I've just been notified that my wife has invited my elderly, eccentric mom to T Day this year. I immediately assigned each family member the task of picking up no less than 100 wadded up and randomly discarded paper towels by my mom. I figure that way we have a fighting chance of not ending up on the show Hoarders by the time she leaves.
Fuck me, I still have PTSD from her last visit. We had an Island of Misfit Toys Thanksgiving, single people with no local family, people who had to work and couldn't travel. Everyone had a dish they would work on. I got the bird, wife got whatever, and my mom? She got the mashed potatoes.
In the Universe's timeline of Thanksgiving food, mashed potatoes would be the length of time modern man has existed, compared to baking pies (Jurassic period), and the actual turkey itself (the Big Bang). But did that ever dawn on mom? Nope. As soon as the potatoes were ready she placed them on the dining table sat down, and announced "Mashed Potatoes are ready!"
Everyone working their ass off in the kitchen kind of looked at each other with a WTF? Being her son, I was not surprised. So we keep cooking, working toward a common goal of feeding everyone at an appropriate time. Once more: "Did y'all hear, MASHED POTATOES ARE READY!"
ME: Yeah mom, we heard, but we aren't ready with everything else.
Ten minutes go by.
Mom: Well hell, I'm just going to start with the mashed potatoes then.
Me: (a notch just below yelling) Jesus Christ can't you see we are all working our asses off here! We'll be there when everything is done!
Well that did it. She crossed her arms around her chest and sulked until the food came out. Everyone got to eating, drinking, laughing - except mom. She decided to get back at me with completey inappropriate passive aggressive comments. Thing like "Mach 1 used to take his diaper off and twirl it around his head like a lasso. He always was an exhibitionist, hope you grew out of that!" and then "Remember that time the cops caught you and your friends drinking Boone's Farm behind the Circle K? I almost had to send you to military school!"
Goddamn embarrassing. Yeah, no one else is going to be invited this year, just the immediate family.