Five Reasons to Celebrate Thanksgiving Abroad

As some of you know, this year we decided to have ourselves a little adventure this Thanksgiving. We like to call it the Great Thanksgivingukkah, Catalonia-style.

Many people drive for hours to see their family, or brave the airports to get stuck at snow-filled connections, just to see their family for a few hours.  This is, as many like to say, par for the course.

Thus, we decided what's a few hours of flying? It was time to celebrate the holiday outside the country!!!  Close your eyes, nap for a few hours and then.....hola, Barcelona!  See how easy that was?

Now, we knew Thanksgiving outside of the U.S. would have its benefits, but in hindsight they were even greater than anticipated.  So behold, our top 5 reasons to leave the country on Thanksgiving!

1) It's the cheapest time to see Europe.  For reals.

2) If you're visiting friends, you can still have Thanksgiving dinner!  We may have been thousands of miles away from home, but we were not without our turkey and marshmallow covered sweet potatoes.

mmm .... malvaviscos rosa y blanco

3) Better wine while you eat, and no football.  You can actually converse with the other guests without having them fall asleep on you!

4) Airports are packed with people flying within the 50 states - international flights? Not so much.  You'd never know we were flying on a holiday weekend!

5) And perhaps the best part of traveling abroad on Thanksgiving: missing Black Friday!  Instead of fighting with strangers in the name of consumerism, we spent our day visiting gorgeous architecture, taking a walking tour of a new city, learning some Spanish history, drinking fabulous coffee, and learning about fun local traditions such as Caga Tio, the Catalonian Christmas log you hit with a special Christmas stick so he poops out presents and candy.  (If you think we're making this up, read more about it here).  Strange to see a culture that brings out the squatting statuettes on the holidays.

Because we like you peeps, we'll spare you the picture of Hello Kitty and her pink turd, which means you'll have to take our word for it on this one.

Caga Tios, everywhere you look.  Every home has one.

A big thank you to our hostess with the mostess

So there you have it.  If you ever get a chance to have yourself a little Thanksgiving adventure outside of the U.S., take it! And unlike this year, you won't have to worry about what to do about Chanukah either.  Though if you do, get thee some Southeast Asian cauliflower/zucchini fritters, which taste just like the real thing. You heard it here first.

Single Mother Suffers from Rare Parenting Fog

Did you hear the one about the single parent who went cray cray?

Of course you did, that's old news.  In today's news, a single mama has a rare flash of clarity and suddenly realizes she cannot do it all.

While sources tell us others have recognized this for years, the inexplicable failure to recognize this earlier can be attributed to only one thing: Parenting Fog.

While not yet classified by the CDC as an official disease, anecdotal evidence suggests Parenting Fog can be a very real and dangerous condition.

Signs and symptoms of the condition may vary, but often include long commutes, fretting over school lunches, and volunteering for mystery steering committees at schools.  Parenting Fog should be strongly suspected when these steering committees are at an unknown school where their child does not attend.  Other common symptoms include failure to return calls and emails, asking questions over and over again (such as: "Who are you?"), and eating expired food while standing.

Now there are reports of an alleged antidote to the condition that must involve a very carefully concocted combination of friends, copious amounts of alcohol, and truffle mac and cheese.  Unfortunately, the FDA was not available to confirm this due to the shutdown of what can only be described as a large group of men and women collectively suffering from Parenting Fog at the same time.

Because really, that's the only plausible excuse for what is going on in DC right now.  

What we'd like to tell our thoughtless fearless leaders.

And with that, if you're looking for this single mama, she'll be relieved of her moment of clarity.

Should she suddenly disappear, you just might find her transporting large vats of mac and cheese and wine to our legislators down south.  

Oversimplifying Politics

Four years ago, when Obama was first elected, we came home from work and asked a three year old mini if she knew what a President was.

"Yes!", she exclaimed! We learned it in school!

Excited that her school was taking on educational responsibilities we had clearly neglected, we rejoiced.  So we asked her, what was a President?

"He is a black man who lives in a white house."

Well, who are we to argue with that?

At the next presidential election, we brought her with us to the polls, let her pull the lever, and proudly wear the "I voted!" sticker.  We then colored in states red and blue together as CNN announced the results on TV.

So it shouldn't have come as a surprise that she was upset at not being able to join us at yesterday's New York Primary elections.  After promising she could come in November, we tried to explain what a Primary was.  This led to the inevitable question:

"Am I a Republican or a Democrat?" 

Oy.  Can't you just ask why Daddy and I got divorced again? That one was easier.

After trying to subdue her with assertions that you can't possibly know until you're 18, that's why you don't have to choose until you're that old, it was clear she wasn't going to take no for an answer.  So, in an effort to get everyone to sleep that night, we attempted to over-simplify politics for a third grader.

"Do you believe that any 2 grownups who want to should get married, even boys and boys and girls and girls?"
"Yes!"
"Do you believe the government should help you with money if you don't have a job?"
"Yes!"
"What about helping to pay for doctors and medicine?"
"Yes!"
"Will you pay some taxes from the money you make to help pay for these things?"
"NO WAY!"

Well, kid, we stand corrected.  You're more firm in your positions than most politicians today.  Happy voting.

Squeezing the Balloon

One wonders why it's been so long since we've posted.

Is it writer's block? Hardly.  Is it lack of subject matter? Nah, one subway ride alone per day is enough for subject matter in this here city.

Then what?

Well, as one friend puts it, we've been "squeezing the balloon".
 

It's simply really.  Do one thing and you have time to blog.  Do 10 things and.....you get the idea.

It's May, and you know what that means. Oh wait, you don't.

It's a bit early for a Mother's Day post, but then again what better way to differentiate oneself! And yes, we realize this is strange written in the third person. No one's forcing you to read, is all we're sayin'.

Today is May.

First, you're welcome for sharing what we're sure is surprising news to y'all.

But second, we'd like to spend a few serious moments describing what May means to us as May will forever be inextricably linked to Mother's day.  See, we lost our own in early May. We remember the day she died. The day before she died. The cruelly beautiful and sunny Sunday that we tossed a shovelful of dirt into the ground. The cruel irony of burying her on the special day we had previously dedicated to the joy of drinking tequila. Sacrilege! And then, one week later, Mother's Day, which seemed at the time to be an unbearable punishment from the universe. 

Still, at the same time, it also seemed an appropriate time to symbolically acknowledge this loss. For that reason, we chose to unveil her tombstone on Mother's Day. That was one year later, one month past the official 11-month Jewish morning period, and though the constant, overwhelming grief had subsided, the intensity had not, and we recall wondering just how much longer that would take. 11 months was not enough. Who were these "forefathers" kidding? And while we were at it - why 11, specifically? Why not 6, or 12, or even 13, which is always a favorite number in Judaism? We couldn't help think that 11 was such an arbitrary number. Did they know something we didn't? Or were they just full of it, making it up as they went along - like the rest of us. Or - what if we were the stupid ones, what if we misinterpreted it and it was suppose to be years, not months?