So, yeah, I know, this is from Thanksgiving and there are no pictures but I don't have time to draw as I am studying my butt off for finals. However, I didn't want this to go too out of date, so I'm going ahead and publishing it. Hope you like.
I woke up innocent and unaware that Tuesday the 20th would be the day my thumb would be forever scarred (figuratively and literally). The day before, my aunt had brought over small fold out tables for my grandparents to eat on when they came over for Thanksgiving. I approached these tables not with caution or hesitance but with love and a friendly smile. If only I had known that even at that moment they were planning the emotional traumatizing experience my thumb would undergo the next day. (insert picture 1)
That night my sister, aunt, and I set these tables up around a bigger card table to do a puzzle on. My family consists of puzzle fiends. They have developed a highly advanced and annoying technique for the puzzle journey they partake in.
First they find a comfortable yet spacious area coincidentally being used to watch BBC dramas while eating absurd amounts of Smarties (they like their terrain to be already warm and cried upon ..)
Second they relocate the puzzle process already having been started by someone who is NOT a puzzle fiend and really enjoys taking their time putting puzzle pieces in the wrong places on purpose to create the shape of a whale (this is a delicate and long process which does not require help)
Third with determination in their eyes, they separate the side pieces from the middle pieces (this process is normal and while a tad bit annoying, still accepted) They then color code the pieces onto a minimum of two tables depending on the puzzle size. (This is not normal and insurmountably more annoying. If you do this please buy yourself a therapist and then allow yourself to be trampled by ostriches or ostrichi...) This is where the little fold out demon tables came in. (insert picture 2)
Fourth they force the puzzler of whales (who is also an emotional wreck caused by the last episode of Sherlock) to participate in these horrendous actions of puzzle worshiping. (insert picture 3)
After a few hours of this exhausting process, I retired and rested in preparation for the following day in which we were to continue this process. I awoke to find that my sister was watching the new Merlin episodes on Netflix. I sat down and we forgot about our puzzle journey for a lengthy amount a time until my demented Siamese kitten, Yoko, decided that the puzzle was her mortal enemy and must be destroyed for terrible misdeeds which were unknown to me and my sister. This is how I imagined the fight that ensued seconds later: (insert picture 4)
Insuring no more fights avenging loved ones, we covered the puzzle tables with sheets and pillow cases and threw Yoko into the kitchen.Too involved in Merlin, we decided to do the puzzle later. Unbeknownst to us, the puzzle was a horrible criminal and my aunt's cats, Babs and Jazzy, had decided it was there life duty to put this criminal to justice. While Babs had no problem jumping and skidding around the table, Jazzy is really really fat and has trouble jumping on things that stand a foot off the ground. So while Babs did minimal damage to the puzzle, (only knocking a few puzzle pieces onto the ground) Jazzy, when she finally found the strength to lift her body off the ground, thudded on top of the table and dragged her stomach around knocking a great majority of our hard work onto the floor and into the rug where I'm sure some pieces still lie, not yet found. (insert picture 5)
We picked up all the pieces we could find and too tired to do much more, put them in a pile on the table and continued our watching of one of the best BBC shows in existence. When my mom got home she was quite unhappy with what she found. APPARENTLY we had been to tired to see the puzzle pieces underneath the sofas and chairs and she wanted the puzzle put up before someone slid across the floor on a puzzle piece and killed themselves. (insert picture 6)
This is when it happened, the horrible deed done by the real criminal in the room, not the puzzle like the cats had thought. I realized then that the cats were only trying to save me. But it wasn't the puzzle, but the tables that the puzzle had been sitting on. I was trying, but failing, to close the horrible folding tables so I could carry them to the garage until Thursday, but the table had OTHER plans. I had just gotten the leg to slide in a folding motion and I was so excited that I had gotten it to work I didn't notice the table's plan being carried out. My thumb was on the other leg and was about to be crushed between it and it's brother, the stupid uncooperative leg I had been trying to get to slide. Scared that the leg would get stuck before I had gotten it to fold, I slammed the chair together on my thumb crushing it completely and allowing the table to have it's sick fun. Later I would retell my thumb quoting a line from Sophocles' play Antigone (insert picture 7)
On the verge of vomiting I opened the table, but losing strength I lost my grip and it slammed, harder this time, on my thumb again. Tears streaming from my eyes I pulled my misshapen thumb from the devil's mouth and thrusted the table at my bearded brother who was home for the holidays. I ran into the kitchen for ice, moaning incoherent words of anger and pain. Finally giving up on the four step journey to the fridge I collapsed in a chair in the kitchen and promptly told my mother that unless we got someone to purify the possessed tables we had to get rid of them immediately. She replied to my pain with, "Ouch, that hurts." and continued her baking.
My thumb is better but is still red, swollen, and feels like a vampire with rabies biting it with the force of an Oliphant when I accidentally touch it.
Happy Thanksgiving!
