Turkey malarky (subtitle: thank god this week is over)

OK.  OK.  I'll admit it.  I have been known to dress-up on occasion.

So, it only seemed fitting that - on my first Thanksgiving as an American - I should mark such an auspicious event in an appropriately costumed manner (I guess it depends on your definition of the word "appropriate" I suppose, but there you have it).  

I was also in need of a bit of fun, given the trying nature of the last couple of weeks.  You know they say that "Things Come In Threes" (buses, trains, deaths, accidents - you know, cheerful stuff like that (its never winning lottery tickets, boyfriends or free chocolate, is it now?).  Well, I just had a couple of weeks where things were starting to come in multiples of threes!   Now, this blog is generally dedicated to light-hearted tomfoolery and mischief, so I wont bore you overly with the details (OK - maybe just a bit).  But suffice it to say that being greeting by several panicked phone calls and emails about a water leak in your apartment is not the ideal greeting to be met with, upon landing at JFK for a week's business trip in NYC.

Yep, some random (albeit obviously rather important) valve-type thingy on my loo upstairs knackered, cascading water throughout my apartment and wreaking all kinds of carnage.  Fortunately Anne (who's staying with me at the moment) was at home and was able to contain the damage quickly and call the HOA for the clean-up crew to come in straight away and start to mop up the mess.  Even still, its insane how much damage even a little bit of water can do.  As i write this, 2 weeks later, my wooden floors are still ripped up exposing the concrete, the skirting boards are off, kitchen cupboards taken off the walls, holes drilled in the kitchen ceiling, and light fixtures not working.  But at least my apartment is now dry again - assisted by 6 enormous blowers and dehumidifiers that were installed in my apartment for over a week! This is the scene I came home to that Friday night, after a long, hard week in NYC:

Recreating the TARDIS in my kitchen in honor
 of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary.

Not pictured: THE IMMENSE NOISE!!

Not the most relaxing sight - or sound to behold - but I was grateful that it didnt cause more damage than it did.  It could have been far, far worse.

So, that was one thing.  The next on the shit list was that I discovered that the little lump that had been innocently chilling out behind Dylan's ear for the last 6 months had suddenly gone all yukky looking, confirming my suspicion that Something Wasn't Quite Right.  I know I talk a good game about how - as soon as anything starts to go wrong with the boys, them getting sick and costing me a fortune in vets bills that it'll be a bucket of water and a brick - but that's just b-s.  Dylan's my boy and he needed checking out, so a call to the vet to who does house calls it was, then.  He rocked up the next day, was great with him and gave him a thorough exam and took several cytology samples to send to the lab for diagnosis.  He also gave both of them a rabies vaccine and microchipped them (sensible in case of a big earthquake and they get loose - though giving them fins and snorkels would probably be more useful).  I got the results back the next day and, yes, its a mast cell tumor and "excision is recommended".  So, to add to the $645 that little visit cost me, its a trip to the Pet Hospital tomorrow to go and see Dr Watts (no, not the one from Eastenders), a surgeon who's apparently the best in the city for removing those tumors.   So, fingers crossed for poor little Dylan tomorrow - the vet will confirm the best course of action to take.  Izzie already has his eyes crossed for him.  And my checkbook already has CPR on standby for the shock it no doubt will suffer.

So if leaks and pet cancer weren't enough, my dishwasher decided to add itself to my Shitstorm Pity Party and go and break its ass on me.  I had the dishwasher engineer guy around yesterday and that will cost me around $300-400 to fix.  Awesome.  Paper plates til then, then...

And FINALLY... just after I'd got the email with Dylan's diagnosis, I opened my mail to discover two cards - one credit, one debit - from Target.  Strange, I thought.  I didn't request a credit card.  I wonder if this is some elaborate marketing ploy by those dastardly advertising types your mother always warns you about.... (Mumsie - I should have listened!)

So i called Target.  To find out that - those credit cards were real.  And that someone had stolen my social security number to open them up with.  Even more scary was that someone had also - god knows how - managed to get a blank check of mine and had linked the debit card directly to my checking account.  And upon logging into my bank account - there indeed were two debits from Target, right there.  Effing brilliant.  The final cherry on my overly abundantly iced turdcake - some douche was now running around with my SSN, my checking account was no longer secure and potentially playing all kinds of havoc with my credit rating.  

That's a mighty fine plate of food.

Cue hours spent on the phone with banks, credit card companies, the FTC, Experian.  You name it.  It is quite incredible just how disruptive having to mop this all up is - and, given I found out at 3pm the day before the Thanksgiving holiday - I did as much as I could before the long weekend but I still have to file a police report, visit the social security office to tell them and file an internet crimes compliant.  At least I went to the bank on Friday and opened a new checking account.  That means, though, that I have to re-do everything from scratch - relink my Paypal account, Ebay, Amazon, all the automated debits - basically everything you've spent the last 10 years accumulating and making your financial life easy with.  I even have to call the IRS to tell them, so some m'fer doesnt try and file for my tax return and claim my refund using my SSN.

All this came on top of a rather frustrating week at work, so its fair to say that - by Thanksgiving Thursday itself - a little light costumery was well and truly called for.  

I had the absolute pleasure of spending Thanksgiving dinner at Lori's place, with my American Mom and Pop, Cheri and Greg, and it was a fabulous evening.  The food was excellent, the company fabulous and a wonderful time was had by all.   

Greg, Anne and some very welcome bubbles!

Lori perfecting her pour...

But wait!  Who on earth was this special guest who also turned up to dinner??

Could that be - a giant Cooked Turkey??

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Why, yes.  Yes, it was.  Well - come on in, then, Mystery Giant Turkey - pull up a perch and dig on in. There's plenty to go around.

As cluck would have it, Mystery Guest Turkey was a fabulously enthusiastic cannibal and certainly enjoyed a heaping plateful of similarly cooked brethren, also not letting the absence of anything above the neck or individually movable digits from preventing the clutching (no pun intended) of a lovely glass of champagne.  At least the bubbles weren't going to go to MGT's head.

Absolutely stuffed.  Basted, not wasted.

But WAIT!  In all the excitement, Sarah seemed to have Mysteriously Disappeared.  And - was it just co-incidence that Mystery Guest Turkey's grip on its champagne flute was as vice-like as Sarah's has been known to be?

Could it be?  Really?  Slowly (really, it was quite tricky to get in and out of), the identity of our mystery dinner guest was revealed to be.....

Surprise!!

YES!  IT'S ME!!!  SURPRISE!!!!  

And so it came to pass that the Legend of The Giant Turkey of Pleasant Hill was forged and it was a night that no-one who was present shall forget easily.  Especially the neighbor's kids downstairs, one of whom is probably in therapy as we speak, the other a newly avowed vegetarian.   But, more, much more than that - it was a damn great big pile of fun and a fitting antidote to a crummy two weeks.  Happy Thanksgiving indeed - and thank God that week is over!!