Five Ways to Ruin a Turkey

The plan this year was to go out to eat. After discussing it with my sister we decided we might as well, especially seeing as how there is only going to be a handful of people (and if you’ve ever prepared the colossus of what is Thanksgiving dinner like we have, you know cooking for a small crowd doesn’t really feel worth all the effort). Plus, in years past things haven’t always gone according to plan in the kitchen, and we felt it might be for the best if we spent Thanksgiving at a restaurant in lower Manhattan.

And so it was decided. Reservations were promptly set for two o’clock.

Dinner out on Thanksgiving is an entirely new concept to me. Over the last few years the location of our Thanksgiving has shifted, yet we’ve always ended up at someone’s home. I’ve cooked in my Manhattan apartment, my sister hers. Or we’ve gone Upstate to our dad’s house - the house we grew up in - and prepared dinner for our extended family there. I’ll confess it’s a strange feeling to not always know where you’re going to end up on Thanksgiving. It wasn’t always this way of course. There was a time when the holidays didn’t leave us feeling so…discombobulated. Those were simpler times. Times I refer to as “before," which simply means the years before my mother died. Ever since we never quite know how we’re going to feel, so the holidays and where we spend them vary from year to year.

Generally speaking this time of year is difficult for almost everyone, so much to do and plan, meals to make, gifts to buy, planes to catch. But for anyone who has lost someone, a key member of the family who on occasions such as Thanksgiving typically played an integral part, well, they can be almost unbearable. For the three of us Thanksgiving has sat there like a ticking time bomb on our calendar since Mom died nearly seven years ago. We start off the day with our best faces on determined to be okay, yet by the end of the day, once the turkey has been consumed and the plates have been cleared, it settles in big and heavy around us – the absence. There comes a point when it’s unavoidable. Not just from seeing the person missing from the table, but by that point you can feel in your heart too, feel it even through the uncomfortable fullness of your gut.

Before she died we spent Thanksgiving in the warm comfort of our home with Mom making the turkey, the Andouille stuffing, the au gratin potatoes, the roasted spaghetti squash, and the whipped sweet potatoes. I’d watch, peering around her even from a young age until allowed the task of mashing the potatoes with the hand masher she received as a wedding present in 1973. 

“Oh no, honey, not like that, like this,” she would say, apron on, sleeves rolled up as she showed me how to really put my weight into it.

I didn’t realize it then, but those moments were the beginnings of my culinary education. When I was older she gave me more to do than just mashing, and soon I was peeling and chopping the potatoes, seasoning the squash, and making the pie crust (butter AND Crisco, that’s the key). It was as though with each new thing she taught me she was silently telling me: I won’t always be around to do this for you, so you have to learn how to do it yourself.

My favorite part was always when everyone would begin to file into the dining room to take their seats. That’s the moment Mom would give me the final task – the pièce de résistance - of whipping up the gravy in the bottom of the pan. I’d take out the same old Mason jar she always used, fill it with water and flour (like she taught me), and give it a vigorous shake. 

“Good job, honey. Now just keep whisking until it comes to a boil and begins to thicken.”

And I would. And every time, like magic, it turned to gravy.

In 2007 when Mom was no longer around I prepared my first Thanksgiving on my own in my Manhattan apartment. That was the first holiday our family was no longer the four of us but the three of us, and I wanted to cook just like Mom did. I was then a 24-year-old New Yorker who not only didn’t use her oven for extra storage space, I didn’t use it full stop. Oven? What’s that? However I was determined. I made all the same things Mom used to, and spent the entire day cooking, rereading recipes, re-measuring ingredients, terrified I was going to mess something up. It was exhausting. So much so when the three of us finally sat around my little coffee table to eat I was almost too tired to pick up my fork.

How had Mom never told me how tiring it was? How did she do it every time, year in and year out?

I’ll be honest that first turkey was...not great. In fact I think it was incredibly dry but we were all too sad and missing Mom too much to notice. Over the years they’ve gotten better. Especially now that my sister helps, and we’ve taken to experimenting with things like brines. Last year, however she forgot to take the giblets out of the turkey (a foul process if you’ve never had to do it), and the year before, well, things really went downhill.

