Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 02 - Christmas Bizarre

Christmas Bizarre

Lizz Lund

Copyright © 2014 Elizabeth Lund

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents and dialogue are created by the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information or permission please send an email inquiry to: [email protected]

For our beloved cockatiel, Chance Marie – she was/is Mina’s cockatiel, Marie, and always will be. Her loss on the eve of Hurricane Sandy will always mark a bittersweet anniversary: just one month in our new home, amidst the destruction of homes for many friends. Oct. 29
th
is a biggie.

For my dad, Robert Lund Sieghardt – his loss on June 16, 2013 keeps Father’s Day forever. As did his spiritual hand, guiding our “Vinnie” home that same evening. We’ve since convinced our fearless feline that being toothless, clawless and senile is not a smart combo in a neighborhood complete with foxes, hawks and the occasional coyote (according to a neighbor). That, and we installed a deadbolt.

And as always, for my chef husband, Mark dear – who convinces me to cope by whipping the virtual egg on my face into some kind of meringue. That, and pouring wine. Lots of wine. And for being my best friend and listening to my whine. Mwah.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m excited about this sequel to “Kitchen Addiction!” Special thanks and mentions to friends near and far, physical and virtual, for their assistance and support. In particular, a huge shout out to John Stewart and Maggie Shetz, of Intuitive Consultants (www.IntuitiveConsultants.net) for using their gifts to locate my lost flash drive which was, at the time, the sole device containing this manuscript. I have since learned my lesson and now back-up in triplicate at home, while another six copies are stashed away with a mute Tibetan monk in the Himalayas. That, and we made sure the cat cannot “lovingly play” with the flash drive’s clip string, which he fancies a mouse tail. Thanks also to my Twitter bud, @cettedrucks – your zany creation of a Manischewitz Cook-Off Contest complete with “glazed bacon wraps with shrimp” was inspirational. Really.

Much nodding of heads and pats on the back to the Facebook crowd: your earnest anticipation of this sequel propelled me forward. Thank you for your support and please know the third novel is now in final edit mode, while the fourth is in the works. Mina moves on!

Also, sincere acknowledgment to those who took time to post reviews on Amazon. Duly read, and duly noted, positive and negative. One step at a time, and I hope you consider this sequel a good step forward.

And as usual, much gratitude toward the tribe of beta readers for helping me keep it consistent: Carol Kusel, Polly Davis, Kate Achelpohl, Barbara Kurze, Margie Sieghardt, and, forever always – Mark dear.

Last, but not least
, sincere thanks to my wonderful new editor, Teresa Kennedy. We’ve only just begun!

DISCLAIMER

This is a silly story about silly people with silly problems for readers who want a quick laugh
fast. There are no metaphors, symbolism, morals or literary goals contained.  English majors: keep out.

The story you are about to read is completely fictitious. All of the characters, groups and events were concocted from my own imagination and too much cold pizza for breakfast. Any similarities to actual people are completely coincidental. Some of the geographic locations referenced are actual places. Others are completely make believe. For the purposes of this story, all persons and groups herein are made up from pixie dust.

The recipes at the conclusion of this book are my own, assisted with critical guidance from my chef husband (yes, he’s a real chef). If you’re inclined to make them, I hope they will bring a smile to your lips as you recall the portions of the story which inspired them.

In the meantime, grab a bag of chips (unless you live in “Pee-Ay” and it’s mandatory to consume pretzels), your favorite brewski and put your feet up. You’re about to have some fun.

“Help me!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m desperate!”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m at my wits’ end!”

I sat up like a shot.
“Do you need an ambulance?”

“
Do you have any tape?”

I rubbed my eyes and checked my alarm clock:
it was 6:09 a.m. “Not on me.”

“I don’t know what to do!” Aunt Muriel yelped.

“Did you rip something?”

“No, foolish!
I need to get these Christmas presents wrapped before your mother gets here! I’ve been
everywhere
and can’t find any tape!”

I yawned.
“Why are you wrapping at dawn?”

“I wanted to wrap last night.
I left the house yesterday afternoon for some odds and ends and tape, of course. There’s some kind of shortage. Everybody’s out. I had no idea. I didn’t get home until after ten.” Auntie yawned back.

“
Can’t Ma bring some?”

Aunt Muriel sighed.
“I haven’t been able to reach her. I keep getting her voice mail. And I certainly can’t arrive with the twins’ presents unwrapped!”

I considered it.
My sister, Ethel, who lives in Northern Virginia, is due to give birth to twins near, or on, Christmas Day. We think. However, I seriously doubted the soon-to-be newborns could spy unwrapped Christmas presents, even in a womb with a view.

Since Ethel
hasn’t been able to see or tie her shoes since Halloween, Auntie and Ma made plans to descend upon her and Ike, and take care of Christmas and the fixings. This sounded like pandemonium, but a lot of fun, anyhow.

