For the first six months of this strange new world, my brain seemed to shut down. I had a hard time remembering things. There are dinners I went to with people whose names and faces I can’t recall. There were meetings I forgot I attended within 24 hours of attending them. When I wasn’t forgetting things, I was fretting that I had some sort of early on-set Alzheimer’s. I may not have appeared to be a hot mess, but a hot mess I was.

Which is probably why I’ve never told this awesome story from the first Thanksgiving without both of my parents.

My parents separated in July 2009, and by November, they were still living in our house together. A couple weeks before Thanksgiving, my dad had had it.

“I just want to let you know that I’m moving out,” my dad said to me over the phone. “I am still trying to figure some things out with your mother, but I’ve just come to the conclusion that I can’t live like this.”

We’re either together, or we’re not is what I heard, and I didn’t blame him. He had an apartment and would be moving into it two weeks before Thanksgiving.

When I asked my mom what our holiday plans were, she quipped that they’d be the same as always — my aunt, uncle, cousins, their kids and my aging grandparents all staying at our house. My brother, my dad and I were disheartened. I think were hoping to find a way to work through the first Thanksgiving apart, together.

But on we trudged. And we were low on drama until the day after Thanksgiving. I walked into our house after dinner with D’s family to nobody talking to each other.

“Uh, hi. What’s up?”

My mom topped off her wine glass and led me out of the kitchen and into the home office. She looked like she’d just done battle.

“We have a bit of an issue,” she said, nodding at the computer.

I sighed. Every year at Thanksgiving, we had issues with our family computer. The issue being my uncle or my cousin’s fiance — let’s call him R — being on it for all hours AND changing all the settings on it. Totally rude stuff that my dad had to fix the day after everyone left. I was expecting to hear what a bind she was in now that my dad was gone.

“I walked through here about an hour ago and caught R looking through a bunch of our family photos. Photos that he would have really had to dig around for.”

I agreed that this was weird, or at least, an invasion of privacy.

“I watched him for a few minutes and noticed that he was saving a bunch of them to his email account, including a bunch of you, as well as photos of you and D.”

“What the f-”

“I know. So I said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ And he said, ‘I was just looking through some of your family photos.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I can see that you are looking at OUR private family photos on OUR family computer. Which is incredibly intrusive. I also see that you are saving some of them for your own use. Do you want to tell me what exactly you’re doing with them?’”

“What the F*CK, MOM.”

“He tells me that every year around this time, he’s responsible for updating the website for [ILLINOIS COUNTY NAME]. And he always seems to do that while he’s at our house for Thanksgiving, so he likes to use some of our photos to update the website.”

“Are you telling me that for the last however many years, he’s been stealing our family photos to use on an Illinois county website?”

“Yes. Yes, that is what I’m saying.”

I let another F-bomb fly and then asked, “What did you say then?”

“I told him that for more than 10 years we’ve invited him into our house and put up with all of his bullsh*t and that he had crossed the line. And that he needed to delete the photos from his email and stay off of our computer.”

“You said this in front of everyone?”

“Yep. And then he left.”

I sat down at the computer and pointed my Web browser to his county’s website. I spotted a few of ours immediately, but quickly realized that there were hundreds of pages to this website. There was no way I could get through them all.

This was not the first time R had been lambasted at a family Thanksgiving (the guy’s a real a-hole), but it was the first time my mom — hostess of the festivities –  had gotten involved.

The next morning, R was back in the house and approached me when no one else was around.

“Hey,  Megs,” he said.

“Dude…” I cautioned.

“Where does your dad work now?”

“Excuse me?”

“I wanted to talk to your dad about this photo situation. And to get his permission for using some of them.”

“I’m sorry; what didn’t you understand about my mom telling you that those photos were totally off limits to you?”

“Well, I just wanted to get your dad’s permission.”

“My mom said no. That’s all you should need to hear. And my dad wouldn’t give you permission anyway, nor would he appreciate you showing up at his workplace. I also say no. End of discussion.”