We were cooking at my dad’s house, and I’ll preface this by saying I’m not at all familiar with his fancy oven. My city apartment oven is about as basic as you can get. It has knobs. Five of them, and is so small I had to buy special mini cookie sheets for it. I’ll also say I had been up until almost two o’clock in the morning making pies, so when I woke up that day I was particularly out of it. We were trying something new - a buttermilk brine and homemade cornbread stuffing. Prepped, the turkey went in, and an hour later, the cornbread. We kept checking but after a few hours it didn’t look like the turkey was cooking. We stuck a toothpick into the cornbread on the bottom rack. Still liquid. The oven was on so what was the problem?

We were mystified until my sister lifted the foil covering the turkey and realized my gaffe. Early that morning when I, bleary eyed stumbled into the kitchen I had accidentally put the oven on BROIL instead of BAKE. Epic. Turkey. Fail. My weak defense was that the oven had too many buttons, and I ended up driving to the local grocery store that was still open (a Thanksgiving miracle!), and proceeded to buy out of their entire supply of corn muffins. As for the turkey? Well we lost three key cooking hours and ended up eating much later than planned, but once we carved away at the charred, black exterior the meat was salvageable.

For the most part.

Suffice it to say these past trials and tribulations are what prompted us to decide that maybe it’s time we leave it to the professionals. It’s a lot of work (with a lot of room for error), resulting in what is basically a whole day spent in the kitchen for a meal that takes people approximately twenty minutes to inhale. And yet. When we told our dad we made reservations at an amazing West Village restaurant, there was silence on the other end of the line. “A restaurant? But…what if you just made something easy?” he asked.

I wanted to tell him I understand Thanksgiving traditionally isn’t meant to be spent in some hipster restaurant in the Village that’s serving bone marrow and Cornish hen instead of turkey, but this is where we are now. It’s not like it used to be. We have to try to roll with the punches a bit more now that the game has changed. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say it because I get it. Thanksgiving is meant to be spent in someone’s home with dishes you know and love, dishes you count on appearing on the table on this particular day of the year (I won’t even begin to tell you how upset certain people were when we didn’t make mashed potatoes one year).

Also, it’s not what Mom would have done. Even with all she had to do she never would have not cooked Thanksgiving dinner. So we relented, and as I began to do some online research in order to find this “easy” menu I happened upon a story called Five Ways to Ruin a Turkey. My first thought was that surely broiling it is the number one way, and my second thought was there is no way to ruin a turkey. Not really. Even if you do broil it and are on the brink of tears thinking you single-handedly destroyed Thanksgiving, your family will hug you and tell you not to worry about it because it is, after all, just a turkey.

Exactly. Because the point of the whole day isn’t about the turkey (no one say that to the turkey). It’s about gathering around a table and eating food with love poured into it as we sit next to family members we haven’t seen in a while. On this day all we want are the comforts of the past, of family, of home (and of mashed potatoes).  

When I began cooking Thanksgiving dinner six years ago I experienced first hand how exhausting it is, yes, but at the same time I realized how strangely rewarding it is. Each year what my sister and I cooked brought people together. And those dishes, the recipes our mother used to cook when we were little kids and everything good, and untarnished, and light, they brought us closer to her.

Looking back on Thanksgivings gone by I can see Mom sitting at the head of that old dining room table covered with food, watching with a big smile as Dad divvied out the turkey and everyone passed around their plates eager to dig in. I know she was tired but she didn’t look it. Not in that moment. In that moment her face held something I didn’t quite understand at the time but have begun to the older I get –contentment. It was the pure, simple joy of being with the people she loved most in the world, and watching as they sat down together to eat the food she had made.

That was everything. Well, what else is there?

And so this year we will cook. We will cook because we don’t know how much longer things will be as good as they are right now. In this moment we are happy and healthy with enough money to buy the food that we will prepare for the people in our lives that we love. And while I mash the potatoes and whisk the gravy I’ll think of Mom and miss her and the way things used to be, but I’ll know she is proud of us, her daughters, for carrying on the way she would have if she were still here.

