You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning

by Celia Rivenbark

  I never miss a Christmas Eve service at our church and get a kick out of the folks who only come once a year, survey the overflowing pews, and tell the ushers they “need four seats together” like they’re at a ballet recital or a Little League game.

  Because there are three services, the ushers often say to come back for the next one and arrive early to claim a pew.

  “That doesn’t work for us,” they’ll say, looking pained while consulting watches that cost more than my car. Then they lower eyeglasses and stare at the ushers as if this is a point that can be negotiated.

  This entitlement of the come-late set owes to the fact that way back in the day a long-dead ancestor who actually went to church every Sunday bought and paid for the stained-glass windows in the sanctuary. So there.

  As they greet another family they haven’t seen in fifty-two weeks, they are quick to put to good use that most practiced of all phrases that rich old Southern families love best.

  “Mutha and Fatha bought the children the most gawjus sweatahs for Crusmus.”

  They have stood in front of mirrors and practiced this phrase over and over until it is Southern old-money perfection. If it can be said without moving the lips even a smidgen, all the better.

  My guess is they didn’t order a single gift from the white-trash Christmas catalogs that overflow my mailbox every year. They are less Horchow and more dog chow with their offerings of battery-operated dogs and cats that breathe and snore.

  You can also order a vaguely disturbing Christmas tree ornament from your dead relative inscribed: “I love you all dearly, now don’t shed a tear, I’m spending my Christmas with Jesus this year.” Since one costs twenty dollars and two are only twenty-five dollars, you should probably wait for two relatives to die to take advantage of this one.

  These catalogs seem to be targeted to a very specific buyer: people obsessed with door drafts (plain and dachshund-shaped “draft dodgers” are sold); people with webbed feet (else, why so many “toe separators”?); people who obsess about the storage and laundering of their ball cap collection; people who prefer the look and feel of transparent plastic on their carpet, couches, and dining-room chairs; women obsessed with securing wayward bra straps and storing and transporting devilled eggs; people who are inexplicably proud to display many rolls of toilet paper on various metal scrolled thingies; people who love to remove dryer lint through various wands and suction aids, et cetera.

  You can even order a silver-toned toothpick holder engraved with your initials!

  There’s also a disproportionate number of afghans that insist on paying tribute to dogs, daughters-in-law, and even “like-a-sisters.” There are all sorts of touching sentiments stitched into these, but they’re a bit treacly for my taste. Call me cynical but I’d put this on the “like a sister” afghan just to see her flip out:

  You hang around the house a lot

  You stole from Uncle Jim

  When he was in the crazy house

  You claimed you were blood kin

  But when he’s gone to glory

  And that final bell shall chime

  Be advised you’re not a sister

  You ain’t gettin’ one thin dime.

  Harsh? I know. My stuff will so never get into the Cracker Barrel holiday gift shop.

  My favorite from the weirdo Christmas catalogs this year was the “Fanny Bank: Makes Saving Money a Real Gas!”

  Just put money into the plastic plumber’s butt crack and listen to six flatulent sound effects that get louder the more money you put in. Beats the hell out of the snoring fake dog, am I right?

  As I sat rather smugly in the pew we had staked out a good half hour before the service, we had time to review which Christmas movies we’d watch that night.

  Hubby’s a traditionalist and favors the black-and-white version of It’s a Wonderful Life, the dreary story of a do-gooder who gets depressed about his life, gets all likkered up, and wrecks his car.

  “That makes it sound terrible when you describe it like that,” says hubby, who begins to prattle on about the film’s message of kindness and faith and friendship. While he talks, I continue to enjoy watching Muffy and Buffy slowly realize that they ain’t getting in and will have to attend the dreaded “children’s service” where they will be pelted with Goldfish crackers and snot for most of the hour.

  Their children’s “gawjus Crusmus sweatahs” don’t stand a chance.

  Soph votes for the real classic of the holiday: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. I could watch Chevy Chase get hit by that sliding attic staircase a zillion times and never get tired of it. Simply. The. Best.