By the time last Thanksgiving rolled around, our house had sold and my mom had moved into her own apartment, which she invited everyone to infiltrate. Somewhere in between meeting her boyfriend and covering my emotions with alcohol,  R told my little cousins that my mom moved into an apartment because she was “too poor” to live in a big house like they had and I almost had to kill him.

This Thanksgiving, D and I are flying to Chicago and staying with his sister. It will be the first Thanksgiving in 29 years that I’ve been away from my family. And I’m totally OK with that.***

**Special shout-out to LP and KCO for also being in this awesome club.

***Actually, I always miss my grandparents.

• Cried Sobbed over work. To add insult to injury, I had started the whole gasping-for-air bit just as our amazing* cleaners walked in, with what appeared to be one of their tween daughters.

• Received a piece of mail addressed to my dead brother.

So, I pretty much have to go kill myself, right?

*Not being sarcastic. This investment is one of the best we have ever made.

“No.”

“Does this hurt?”

“Uh, no.”

“How about this?”

I was lying on my stomach on an exam table while the doctor pushed on various parts of my spine. I was facing the one accent wall, which was painted bright red. It was far too aggressive for the tiny, windowless room. Size and flickering lights aside, it took me a couple of minutes to figure out what was so unsettling about it: There was no sink. In its place was a giant bottle of hand sanitizer.

I hate hand sanitizer. What was wrong with good old-fashioned soap and water? How could this be an exam room without a sink?

I questioned the cleanliness of the doctor’s hands as he continued to push along my back.

“How about there?” he said.

He was somewhere between my tail bone and my lower back, but not underneath the navy surgical shorts I was asked to put on in spite of having brought my own as instructed on the website. I am nothing if not thorough about matters involving my health.

“YES. That’s it. That hurts.”

“OK. So you’re pretty active.”

“Yeah, extremely. And I’d like to get back at that point again.”

This is what I’d come for. I’d researched ortho docs with a specialty in sports medicine and I was eager for him to drop some wisdom.

“What kind of workout where you doing when started having more serious symptoms?”

“Um, my workout that day had deadlifts in it, and–”

“Deadlifts?”

I felt my face fall. Mr. Fancy Sports Medicine didn’t know one of the most basic weight training exercises in the history of weight training. I was doomed.

“Well, nothing seems seriously awry from the exam, so I think we ought to get some x-rays if that’s OK.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I’ll get Randy.”

Randy, as it turns out, was their lone lab tech — and the creepy guy in a red polo who had stood in the doorway of my exam room eavesdropping on my medical history when the nurse was reviewing my symptoms. I’d thought he was a wandering and potentially mentally unfit patient.

Now he was walking me down the hall and into an x-ray room that hadn’t been updated in 30 years and saying, “We’re going to get through this together.”

Kill me.

I’ve had a lot of x-rays in my life, and none of the rooms had looked like places women go to die. This one had mastered the Princess Bride Torture Chamber / Civil Rights-Era Back-Alley Abortion Room motif.

I lifted myself onto the x-ray table and stared at the thick hazmat-approved rubber gloves propped up on a side table. What could those possibly be used for?

Randy explained that he needed me to sign a waiver for the x-rays. I nodded and took the clipboard, which had two yes or no questions on it. The third and final question inquired about the date of my last period. Randy was about the sixth motherf*cking person with whom I’d shared this information today.

I handed it back to him and he stared at it for an uncomfortably long time.

Finally he said, “June 15th, huh?”

“Yep.”

He was standing about four inches from my knees, which were hanging over the table.

“So… you’re not like, trying for one.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know… are you TRYING for one.”

His intonation didn’t include anything resembling a question, which made this more uncomfortable.

“No,” I said flatly. “I’m not.”

Randy instructed me to lie down on the table the way Buffalo Bill first told Catherine Martin to put the lotion on her skin — calm but menacing. He flipped on a light above me and zeroed the antiquated machine over my stomach. Then he smoothed my t-shirt over my stomach.