That’s why Dad didn’t want to go to a restaurant, and that’s why when he asked we didn’t mind all that much to cancel the reservation. Thanksgiving is a holiday so deeply rooted in tradition that it’s a difficult thing to try and reinvent. As a family we’ve stumbled over the last few years to find our footing, yet it is the food that always grounds us.

And so while the seats around the table may change - and four of us may become three, or five, or ten - we will always come together on Thanksgiving in the kitchen and cook. And the turkey, no matter what happens, will never be ruined.

Even if we do happen to broil it by mistake.   

Friends with Kids

Now that so many of my friends are starting to have kids I’m realizing just how big a responsibility raising a child actually is. Not that I wasn’t at least a little bit aware from having been a child myself, but there’s something about seeing the people you got drunk with at parties in college now holding small human beings that really drives it home. Wow so you’re responsible for an actual living person now? Remember when we rocked that epic game of flip cup back in ’03?

I guess when you’re a kid you just think of your parents as having always been responsible adults. You never picture them being young and stupid. They are in charge of you. They clothe and feed you. They keep you safe. They are nothing if not consummate professionals in childcare. And they have these rules.

My sister and I grew up under a very Bringing Up Bebe roof where certain rules were enforced without question. We ate what we were told when we were told. We had set bed times. We did work around the house to the point where now my sister and I have both come to realize that we can clean our apartments ten times better than the most expensive Manhattan cleaning service. Growing up we didn’t have cable or video games, and when I would mention to my dad that all my friends had televisions and phones in their rooms, his favorite line was always, “You can have your own phone and television when you have your own apartment.” Ugh, Dad. You suck.

In our house there was none of this autonomy at age four. Like, oh, you’re four so you should TOTALLY be calling the shots. Want to paint your nails? Sure. Piercings? Go for it. Be the expert on what you are willing and unwilling to wear and eat? You can definitely go to nursery school in your Halloween costume! Well, um, no, actually. I am four. I have absolutely no idea about anything. If it were up to me I’d eat nothing but peanut butter and fluff sandwiches, and watch cartoons, and wear a princess costume 24 hours a day and never sleep again ever. Because sleeping is boring and I hate it. I also hate reading. YOU KNOW NOTHING, GROWN-UP!

When I was four and dinner had, say, asparagus (that dreaded stalky vegetable my young palate did not at all prefer) I’d have to sit there until I finished it. And I oftentimes did, alone in my defiance for hours after everyone had cleaned their plates and left to go do more fun and interesting things like not sit by themselves at the kitchen table in the dark. It took a while, but before long I relented and came to realize my parents weren’t as stupid as I thought. Asparagus isn’t half bad. Maybe you guys aren’t totally horrible people after all.

At some point I turned a corner and moved on from those late night solo table sessions (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em), and came to really appreciate the finer things. By the age of eight I had wholeheartedly embraced tres fancy dishes like coq a vin, stuffed artichokes, and vichyssoise. Oh you heard me, it was cold soup and I was LOVING IT.

For me and my sister, one of our friend’s favorite stories is when we recount the time our parents took us to McDonald’s as a punishment. Yeah. That happened. Our family didn’t go out to eat very often, but when we did our parents always took us to nice restaurants, even at a young age. If we misbehaved in the slightest we left immediately, were taken into the parking lot, chastised and driven home, sometimes before the meal even arrived. On one such occasion when I was about five or six we were out at a rather nice place, and for some reason I just didn’t want to be there. Like, at all. I thought being there was quite possibly the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. And so I did what you do in a situation like that, I created a scene, and (defiantly) refused to settle down. After a few minutes, and with my sister’s knowing glares for me to shut up before I ruined it for the both of us, that was it.

Boom. We were outta there.

I can remember sitting in the McDonald’s on that sticky plastic bench, those little hamburgers getting cold on the table, a somber net cast over us against the backdrop of the florescent overhead lights. My parents sat across from us just shaking their heads saying, “If you want to act up then we won’t take you to nice places.” I remember thinking like, OH MY GOD MOM THIS IS SO MEAN, but I held it together, biting into the hamburger defiantly (always defiance with me for some reason), while my sister just sat there looking really upset. Okay, she may have cried, but she was definitely giving me that older sister look I’d come to know well of, NICE GOING…VICTORIA. She wanted to kill me because I robbed her of her rightful dinner of veal scallopini.

