Giving Thanks
What are you thankful for?
Good morning friends and fellow bitter bitches!
It is Thanksgiving morning in the Bitter Bitch household, and for the first time in at least a decade, we are celebrating. As this is the last holiday we’ll be in the house, I thought it would be nice to make a dinner and reflect. Unfortunately my reflection began yesterday around 3pm when I laid down on the couch crying and got started on a fresh bottle of Whitley Neill gin. After some sleep and a few Excedrine, I still feel like moderate shit. But c’est la vie.
I’m sitting here sipping a hot coffee while I wait for my Marie Callender’s pie to bake. Later I will attempt to cook my first ever ham, which came pre-cooked (I don’t cook so why pick today to start fucking shit up, ya know?). This year we’ll be eating off my newly inherited china, given to me by some shrew who didn’t want to pay the $400 to ship it to a dead woman’s family. You see, my dinnerware came to me via this tiny fuckshit dog by way of Cutie’s original owner Arlene. Arlene left her entire estate to some “friends” who systematically reduced her life into a few trips to the Goodwill after they pillfered the valuables. After Arlene’s passing I went by to retrieve the rest of Cutie’s belongings and found them arguing in the street about shipping costs (not withstanding the $500k they made off her house). Rather than cough up the money to ship the valuables to her niece, they dumped them on me. Just like they did Cutie.
Being sentimental, I agreed and took everything home. Once unpackaged, I realized this was most likely Arlene’s wedding china, a delicate pattern with 16 sets! That’s a lot of pieces. But they were coated in a yellow haze from decades of sitting on a shelf in a home with smokers. I carefully washed and organized each piece and placed them in my cabinets with my other treasures, not because they meant anything to me but because I respect that they meant something to this woman. Something of such value, once cherished as a symbol of her union to her husband, put away on a shelf for years, unused, until it was ultimately discarded by the people Arlene trusted the most in the world. To think the things Arlene held closest to her heart would end up with a stranger who values them more than anyone she knew in her time on earth. Utterly heartbreaking.
Unbeknowst to anyone else, Arlene has proven to be my ghost of Christmas future. As a single woman with no children, the mockery of Arlene’s estate “sale” gave me great pause. I was affected more than I should have been because it caused me to reflect on myself and my choices. All my worldly possessions and a lifetime of memories to leave to…no one. A house and estate that would eventually go into…probate? Fuck that. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not going out and getting knocked up. Rather, I’m purging the shit and focusing on the things that bring me joy today. Arlene’s death is a reminder not to save what we treasure, locked away in a cabinet: use your fancy china not just today but every fucking day, eat Cheerios out of your antique teapots, wear your expensive perfume to the Dollar Tree. What. Ever. The. Fuck. The point is to stop waiting for tomorrow. Stop waiting for the right time. Stop waiting for a celebation.
So today while we’re all giving thanks for our health, our family, our friends, I’m giving thanks to Arlene, to the shitty dog I never wanted, and the random events that helped me change the course of my entire life.
Cheers Arlene!