This seemed like a good time to mention that my husband was a lawyer. A malpractice lawyer. Actually, if we’re going to talk about the law, let’s make him an SVU detective. You know, f*ck it. My husband is Leon Panetta and he will have the CIA come to your house while you’re looking at kid porn and you’ll never been seen again.

“OK. Now hold your breath. Hold your breath! Please.” Randy shuttled back to his picture taking room.

He came back out and attempted to help me roll onto my left side.

“I got it,” I quickly said.

“Now, put your hands together up by your face as if you were sleeping. Yes. Together like you were sleeping.”

Oh, I get it. This is how he poses all the dead corpses in his basement for their photos before he ditches them in a a rural Maryland swamp.

He smoothed my t-shirt again and told me not to breathe. Or what? The hose again? How was this happening?

Because I’m a hypochondriac and wanted to rule out a spinal tumor, I told myself to hang in for one more photo. He took the picture and I bolted out of the room and back to the sh*tty exam room.

I sat there fuming, staring at the red wall, trying to pry the sticker off of my surgical shorts and wondering what it was going to feel like to call my husband and tell him I had back cancer AND that I wanted to sue everyone who worked here.

The doctor came in after a few minutes and pulled up my films on the monitor crammed next to the hand sanitizer.

“Well, Megan. These look perfect. I don’t know what to tell you. I think you may have irritated some of the soft tissues in your back and probably need some physical therapy.”

“Interesting. Nothing there at all that would suggest pain when I so much as sneeze or bend over and tie my shoes?”

“No, everything looks perfectly healthy.”

Right. Because by all accounts, you people know what you’re doing in here.

(And, for old times’ sake)

*And that my better half has to suffer through.
**I only did this once. It was in high school and even I was freaked out by the burst of rage.

Anyway, he “liked” Boris Smiles’ “My Love Powered by 10​,​000 Practice Amps,” on Bandcamp and I’ve been listening to it all morning. It reminds me of a cross between Annuals and Pedro the Lion. (Which is probably a good thing if you love PtL’s sound but it makes you feel sad about life.)

My favorite tracks so far include Lucy, Into Town, Rumors, Fox and Amelia and, well, pretty much the whole damn thing.

Give it a listen (you can stream it for free) and consider picking up the mp3 album from Amazon.

Here’s their official album teaser. Aren’t they fun?

So I owe a huge thanks to Refinery29 for posting one of the Kills tracks, “Pressure is a Privilege,” on their blog yesterday. So good.

Obviously I downloaded the rest of Kills last night, along with some other jj’s albums.

Among the tracks I can’t stop playing:
“Things Will Never Be The Same Again”

And, “From Africa To Malaga”

• My mom moved away. And in with Steve. (I guess I didn’t tell you he was a long-distance lover, did I?)

• My dad met someone (!).

• My husband took a certain aptitude test and kicked major tail. More on that in the coming months.

• I’ve been CrossFit training. And yes, I have totally consumed the Kool-Aid. Not sure you’ll ever see me in the CrossFit games (click that link and prepare to be inspired), but it’s super motivational. As is deadlifting next to a bunch of dudes doing bicep curls.

I flipped out on him.*

Here’s the thing. What makes one gal comfortable might be uncomfortable for the next gal. For me, this was not only immature and unprofessional, it was inappropriate.

This video, (NSFW because it uses the word “sh*t” a lot) directed by our friend (if you were at our wedding, he was the emcee), made me feel better.

Of course, in my case, “my sh*t” is my bod.

Feels good to laugh again.

*I told him never to do that again. He laughed. I said, “I’m serious, never do that to me ever the eff again,” and walked away. Then asked HR to document it. Later in the day I overheard him make an offensive joke about Asians… to our new Asian colleague. Ugh.

1. I suddenly like nuts in my cookies.

2. While shopping, a college student told her boyfriend that I looked like her sister. He replied, “Yeah… your older sister, right?”

3. I tried on a suit jacket and, for the first time, didn’t look like I was playing dress-up in Mom’s closet. Said jacket is now in my closet.