Day 29, Oh Frabjous Day!

Monday was a big mail day for us! In general, getting the mail is one of the fun parts of my day- which shows you what my days usually are like since I became a full time Domestic Engineer. "Mail call" forces me to get outside and see what the weather is like, something that easily can get away from me if I've been spending the morning watching Mr. Moosh. It's easier now that he can walk around on his own, but for a long time I was lucky if I got up before him and remembered to go outside. There were a lot of days last year when I would blink and it was already eleven in the morning.

So, why was it a big mail day? For two reasons. First, Mr. Moosh received a Hallowe'en card from his grandpa. Second, the *deep happy sigh* November issues of Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle arrived. Prediction: cider cream pie/apple cider custard pie is the Big New Thing. It's definitely on our Black Tea Friday menu for this year at the very least. More on Black Tea Friday later but it's an unofficial holiday born (almost ten years ago) of annoyance with the Christmas shopping season encroaching ever-more on the day of Thanksgiving itself.

Family Circle has provided some (unintended?) hilarity this year with its Thanksgiving suggestions. They did a segment on delegating out Thanksgiving tasks- a great idea, since it's really easy for the family matriarch (materfamilias?) to take it all upon herself. Now, Better Homes and Gardens, or BHG, has at its core the assumption that you, gentle reader, are a maven of home-making. Turning out fashionable food, papering your own living spaces, or shopping for new backsplashes when you can't bear the subway tile of last year anymore- BHG assumes that you're doing it all, or paying someone to have it done. Family Circle is decidedly less aspirational and more about balancing kids and work. Which is why it was pretty hilarious to read the article about delegating tasks at Thanksgiving, which seemed to have some BHG-style assumptions at work. One of the assumptions: that cheese board/charcuterie board/antipasto are de rigeur a part of the American Thanksgiving.
The magazine also reads:
"You'll feel extra grateful if you outsource the zhuzhing [Angel's note: What the hell is zhuhzhing?] to someone else."
And elsewhere: "Whoever is nominated chief table stylist can up the sparkle factor with metallic ink... applied to the stems or even ridges of the gourds."
Oh, bless. Oh, sweet autumn child. One struggles to imagine how that would go down- imagine if Marney decided to delegate decorations in addition to side dishes.
"Hey, Susie! I'm so glad you're coming on Thursday! Look, I know this is last minute, but Mike mentioned you have an art degree and I was wondering if you'd mind doing the table decoration. You'll need to come at least an hour early of course, and bring anything you think would work. Some gourds, of course. And metallic paint. And some other greens, we don't want it to look tacky, and FC suggests..."
Click.
 Incidentally: so this is what "zhuzh" is. That's some painfully new slang. Can I suggest "zsazsa-ing" instead, i.e., the act of adding frosting and fur touches until something evokes the idea of Zsazsa Gabor?