Oops, my bad.

I know it sounds absurd, but my parents were right. I hated that hamburger, and I really didn’t want to be there. It was as though in that moment, with each bite of that greasy monstrosity my parents made me understand that while I’m a child they always know best. They were right about the food, and they we right that I would rather be in a nice place than a McDonald’s, and if I didn’t get my act together I’d never see the buttery majesty of escargot again.

It was like, holy cow. You guys are good.

Suffice to say we never had to go back to McDonald’s again, and thinking about it now it’s so interesting to me that my parents seemed to know how to handle those sorts of situations. While neither came from money, and both were from small towns (my mom grew up in place with a population of approximately 3,000 that had exactly one restaurant), my parents were insistent that me and my sister saw things differently than the limited worldview they had when they were kids. Maybe it was weird that I was watching Masterpiece Theater instead of MTV, and eating crepes instead of chicken nuggets, but it’s just how they wanted to play things. And I’m totally okay with it.

I get that I’m not a parent now, and I’m not convinced that if I ever am I’ll know inherently what to do. As an adult I look at my parents as though they were some sort of magical force ahead of their time. They weren’t perfect to be sure, but they had a clear idea of how they wanted to raise their kids that worked better than most I’ve seen. When I look at my friends who have children I just want to be like, oh my God you guys, HOW ARE YOU EVEN DOING THIS RIGHT NOW? I don’t know that I could. There seems to be so much noise these days that my parents were never subjected to. EVERYONE is an expert, with daily “Today” show segments, and blog posts, and New York Times articles about what you’re “supposed” to do and not do as a mother and a parent, honestly…I’m feeling overwhelmed for them just thinking about it.

I guess the point here is to remind my friends - you all know best, because your best is what’s best. And truth is no one knows what they’re doing. Parenting is messy and complicated and everyone is just winging it - trial and error, learning from how they were raised, remembering what worked and what didn’t. Sure there were moments growing up when I absolutely hated my parents. I even ran away once, (DEFIANTLY), getting only as far as the end of the street before realizing, hey wait a minute, actually my folks are pretty awesome, AND I think Mom is making chicken piccata for dinner, so…

To you newly (and some not-so-newly) minted caretakers I just want to say that while I know most of you are running on just about zero sleep hours right now, take heart. It’s all going to be okay. From what I can tell parenthood is a long road devoid of drinking games but I hear it’s just about one of the most rewarding things you can to.

And if one day you happen to find yourselves sitting in front of your kids as they cry into their happy meals, well, take a moment to smile. Because trust me when I say, they’ll thank you for it later.

I bought my dead mother a Mother's Day card.

It first hit me during a random stop at Duane Reade to pick up toilet paper, saline solution, toothpaste, and dish liquid. I wasn’t thinking about much of anything save for the items on my mental list, one of which I knew I’d inevitably forget until after I paid and was back out on the sidewalk. Cart in hand I started to make my way to the back of the store where I knew each item was located. Upon turning a corner there it was, bright and big before me, a long wall of white and pink squares that stopped me in my tracks - the Mother’s Day greeting card section.

I knew deep down it was coming, the inevitable holiday sitting there at the five month mark of the year, always the second Sunday in May, just a month before my mother’s birthday. This year she would have been sixty-one. And yet for some reason it still surprised me, as though I had forgotten that other people don’t look at the holiday with as much trepidation as I do, or feel now as I feel like an outsider to a club that I used to belong to but am no longer allowed to be a part of.

People With Mothers Only.

I think about Mother’s Days past, of having gone to Duane Reade or somesuch specifically to get her a card, while now I find I try desperately to avoid the section altogether. It has been six years since I’ve had to search through cards adorned with ribbons, and glitter, and heartfelt messages about how much a mother means. What the cards don’t tell you, of course, is that you can’t really know just how much a mother means until you no longer have one. Like anything else, the absence of something invariably makes you feel it more. The absence of water causes your body to break down, the absence of food makes your stomach hurt, and the absence of my mother has made me feel like a piece of my heart has been missing since the day she died. 

