Thanksgiving à la Bean, part II

This is the second and final installment on the Bean Thanksgiving holiday.  If you haven’t read the first installment, you might start there first.

In the wee hours of Black Friday Jax whimpered in his sleep. The whimpering progressed to crying and the crying progressed to blood curdling screams.

His ear hurt, and it must have hurt like hell…. I got out the Motrin and the heating pad.

When he awakened again at a suitable hour, Jax said the ear didn’t hurt anymore. I’m suspicious of miracle cures, and although I was supposed to be spending my day in front of a computer on freelance, we went to see the good doctor.

The doc confirmed my diagnosis—infectious myringitis. Okay, I didn’t actually know it was called that, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to pronounce it. And I certainly didn’t know that he had blisters on his tympanic membrane. And really I didn’t remember that the tympanic membrane was called a tympanic membrane.

Then the drawbridge got stuck when I was coming home from the pharmacy, and after 20 minutes of waiting and practicing my pronunciation of infectious myringitis, I made a u-turn and went 20 miles out of the way to get home.

Sissy Zorro arrived bearing a basket of dirty laundry. She was babysitting so that I could work. While we fed the little Beans leftover turkey, the washing machine agitated… or so I thought.

The Bean washing machine was actually spontaneously combusting, and by the time I discovered it, there was THREE INCHES OF WATER ON THE FLOOR.

Papa was upstairs in his garret watching a football game and didn’t hear my scream. Jax and Moose did and they went into hiding. Rooster was still in hiding from Thanksgiving.

For 20 minutes Sissy and I mopped, and then, eureka, a light went off in Sissy’s head, and she jumped up and screamed, “THERE’S A WET VAC IN THE GARAGE.”

It’s always news to me what’s in my garage. Everybody stores their stuff at Maison Bean, and Sissy and Buzz are no exception.

If you’ve got to have a washing machine that spontaneously combusts, a wet vac is a handy piece of equipment to have in your garage. After we cleaned I decided to have a little nap to recover, but just as I got settled the phone rang. It was Mimi talking about Christmas. After I finally got her off the phone and got settled again, the Pularsky’s yard boy turned on his leaf blower.

I gave up the nap.

In the kitchen, Papa pointed outside. Hyacinth had relieved herself in the backyard near the hitching post, and Papa couldn’t find it. I went outside to look. I didn’t want any little Bean ending up with it on his shoe. I scanned the whole backyard. Then I walked the length of the yard, back and forth, back and forth. There was no poop to be found. And then I found it just as I was about to go inside.

On the bottom of my left shoe. MY NEW LEFT SHOE. One of a pair of COLE HAAN ballet flats.

It was 4 p.m. I decided to move cocktail hour up.

Later that night I had a wreck. I was taking out the recycling and the ramp to the trailer that Papa had used to remove the combusted washing machine was invisible in the moonless night.

My sandal—it was a Christian Louboutin—caught under the ramp, and I did a nosedive onto the rusty steel bed, sending wine bottles flying all over the neighborhood. I skinned the palm of my left hand. I jammed the fingers in my right. I put a hematoma on my right shin and two of my toes were bleeding.

I left the wine bottles scattered about and limped inside for a bubble bath.  The next morning I woke up determined to have a better day. Then I looked in the mirror.

There was a zit on my chin.

Addenda

• It was a monster zit and Papa took a picture of it, but I erased it from his camera and kept a Bandaid on my face for a week.
• Moose has contracted bullous impetigo (something else I can’t pronounce), and it’s worse than a monster zit, and now he can’t perform in the Wee School Christmas pageant because they think impetigo is a Latin word for leprosy.