter. All of those people who say they like freezing their tits off make me want to snap. They're always like, "oh, but then you get to wear your sweaters and cute coats." Sorry. Wearing a cute sweater is not enough for me to embrace the frigid bitch known as winter. My point is, that once fall is here there is another season that makes its presence known: catering season. Time to pull the used tuxedo out of the closet and scrape off the honey mustard from the last party, because I will be needing to put that shit on and pass around hor d' ourves too soon. Tis the season for a cater waiter.

Every Thanksgiving, I work for a family in Westchester. Or Long Island. I dunno where it is really, I just get on the train they tell me to and then they pick me up at the station. I have done it for three years and they consider me "part of the family." I guess they are referring to that one family member who stays in the kitchen all day and serves their food, washes their dishes and takes out their garbage. What family member is that anyway? Grandma the Housekeeper maybe? Uncle Charlie the Slave perhaps? Anyhoo, that's me. Last time I was there someone brought their friend for dinner and the guy started making small talk with me in the kitchen. "So how are you? Where do you live? What do you do?" I told him I was an actor and I do catering and stuff and this year I got to work on Thanksgiving. He was all, "you have to work today? That sucks. When? After dinner?" I realized he had no clue I was the hired help. It finally dawned on him when I pulled my apron out of my bag, tied it around my waist and opened up a can of cranberry sauce. He was embarrassed. And didn't talk to "the help" anymore.

The year before I was washing all the dishes (by hand, because that's how I roll) when I realized I was familiar with the pattern on the dinnerware. I turned it over and recognized the name of the potter who makes them. It was the same lady that I work for twice a year at the New York International Gift Show when she sells her pieces to stores all over the country. Yes, I had sold these very dishes at one job and here I was washing them at another. It was a perfect circle of subservience. The lady of the house couldn't believe that I knew the lady who had made her dishes. I couldn't believe that the universe had made it so crystal clear that I was having a shitty Thanksgiving. Thirteen more weeks until Turkey Day. Gobble gobble, mother fuckers. Life is funny, isn't it? So fucking funny.


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Oh, My Nose!

Y'all, I only have one more Thanksgiving post and then I promise I am finished. Thanksgiving was four days ago and by now we are all sick of turkey sandwiches, turkey pot pie, turkey and eggs, turkey soup and any other way you tried to eat that tired leftover fucking bird. But I think I found a new Thanksgiving tradition that I shall look forward to each and every year. From the cornucopia of traditions we find marshmallows on sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce slices that came out of a can, but I proudly suggest this new rite that we shall do the fourth Thursday of November from now on: throw a big fucking ham into Paula Deen's face. You have probably already seen the video and loved it like I have. You are probably also wondering what the hell this has to do with the Bitchy waiter. Well, honestly, not much. Other than there was food involved. And they were serving it. I guess, Paula was at a food shelter dolling out about a million pounds of meat that she was donating. They were having some kind of ham tossing party when one rogue (Sarah Palin) ham went AWOL up against Paula Deen's nose. Luckily for Paula, her face was covered in butter and grease from the Lard and Sausage biscuits she had inhaled for breakfast and the ham gently slid right off of her face. I'm surprised she didn't just catch that ham in her mouth and eat it like my dog does when I throw him a piece of Boar's Head. Thankfully, Paula was not seriously injured. She put a raw steak on her nose to maintain the swelling but she accidentally ate the steak and then whipped up a batch of peanut butter, butter and bacon bars. She laughed the incident off as pigs across America high-fived one another. The rogue (Sarah Palin) ham has not been seen since the encounter and it is assumed that it went into hiding and is shopping around a book deal.

My Brady Bunch obsession peeks out yet again as the whole pig in the face is completely reminiscent of the time Marcia Brady was hit in the nose with a football (also known as a "pigskin"). Marcia and Paula should totally get together and discuss what it feels like to have the shit knocked out of them by a piece of meat. Thanksgiving is officially over for me.

click here to see Paula Deen get hit in the face

click here to see Marcia Brady get hit in the face