F
ate had other plans for me. Or rather, my unemployment status does. Since I’d been let go last summer from EEJIT - Executive Enterprises for Job Intuitive Technologies - I’ve been working part-time, full time. My mortgage lender thinks it’s a good idea for me to pay on a monthly basis. Since my unemployment compensation pays half my former salary, I need to make up the gap somewhere. And playing the lottery hasn’t proved to be very reliable.

I’m Mina.
Casually, my nickname’s pronounced just like the bird’s. Formally, the full-length version is Wilhelmina Kitchen. I’m named after a great-grandmother I never met and plan to poke in her spiritual side with a shish kabob skewer slightly post-Rapture. This isn’t because I dislike her. I’m just not that keen about our common cooking disorder. Aside from our last name, I also inherited Great-Grandma’s catering crazies. Long ago, Bumpa, my great-grandfather, locked the oven door on Grandma Mina cooking for crowds, after she made enough food one evening to feed a large, diverse community - like the Bronx. Her wooden spoon floated down the proverbial genetic cesspool into my hot little oven mitts. To this day, I cannot fathom making potato salad with less than five pounds of potatoes.

“I think the twins will be okay with it.”

“Well, I hope so. I mean really – their first Christmas!”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll try. And don’t forget to bring your presents today!”

After assuring Auntie the twins would not need a therapist before their actual birth date,
and that I’d arrive with Bounty Noel, I hung up and rolled over. I didn’t have to be at my next part-time job until nine o’clock, when I became one of Santa’s Sidekicks at Countryside Mall. This has been a steady gig since Black Friday. I get paid minimum wage, with a maximum serving of bruised shins. I also have to sport a lot of “Santa Sparkle” which means I’ll get huge employee discounts at all the stores eventually. I’ve been hopeful the discounts will balance out the crummy paycheck. I’m also hoping this translates to friends and family getting something besides frozen chicken stock for Christmas.

Vinnie
, my twenty-plus pound, mini mountain lion-sized tabby yawned and thwacked my head with his tail. Clearly, his breakfast plans did not include my sleeping late. Vinnie was bequeathed to me by Trixie, my BFF who’s an ER RN. Trixie’s upstairs neighbor made her final visit on Trixie’s watch a long time ago. That’s when she made Trixie pledge an oath to place her Vincent in a new home. And so Trixie arrived on my doorstep with Vincent, a stuffy name for an even larger stuffed cat. I call him Vinnie, to keep him humble.

I
swatted Vinnie’s tail away and stared at the clock. Crap. Not quite asleep, with someplace I dreaded to go. I cringed at the thought of another Sidekick shift and slid further under the covers.

I
heard the front door bang open, followed by shuffling and grunting. I sat up.

Vito swore softly and continued banging his way through my house and into the basement.

Vito Spaghetti’s my retired next door neighbor.
He’s got a spare key to my place that I haven’t had the chutzpah to get returned. He’s a good guy mostly, except that he considers himself more of a roommate than a neighbor. And yes, Vito Spaghetti’s not his name at all. It’s the alias the Feds gave him after he went into a witness protection program that he’s kind of strayed from.

His real name is Vladimir
Pryzchntchynzski. Gezundheit. He used to be the leader of the Moils, a part of the Jewish Polish mafia out of Bumville, New Jersey. Ever since he got transplanted to Lancaster, “Pee-ay”, he’s developed a fondness for helping out the crowd at St. Bart’s Episcopal and Swiffering. This landed him in a lot of hot water last summer with the St. Bart’s crowd, not the Swiffering. That’s another story (called
Kitchen Addiction!
)

Vinnie walked over top of me and headed downstairs, greeting Vito and
meowing away about how glad he was that someone arose at a sensible hour, and would he mind pouring a heaping bowl of Kitty Cookies, as he was famished?

I took the hint and tumbled into the bathroom, pulling on my robe and
tottering downstairs. I found the hallway crammed floor to ceiling with cartons and boxes.

Vito was in the kitchen, giving Vinnie his cookies.
Coffee was brewing.

“What’s with the boxes?”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry Toots,” Vito answered in his usual triple-speak. “I ran outta room at my place. These are for the Christmas Bizarre.”

“Don’t you mean bazaar?”

“Whatever.”

“These are legitimate, right?”

“Absolutely!”

Ever since last summer, when my basement became t
he unsuspecting cache for a not-too- legitimate enterprise, I’ve been on the nervy side where Vito and cartons are concerned.

I shook my head and poured myself some coffee.
Some things are better left unsaid. Especially before a cup O’Joe.

The phone rang.
“Whaddaya got for tape?” It was Trixie.

“Where are you?”

“On my way home from night shift.”

“Night shift? I thought you got put on days?”

Trixie grunted. “I was, until everyone came down with Crew Flu.”

“Crew Flu?”

“Yeah, the flu the whole staff gets right before Christmas – especially when they’re spazzing about a tape shortage.”

“Tape shortage?”

“Good grief, don’t you watch the news?”

The truth is, I do.
But since I couldn’t afford to buy anything to wrap yet, I really hadn’t made the connection. Then I remembered Aunt Muriel.