  Still, I’m feeling a little naughty, not nice, and I vote for Bad Santa, because Billy Bob Thornton, like Denzel, is just someone who never lets me down. I’ll pay to see them in anything just for the joy of watching them. Billy Bob is probably the most unlikely movie star imaginable—a wormy, undistinguished little man who just, somehow, has “it.” He could’ve probably made It’s a Wonderful Life a good movie.

  “Bad Santa! That’s rated R!” says hubby, while, in my peripheral vision (which is practically bionic by the way), I saw the “sweatah” set finally huffing out the door of the narthex, apparently having been told that a roll of twenties wouldn’t be enough to displace the sweet little widows in the front pew. Justice had been served; somewhere an angel was getting his wings.

  My friend Nan doesn’t cook often, but when she does, it’s always delish. When Duh and I were newlyweds, we rented an apartment on the third floor of a beach house smack-dab between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean. The North Carolina Holiday Flotilla, held on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving every year, cruised right by our front porch on the waterway and we drank this wassail and watched the parade in the company of all of our rowdy friends. As any beach Bubba will tell you, “It don’t get no better’n that.”

  Serve Nan’s wassail in those cute snowman mugs you probably paid too much for at Pottery Barn last year.

  NAN’S WASSAIL BOWL

  6 cups apple cider (not juice)

  1 large can pineapple juice

  2 tablespoons honey

  2 sticks cinnamon

  1 orange with cloves stuck in it

  Juice and grated zest of two lemons

  Dark rum to taste

  In a large pot over medium heat, combine everything but the rum and bring to a near boil. Keep on low and add the rum about a half hour before you’re serving, stirring to mix. Ahhhhhh.

  23

  Sex Every Night for a Year? How Do You Wrap That?

  As hubby and I approach our twentieth wedding anniversary this year, I’m grateful as hell that neither one of us suffers from a new ailment I just read about called hyperthymestic syndrome.

  Who that, you say?

  Well, picture this. What would it be like to remember every single event in your life, from the kind of cake you had at your third birthday party to how much you paid for a Grand Funk Railroad album? Life’s highs and lows never forgotten because of HS, which is derived from the Greek words, “hyper” meaning “big pain” and “thymesis” meaning “in the ass.”

  Or close to that.

  Only a few people in the world have HS but, luckily enough, one of them has just written a book and the other is the subject of one of those smart-person PBS-type documentaries that I usually try to avoid in favor of watching Celebrity Rehab 2 on VH1.

  I think it would be hard to be married to someone with HS.

  She: “Hon, you didn’t take the trash out.”

  He: “Yes, I did. Which reminds me. The first time I ever took the trash out was June 16, 1969. It was a sunny day with a thirty percent chance of rain. I ate an egg salad sandwich and Hawaiian Punch for lunch and rode bikes with Jimmy Moran from down the street until approximately 5:10 P.M.”

  She: “Fascinating. What do you think we should have for dinner tonight?”

  He: “Hmmm. How ’bout you make the dinner you made on N
ovember 3, 2002?”

  She: “A little help?”

  He: “Duhhh. Marinated lamb shanks and buttered couscous, you silly woman. I swear, sometimes I think you’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached to your shoulders.”

  She: “I was just thinking how funny you’d look with your head not attached to your shoulders. Hahahahahaha!”

  He: “What?”

  She: “Nothing.”

  With HS, you’d never have an excuse for forgetting special occasions.

  He: “Are you kidding? Today’s our anniversary?”

  She: “Lemme get this straight. You can remember the day in seventh grade when you bought new shoelaces for your gym shoes and you can’t remember the most important day of your life?”

  He: “Well, they were very nice shoelaces, and a steal at sixty-nine cents a pair and with tax, that made it . . .”

  I hate to admit it, but if I had HS, I’d use my powers for evil.

  Me: “You said you’d buy me one of those diamond necklaces with the yesterday, today, and tomorrow diamonds on it for our twentieth anniversary.”

  Duh: “When did I say that?”

