Turkey Day at the Nuthouse

I guess that some of you are wondering what the holidays are like in a nuthouse. Perhaps you think they are depressing because we are separated from our families? Or maybe you think we sleep all day?

So far, my Thanksgiving is great. I am writing on the computer, with freshly polished fingernails, listening to Barry Manilow on my iPod (a gift from Orac) and eating chocolate-covered coffee beans, thanks to a devoted reader, who shall remain nameless, but nonetheless, very appreciated.

Because I don't have a family, I feel that my fellow lunatics and the staff are my family, and I have been enjoying the unique treat of being with them today. One of the nurses, who incidentally is my hero among the nurses, brought in his two pet turtles, so all of us got to play with them. Even though we presumably are adults, you would not have known that after watching us crawl around on the floor and otherwise dote over these turtles.

Herman, the red-eared slider, was rather shy and was also quite the racehorse -- he could have given a hare a good run for its money, except that he got stuck nose-first in a corner of the room. The other turtle, Mabel, is a map turtle (pictured). She was much calmer than Herman and in fact, Mabel sat with me for a long time, helping me choose gifts from the Macy's Christmas catalogue. Needless to say, it appears that all of you, amigos bonitos, will be receiving an assortment of headless goldfishes, turtle chow and lettuce as gifts this year. I hope you can stand the long and suspenseful wait for them to arrive.

Another of the nurses gave me her December copy of the Smithsonian magazine that features a story by novelist Paul Theroux about living with geese. Hopefully, I will find a word for the day for my public blog in that story soon, but before I managed that for today, I fell asleep, face down in the magazine. I never do that sort of thing. I guess that I am still recovering from yesterday's stress-fest.

Other than those events, nothing much is happening here so far; although a group of us are sitting around in the common room, watching TV, talking with each other and discussing the many different structures that one can burn down while trying to fry a turkey.

For those of you who wondered what we ate, we had a relatively traditional Thanksgiving dinner, buffet-style. I chose to eat three pieces of pumpkin pie, to the exclusion of everything else, because pumpkin pie is one of my favorite foods and I have not had any for many years now, whereas I am served turkey on a weekly basis here.

This was the first Thanksgiving that I have celebrated in 5 years. The last Thanksgiving that I celebrated was during my last year in graduate school, when one of my dissertation advisors would traditionally cook a Thanksgiving dinner for all of her graduate students, technicians, postdocs and their families. On those days, which might very possibly be the sweetest holiday memories that I will ever have in my life, we ended up having a day of fun; playing croquet, badminton, volleyball, frisbee and going horseback riding followed by an evening spent drinking red wines and watching my advisors' video adventures from their latest trip to Africa.

I hope that all of you are having a good Turkey Day yourselves.

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And then what happened?

How the heck did this nuthouse story get started in the first place?

Image source.

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