“Is it really that much of a crisis?”

“Are you kidding? You and K. were my last hope. Guess I’ll end up using Band-Aids after all. Hope Mike doesn’t think it’s a nursing fetish.”

Mike Green is Trixie’s somewhat new-ish
SO. She hooked up with him sometime after Vito gave up his protected status, just before Mike, a US Marshal, was able to fully investigate why. Apparently their relationship is still on the horizon for the holidays.

“You’re wrapping boyfriend presents! I’m happy for you!”

Trixie sighed. “Yes. No. Sort of. We’re unofficially official.”

“What the heck does that mean?”

“We talk every night on the telephone, and see each other just about every weekend. So we’re kind of assuming the exclusive relationship thing but we’re both too chicken to bring it up.”

“Wow.”
Dating sure got complicated since I last ventured out, sometime around the Ice Age.

“So I’m hoping our Christmas presents do the talking.”

“What’d you get him?”

“Silk boxers and a mask!”

That should speak volumes. At least she hadn’t bought him the complete costume. Trixie’s always had a thing for a guy in uniform. Prior to her current beaux, this inclination took some odd twists.

“That sounds…
convincing. Do you think you’ll get a ring?”

“God no!”

“Oh. Well, what do you want?”

“Plastic.
I’ve seen his tastes. A Visa gift card would be excellent.”

Ah, young love.

“Are you still working at the mall?”

“Yeah, I’ve gotta be there this morning.”

“Great! Can you look around for tape?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks. Maybe as a mall employee you’ll get a deal?”

I shrugged.
“It’s worth a shot.”

Vito lumbered back down the basement stairs with more cartons.

I glanced up at the clock
. I was becoming a quarter-till late. “Gotta go! Later!” I hung up and dashed upstairs, whirling myself in and out of the shower and into my garb.

Luckily, Vinnie was occupied with tripping Vito’s travels up and down the basement steps.
This was helpful, since I found out the hard way that Vinnie has a definite thing against my Sidekick shoe covers. Which is odd, even for him. I mean, they’re just a kind of slip-on cover that “converts” your shoe into a pointy elf boot, complete with a jingle bell toe. Unfortunately, my right jingle bell is dented and the fabric’s a bit frayed since Vinnie’s last encounter.

I
returned downstairs, bedecked. Vito sat in the kitchen sipping coffee, petting Vinnie on the counter, while they read the paper together. “Hey, you look cute, kid. You made sure you got all your Sparkle this time, right?”

I nodded.
The first time I arrived for my shift I was missing my hat which I immediately discovered was a big no-no. They made me drive all the way back home to get it, or I’d miss my shift. With gas prices the way they are, I’ve been very careful ever since.

However, I’d also learned I had to hide specific costume bits from Vinnie.
Oddly enough, his antipathy toward the booties is dysfunctionally proportionate to his fondness for the hat. After a daylong frantic search, I finally found it wadded up and stashed as one of his coveted possessions. No hat, no job, see? Now I hide it in the bread drawer. It also keeps Ma and Auntie’s paint swatch samples from getting lonesome. And what the hell, it’s festive, no?

The rest of my costume consists of a wide, fake plastic leather belt, and a red felt vest that sports Sparkle buttons and pins from each of the participating stores in the mall, in case the little tikes don’t know where to shop
after they tell Santa about their lists.

Vinnie
recognized his bootie prey and came racing down the hall. I grabbed my coat and shut the door to the garage with a bang.

I jumped into the Doo-doo – my poop brown mini-van – and turned the key in the ignition.
Bupkis. I banged my head against the steering wheel, reprimanding myself about forgetting her bent toward religious stations.

I turned on the radio, and Christmas carols filled the air.
Luckily, this being Lancaster, every local radio station began playing Christmas carols post-Halloween. I’d listened to nine-thousand plays of “Dominique the Donkey” and can now sing it in Pig Latin, backwards.

However, Christmas carols are a lot easier religious-esque listening than
Reverend Hollers-a-lot. I turned up the radio’s volume and re-started the van. She purred and we backed quickly down my steep driveway. Which is why I almost ran over my neighbor Bruce, and his Goliath-sized Great Dane, David.

“Sorry!” I called out the window.
Bruce was brushing the snow off his jeans and his dog from where they’d rolled sideways to avoid getting flattened.

“Geez, Mina! Careful, huh?”

“I know, I know. I’m late.”

“Oh great! You’re working?”

I shook my head. “My other part time job.”

“You’re cooking at Squirrel Run Acres?
Fabulous.”

“Nope. Santa’s Sidekick.”

“Oh! At the mall? Hey, can you pick me up some tape?”

“I’ll try…”
I shook my head. This was the third request for tape in one morning. I made a mental note to pick up gift bags for my presents while I was locating tape for everyone else. I’m not that good a wrapper, and figured bags are better for frozen chicken stock, anyway. I chugged the Doo-doo down the block and toward Countryside Mall.