And there’s no denying that she absolutely loved being a mom, and was great at it. From the moment she married my dad in a small ceremony in upstate New York in 1973, the only thing she wanted was children. When my sister came along in 1981, and then two years later me, her life, as she used to say, was complete. I never really understood what she meant by that until I got a bit older, and heard the story of how difficult it had been for her to finally have children. 

Before she had me and my sister, my mother was tragically saddled with a series of miscarriages. Five to be exact. She rarely talked about them, but when she did, even after twenty years had passed, she would still cry. She cried especially about Lisa, who for all intents and purposes is my older sister. Lisa was born in 1977 and lived for only three days. Today she would have been thirty-six. My mother is buried next to her, a sister I’ll never know and a daughter who now, I like to believe, is finally with her mother.

I looked on with envy at the handful of people who were hovering over the greeting card section. Some old, some young, men and women both, all picking up cards, reading a few lines, shrugging or smiling before putting it back and selecting another. They’re looking for just the right message, just the right tone to encapsulate all that their mother is, to them, her child.  I miss being able to do that, to buy a card for the person who has meant so much to me in the twenty-three years I was fortunate enough to have her. I realize now that Mother’s Day, like so many other things, isn’t to me what it is to other people whose mother’s are alive, and standing there I started to worry that might never change. 

Perhaps not until I have children of my own, and someday, maybe, become a mother myself?

It didn’t seem fair. 

So I approached a woman who looked to be in her mid-forties, sidled up next to her slowly like I knew I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. I hesitantly followed her lead of reaching out and picking up a card, reading the front, opening it, putting it back. I thought safety in numbers, that if I wasn’t standing there by myself looking at cards for a mother I didn’t have it wouldn’t seem as strange. 

But what is strange? What is normal? Yes I may not have a mother but I had a mother, and what began to creep up on me as I stood there was the question you ultimately have to deal with when someone close to you dies: after death just how without them are you? Once someone is physically gone are you meant to act as though they never existed? My mother is dead but does that mean she’s not still my mother? In all the years without Lisa I know my mother always felt she had three daughters, not two.

I can’t hug her, or sit and have coffee with her, or call her up on the phone to ask her advice about my love life, but I do know that little parts of her are still living on in other people across this great country. Surely that ought to count for something. And I bet the woman who has her liver, or maybe even the woman who has one of her kidneys is a mother. I think about how my mom dying allowed some other person somewhere out there to have a mother to buy a card for on Mother’s Day. And maybe that’s enough.

So I decided to buy my mother a card. I stood there for a long time, going through almost the whole section until I found just the right one. I left the store, forgetting about all the other items on my list, and went home. I wrote in that card what I wanted my mother to know. I told her how much I love her, how much she means to me, how much everything she did for me, every sacrifice, every word of encouragement, everything she taught me over the whole course of my life has helped me get to where I am today. And then I thanked her, and told her I missed her, and said Mom, I’m thirty now, can you even believe it?

I bet she can’t.

Then I wrote her name on the front of the pink envelope along with the address of the place where I grew up, the address she made me memorize on my first day of Kindergarten, and sealed it.

The card sits now in my desk drawer, signed and dated where it will remain. I did it because she deserves a card, as all mothers do, and I think every Mother’s Day from now on I’ll do the same, buy her a card, sign it, seal it, and file it away. Because what I realized is that when it comes to this amazing woman who brought me into the world, no matter what happens, even long after we become disintegrated bodies in disintegrated boxes under people’s boot soles there’s one thing that will always be true - I am her daughter, she is my mother. And that will never change.

                                                              

The Truth About Thirty

There I was on the subway, earbuds in listening to God knows what (fine, it was Rihanna), and at each stop the doors would open - bing bong! - and more people would get on, and more people would get off. To tell you the truth I was sitting there not really thinking about anything in particular. Ugh, okay that's a lie too. The truth is I was actually sitting there counting the number of days I have left of my 20’s and feeling a bit depressed.

Do you want to know how many days it is? Eight. Eight days. A terrifyingly small amount when you think about it, which let me tell you I've been trying very hard not to do. Eight. That’s basically a week. You can count the days on both hands.