  Me: “March 20, 1992, and don’t even argue with me about it or I will be forced to recall a certain August 16, 2004.”

  Duh: “I have no idea what happened that day.”

  Me: “That was the day that you said that, yes, as a matter of fact, my Capri pants did make me look fat.”

  Duh: (silent)

  Me: “Psych! No you didn’t! You are so lame!”

  Having HS would kinda blow. You’d never be able to forget the tragic stuff in life: where you were when the Challenger blew up or when you learned that Denise Richards was going to star in her own reality show, for instance.

  And you’d remember every bad decision (the vintage Audi), every disappointment (the last Seinfeld episode), every time you gave your heart to another only to realize they didn’t even know you were alive (I’m talking to you, Mr. Jimmy Smits), every Low Moment in Parenting (Benadryl before Target trip equals peaceful shopping experience).

  I had some more examples, but I forget ’em.

  With the twentieth anniversary approaching, I’m casting about for unique gift ideas for hubby. The truth is, I love him madly and resent it just a little when he jokes that, if he dies first, I’ll bring a date to the funeral.

  “That’s a terrible thing to say,” I said, looking wounded. “It’s not like I could get anybody good on such short notice, anyway.”

  In honor of our twentieth year, Duh has decided to grow a beard. This is the closest a man gets to having a pregnant stomach touched by strangers because everyone likes to touch a new beard, unless it’s Michael Moore’s, bless his heart. (And have you seen that creepy pregnant man? He has a beard and a pregnant belly so how do you know which to touch first?)

  Everybody feels the need to comment on a new beard.

  His mama: “Oh, son, you look just like Jesus himself with that beard.”

  His boss: “The guy with the cardboard ‘will work for weed’ sign down at the underpass.”

  The car salesman: “Oh, Jesus, definitely Jesus. With just a touch of Abraham Lincoln thrown in. Sir.”

  Me: “Tom Hanks in Cast Away right when he lost his mind and started yakking with a volleyball. At least I think it was a volleyball. It might’ve been a soccer ball. It was, like, some sort of sports thing and he made a face on it with his own blood. No, wait. Maybe it was fish blood. Hey! Did you take the garbage out tonight? No? Who do you think you are? You’re kidding. No, only your mama thinks that. OK, and the car salesman.”

  Looking for something more creative than the usual tool, book, CD, clothes, et cetera that I buy hubby for special occasions, I came across a story about what a Charlotte, North Carolina, woman did to mark her husband’s fortieth birthday.

  Charla Muller, mom of two and certified crazy person, told her husband that she would make love to him every day for one whole year. No matter what. No excuses.

  Great. I’d finally decided to give the newly bearded hubby the DeWalt eighteen-volt cordless hammer drill with six-tool capacity, but now that seemed unspeakably unoriginal thanks to Charla.

  Way to go, girlfriend. Thanks to all the publicity your big idea got, I’ll probably have to throw in the radio-charger gizmo, too.

  Duh read the article about Charla Muller one morning over breakfast. Until then, we were both perfectly happy to stick to the loving and emotionally committed plan to make sure that, at the very least, we’d do it on national holidays. This “Don’t go knockin’ if, uh, the banks are closed” system has become so well-known that my gal pals have actually apologized for calling after they realize, too late, that it’s Presidents’ Day.

  But this? This? Every day for an entire year? Charla said in a newspaper interview that by the ninth month she’d hit “the proverbial wall.”

  “I felt like beating myself over the head with the nearest newspaper or maybe a spatula,” she told a reporter.

  Oh, girl, stop beating yourself up. Allow me to do that. Now, where did I put that cinder block?

  Even nutty Dr. Oz says you should have sex about two hundred times a year. But then, he’s always running off at the mouth about something that I think he just makes up in his head right before he goes on the air. Like the time he said on Oprah that your pee should be clear enough to read through (yuck) or that the perfect poo is shaped like an S (double yuck) and Oprah is, like, all excited, going “Nailed it!!!” (triple yuck, double word score, and Yahtzee!).

