Your Weekly Antics - Where the Hell is the Pecan Pie Edition...12-1-22

Holy cow!!! It's December 1st already kids...not sure where this year has gone, but it is winding down and doing so fast. We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving and are rested and ready for the remainder of the holiday season. With that said we at The Antics would like to take this opportunity to say, good luck and Godspeed, may the force be with you, go in peace, whatever phrase floats your boat because we all know the holidays bring out a special kind of crazy in all of us so fa la la la la...and by the way...next full moon is December 7th - here's what I've got...

1. According to Sue Miller’s eldest Grandchild, the Swedish Apple Pie is the most underestimated pie baked… Kolby asks, what makes a Swedish Apple Pie different from an ordinary apple pie? Grammy explained, raisins and walnuts are just two of the ingredients that differentiate her Swedish apple pie recipe from a traditional apple pie. Kolby, I hate raisins…they remind me of shriveled up old people… Kolby Miller & Sam Kapacziewski, day after Turkey Day 2022.

2. With the above said, I’m guessing we won’t have to worry about Kolby following in her Aunt’s footsteps and doing the work of the people at Elder Services…or becoming a raisin farmer. Both those professions are off her list. Live long and prosper kid...

3. Let’s talk about the pecan pie, shall we? Sue Miller did her baking. She made more pies and baked goods than anyone of us needed. Many of her pies she baked ahead and had her four Granddaughters carry her completed and baked pies to the basement freezer. Now let’s set the scene. These fools are afraid of the basement as well as the attic. Do I think it’s their way of getting out of doing any manual labor and bringing things up and down the stairs? Of course I do, I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck and neither did their Grandmother. Naturally, Grammy humors them and tells them to overcome their irrational fear of the basement, get their asses moving and bring the pies to their place of deep freeze rest until they are called upon for the holiday...or something like that...so off they went.

4. Fast forward to the day before Thanksgiving. Some of the same crew were at Grammy’s helping her get ready for Turkey day. This assistance involved making the trip back to the basement to retrieve the pies. There were six pies in total…I repeat, 6 pies...All four of these girls insisted that all 6 pies made their way up from the depths of the basement and on to Grammy’s kitchen counter to thaw for the next day. Why did it take four of them to take six pies to the basement freezer? Refer back to # 3...six pies went down, six pies came back up…or so we thought.

5. Thanksgiving Day comes. All have stuffed their faces and are now moving on to Grammy’s baked goods. We find 5 pies, not 6. The 6th and final pie that was unaccounted for is the coveted pecan pie. We look high and we look low. We send the youngest Kap kid back to the basement freezer to see if it’s been left behind, and nope…not once, not twice, but thrice times to the basement all to confirm, there is no pecan pie or any other pie for that matter, to be found in the cellar freezer. We look in the upstairs refrigerator freezer, no pie. We check the fridge, the counters, the cabinets, no pie. Now Grammy thinks she’s lost her mind or she's been robbed. She now begins to tell me she is forbidding any word of this incident be printed in The Antics because this is no laughing matter, I pick on her enough as it is, and people will think she’s lost her mind and ship her off to the home. With fingers crossed behind my back not to breathe a word of the missing pie all while thinking we really can't make this stuff up, I anticipate finding the pie in the linen closet come Easter, which will cause a whole other host of problems. We continue to tare the house apart…still no pecan pie.

6. Now’s a good time to mention I don’t even like Pecan Pie, yet being the fabulous daughter that I am, I continued to look. According to Sue Miller at this point however, I'm not that fabulous and am probably conspiring to throw her in the home because she thinks, we all think, she's hallucinating and she never made the pecan pie to begin with.

7. Thanksgiving’s over. All the dishes are washed, put away, food packed up and the house looks as if Turkey day never happened. The house is spotless, as Sue Miller likes it, yet there is still a black cloud over this fine occasion coupled with that ominous feeling that maybe the girls are on to something and have reason to be afraid of the basement because clearly the house is haunted and the ghost of residents past are responsible for the missing pie. We decide to give it a rest, for certain this pie will show up, unless of course it grew legs and walked away, or I accidentally brought a rat with me from one of my many rat infested home visits as of late and that bastard took off with Grammy’s pie. I go home, sleep on it, tomorrow’s a new day. Sue Miller decides to do the same.

8. A fitful night sleep was had…nightmares of a giant angry pecan pie in hot pursuit of me and my kin threatening to throw us in to an oversized pizza oven for locking and then losing him somewhere in the hollows of the basement. I wake up in a cold sweat and conclude it will be my days mission to find that friggin pie even if it kills me.

9. Day after Thanksgiving is Sue Miller’s annual open house. All are welcome to stop in, grab a turkey sandwich and desserts, stay and visit, or eat and run, whatever your fancy…stay as long as you like, or chew and screw, whatever works for you works for us. We again converge upon Sue Miller’s house, stuff our faces for the second day in a row and sit back and visit for a bit. I’d be lying to you if the subject of the pecan pie didn’t come up, because of course it did. Despite Grammy telling all to give it a rest, the four Granddaughters insist all pies were retrieved from the cellar freezer and all insist they saw it. Of course it was placed on the counter with the others…do we think they’re inept of such duties? Of course we do, so back to the basement they go…all four of them, the big chickens, and again…no pie found…

10. The day after Turkey day winds down. All are tired and have had their fill of food and company – it’s been great breaking bread with you people, but enough’s enough, it’s time to beat feet and head home…we’ll be doing this all again in three weeks. As things are wrapping up, the sore subject of the missing pecan pie once again surfaces and looms over all of us...of course it does and my Mother has clearly had it and is one step from swearing she’ll never bake another pecan pie as long as she lives because of course we just can’t let it go. The four Granddaughters decide to check the basement freezer for the 100th time in two days, and once again, come up with nothing. Now’s a good time to point out that there was nothing else in that freezer…not a thing, just the pies, so that Pecan Pie was either in there, or it wasn’t…no gray area – nothing to pick up or look behind or under. It was either on a shelf or it wasn’t. Easy peasy. But again, no pie. To humor all, Ronnie Miller decides he will take a gander at this mystery and makes his way down the cellar stairs to the freezer. What does he find? The pecan pie. It was like the day after Thanksgiving miracle.

11. And last but not least…let this be a lesson to all of us…Sue Miller knows what she knows – if she tells you there’s a pecan pie in the basement, there’s a pecan pie in the basement. Get it together people...it's not her problem if the rest of us nit wits can't find it.

Have a great weekend!