And I was thinking well shit, thirty already? It’s that feeling of knowing something is a reality but being so in denial about it that you’re still somehow surprised. Like when you come back from that weeklong vacation where you didn’t exercise once, and ate and drank like you’d die if you didn’t have those two bottles of wine every night with dinner PLUS dessert, and finding your pants are tight. All of a sudden it’s like, HOW CAN THIS BE!? You look down, hands tugging at each side of your hard-to-button jeans, your face cloaked in incredulity. You look up to the mirror, and then down at your pants, and then up again, and all that pops into your head is complete and total absurd denial. 

Perhaps they shrunk in the wash. 

Maybe the humidity is making my body expand. 

Are these even my pants?  

Because the truth is you'll think of just about anything but the truth when the truth isn't what you want it to be. Whenever that happens to me I've found that denial is by far the easiest place to run to. The gym also helps. But with count 'em eight days to go I'm all out of escape routes. There's nothing left but to face the truth, and that truth is capital "T" Thirty, and me asking the question: So what's supposed to happen from here? 

Because right now Thirty is an overpriced studio apartment in Manhattan where my refrigerator is plugged in with an extension cord. Thirty is still working on the novel (third round of rewrites. At which round are you supposed to give up?), and the career, and the debt that I'm thinking now may not be erased until I'm on Social Security. Thirty is the beginning of wrinkles and 50 shades of erratic grey hairs. Thirty is also accepting the fact that the men I've loved over the past decade all didn't love me back. Or at least didn't love me enough. Which means Thirty is trying the I-never-thought-it-would-come-to-this world of online dating.

As I sat there on the subway thinking about these things, and about how this next birthday is going to affect my online dating age bracket (moving up to the 30-35 box, the horror!), the doors opened at West 4th Street, and an older looking man walked on the train. Upon seeing a large expanse of empty seats he, for some reason, chose to sit right next to me. And I mean rightnexttome. What I noticed first was the expensive looking shiny brown leather envelope briefcase he was clutching tightly to his chest. I noticed it not because it was beautiful, (though it was), but because it seemed out of place for someone wearing paint spattered jeans, a slightly pungent hoodie sweatshirt, and black sneakers so worn I'd suspect he purchased them sometime in the mid to late 80's (ah the 80's, I was so young then!). Something didn't add up. 

Are all of his suits at the dry cleaners? 

Is he helping paint his penthouse? 

Maybe he's doing some sort of social experiment. 

And so went the denial until I noticed the girl across from me looking on with what appeared to be real disgust registering on her face. Slow and with fear rising up in my chest, I turned to find that from that beautiful shiny leather case this man had pulled out a set of yellowed and dirty-looking partial dentures (Maxillary? Mandibular? Does it make a difference?), and was now attempting to squeeze some sort of pink adhesive paste around its surface. Well, quite.

He was mumbling something incoherent to himself as he did this, inexpertly wielding the tube to the point where the thick pink stuff was getting on just about everything but the place it needed to go. I took that as my cue to stand up and move across from him, figuring considerable distance during a situation such as this is probably preferable. The girl and I continued to look on in equal parts amazement, amusement, and let's face it acceptance because this is after all the New York City subway. 

I wondered if he'd stolen the briefcase or if he'd simply just lost his mind. Either one, I suppose, were very real possibilities. And as he sat there continuing to struggle pasting and adhering his teeth, I couldn't help but laugh. Not at him but at how foolish I'd been up until the moment he walked on the train. 

Thirty may be a lot of things, looming up ahead like an unavoidable hangman in the doorway of my youth, but I realized that for all I don't have (who needs an apartment with a real kitchen anyway?), there's so much I do that I'm really very grateful for. Including, but by no means limited to, my teeth. 

Added bonus? I figure that while I still have them their presence really ought to help drum up my online dating numbers, regardless of what age bracket I happen to fall in. 

And that's the capital "T" Truth.

RE: Bro's Craigslist Ad for Date to Wedding

New York Daily News headline for February 20, 2013:

BROTHERS’ HILARIOUS, BIZARRE CRAIGSLIST AD TO FIND DATES FOR COUSIN’S WEDDING GOES VIRAL, ELICITING MORE THAN 800 RESPONSES. 