  Charla said that she wanted to pick a gift that would be so special that her husband would never have to pause and wrack his brain to remember what she gave him for his fortieth.

  If he ever does, she has my permission to, as we say in the South, “go upside his head.”

  Can you imagine him ever saying: “Honeypie, was it my fortieth birthday when I got mooney-gooney every day for a full year or was that the year you and the kids gave me the stainless-steel turkey smoker?”

  When I first read about Charla’s plan, I figured she was just desperate to find a gift that wouldn’t have to be exchanged. I mean, one hopes.

  There’s no chance of regifting 365 nights of sex. It’s not like he’s going to say, “Hon, don’t take this personally, but I think I’m just gonna give this to Tad in accounting; he’s been a little depressed lately. . . .”

  In a time when more and more married couples joke that they’ve been reduced to “hallway sex” (that’s when you pass in the hall and she says “F-you” and he says “F-you” back), perhaps Charla’s idea isn’t all that terrible.

  Then again, Omaha steaks are always nice.

  There are tons of recipes for better-than-sex cake out there and most of them involve chocolate. My Duh prefers fruity spice cakes, so this has become the BTS cake of choice at our house.

  BETTER-THAN-SEX-365-NIGHTS CAKE

  3 cups flour

  1 teaspoon soda

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 cups sugar

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  3 eggs

  ¾ cup oil

  1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

  8 ounces pineapple (with juice)

  1 cup pecans

  1¾ cups mashed bananas

  Combine flour, soda, salt, sugar, and cinnamon. Add eggs, oil, and vanilla. Stir ’til moist. Do not beat! Stir in pineapple and juice, pecans, and mashed bananas.

  Pour batter into three 8-inch cake pans that have been greased and floured. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

  Frost layers when cool with this Nutty Cream Cheese Frosting: Beat together ’til fluffy one stick butter and 8 ounces cream cheese. Add a box of confectioner’s sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and half a cup of chopped pecans, and mix ’til it’s good and spreadable.

  24

  Japanese Moms, Meet Most Honorable Uncrustables

  The army is advancing, headed toward my street. From the looks of it, they’ll be here in T-minus two minutes, spr
eading out, covering the left flank (Mrs. Hoolihan’s yard) and the right (Mr. Ledbetter’s). I’m busted. They’ve already seen me, water hose in hand, trying to coax a few last-minute blooms out of the periwinkle before the first frost.

  At this point, the only way I can avoid the Cub Scouts selling popcorn to the east and the chorus students (including my own Princess!) peddling catalogs for everything from chocolate turtles to Newsweek to looks-sorta-like-silver necklaces to the west, is to lay down in the shrubbery and pretend to be dead.

  Even then, the persistent school/scout sales team, none over five feet tall, will probably poke at my body just to make sure.

  Can I really stand the chubby Cub Scout from down the street, telling others, “Snap! She’s not even cold yet; wish we’d gotten here a few minutes sooner. From the size of her, I’d guess she was good for at least a coupla pounds of coconut almond treasures.”

  Would the Princess look dejected and only muster a lame “She was alive when she made my lunch three hours ago”?

  The scouts are selling popcorn and candy in tins roughly the size of a doghouse. Who needs that?

  A flyer left in my door earlier in the day advised, “It’s time to order your holiday popcorn!” I don’t get the connection. The wise men brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh, not butter toffee, confetti, and “bedda cheddar.”

  Whatever. I can easily say no to strangers, even ones in uniform. And I can even say no to my mom friends who have torpedoed more than a few girls’ nights out by covering the table—and displacing my yummy pear martini in the process—with an array of overpriced gift-wrap samples for their kids’ school fund-raiser.

  But saying no to the Princess is, naturally, much harder.

  There are four catalogs to choose from, she chirps while fanning them out on the coffee table one night.

  “Isn’t-it-time-you-said-yes!-to-aromatic-oils” she begins in a stilted monotone, and I hold up my hand to stop her before she can add, “sir or madam.”