“Dave, 28, and Mike, 24, originally of Albany, promise dates ‘eccentric/downright dangerous bro-2-bro dance moves’ and royalties once their night is turned into a romantic comedy. They say they are overwhelmed and need to sort through the deluge of replies.”

Whoa. Dudes. Thank you SO much for giving me this great idea for the next wedding I have to go to. All this time I’ve been going by myself, or you know, just asking someone I actually know. But what an idea to take an ad out and interview someone like it’s a job application. Nothing says romance quite like, “Feel free to include a resume!”

And I’ll give you credit, you’ve totally pegged the we’re-quirky-in-a-cute-and-endearing-way that women seem to love. Crazy Christmas sweaters! Bro-2-bro dance moves! And where did you guys get those American flag swim trunks? You guys are basically the Mr. Darcy of my generation. I mean, 800 responses so far? WITH a PowerPoint presentation?  Pure gold. With numbers like that you could put Match.com out of business.

I also appreciate how this is helping put our hometown of Albany, New York on the map (Go Shaker Bison! I was on the tennis team and we used to kick Saratoga’s butt! #athleticstats!) We haven’t had anyone fun come out of that place since Andy Rooney. Did you notice that the local Times Union even picked you guys up? The story has what might be the best combo of a scary and weird headline of all time: “You could be the dream Craigslist wedding date.” Hilarious!

And when the TU picks you up you know you’ve arrived. My sister and I got our picture in there circa 1992 when we had a lemonade stand at the end of our street in Loudonville. Must have been a slow news day, but I’ll admit our lemonade was the shit. None of that from concentrate nonsense. Did I mention that photo placement changed our lives?

OK. So let’s get to the good stuff, and talk about your list of guarantees for the night.

• An excuse to get dressed up: So does this mean I have to wear an eccentric festive sweater and/or anything patriotic?

• Open bar and food all night: I’m a 29 year-old professional woman who lives in Manhattan, and let me tell you there’s nothing I love more than a guy who doesn’t have to buy me dinner or a drink. 

• Eccentric/downright dangerous bro-2-bro dance moves (may need to sign a waiver): I’m confused here. I get that you’re brothers, but does this mean you’ll both just be dancing with each other all night? If so that’s fine. I know the entire dance to Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend.”

• Adventure: In Saratoga? I mean, I guess. It’s not even August. How can there be adventure without horses? If I ever own a horse I’m going to name it Heavens to Betsy.

• Mystery: Will you be wearing masks?

• Suspense: Is this one of those murder-mystery weddings where everyone shows up as a specific character? I went to someone’s birthday like that once when I was in junior high, and it was a lot of fun. I was the murderer.

• True love: 50% of first marriages end in divorce, but I’m really rooting for your cousin. Oh, and speaking of your cousin, how does the bride feel about you guys stealing the thunder from her big day? I'm assuming that’s probably sort of a sore subject at this point. If you choose me I'm definitely going to need some time to beef up on my self-defense skills before we show up. #bridezillas.

• Royalties once our night's story is developed into a romantic comedy*

*if this happens (we estimate the chances at 85%) we refuse the right to let Ashton Kutcher play either of our characters, however, we will consider him for a supporting role. Can we call it “You Could be the Dream Craigslist Wedding Date?” And this sounds more like a Lifetime “based on a true story” movie to me. *People tell me I look like Lizzy Caplan.

Good news for all of us! You won’t believe the exact amazing compliment I’ve been getting from men my whole life. It’s what every girl is dying to hear: “You’re pretty, but not too pretty.” Bingo! Also, I too aspire to be with someone who doesn’t have time to get to know me, and can just make things up when I’m meeting their family for the first time. #keepingitclassy.

Listen, I understand the two of you have some pretty difficult decisions to make here. Getting bombarded by messages from women all trying to convince you to go out with them isn’t easy. Ugh, life is SO hard for guys these days, amiright? But knowing a woman’s high school athletic statistics along with how many jobs she’s had really is the best way to find the right match. So keep pressing on, boys. You have a date with destiny.

And when all is said and done in this American Idol of love and dating you guys have created, I really do believe you’ll both find your Kelly Clarkson’s (or at least the oftentimes more successful runner-up).

So here's to the happy couple! You know, the one that’s getting married.