(no subject)
Hope everyone had a fabulous holiday...I would've wished everyone so before I went out of town, but I'm an idiot and, of course, was running late Friday morning and my bro and dad were tapping their feet waiting for me so we could head out. And thanks to my lovelies for the wonderful texts on Christmas! Again, my apologies for not sending similar messages but (A) I still can't text and (B) I'm an even bigger idiot because I left my cell phone in Iowa on the floor by my bed plugged into the damn charger. Of course, I realize this about an hour out of town....too far to make my dad turn back. The trip to Springfield, MO went relatively quickly....it wasn't the "ohmigod, 7 hours feels like FOREVER" shit that I went through as a kid. I just picked up a book and plugged myself into the highly criticized stylings of Mr. Tyler "I'm a Douche" Hilton. Yes, I know he's a bit of an ass, but his voice absolutely kills me every time. Anywho, allow me to outline my break:
- Friday: Arrived at my aunt and uncle's place in Springfield, sat around the house with my cousin, ate THE BEST lasagna of my life at Avanzare, an italian ristoraunte with a Mexican former-boxer head chef. It's a requirement of mine that we visit Avanzare at least once whenever we go down there because they honestly have awesome food. And my uncle, being the bigshot doc around town, knows the chef and we always get him sitting down with us and having us sample various bottles of wine. I can't complain. I tried oysters rockafeller. They tasted okay, but I'm a very tactile person. I don't like slimy, mushy things in my mouth...even if I can't taste onions, if I feel them crunch in my mouth, I have to spit it out. After dinner we just sat around all night watching TV.
- Saturday: woke up to a bacon and eggs breakfast with my aunt's famous bran muffins...every Christmas since I can remember she makes these muffins, and they sound gross, but they're so good. The rest of the day was spent running errands to see friends or picking up a whole shopping bag of free drugs from my uncle's office, then watching football. We went over to see some family friends and meet a new fiancee that night, had some drinks, laughed a lot. My cousin's friends from high school, Clayton and Curtis, were there...Curtis just got engaged and Clayton was hot, but I came to find out later that he had a girlfriend...damn.
- Sunday: Ate Christmas breakfast, consisting of cheesy mushroom eggs, more bacon, and buckwheat pancakes! Opened presents, or rather, present, while my cousins opened ALL of theirs, lol. Then we started in on the preparing of Christmas dinner. When it was all ready to go, we started drinking heavily....around 2:00 pm. We broke out an almost full bottle of Jack, a brand new bottle of Captain, lots of tequila, and then we started playing craps on the pool table. After craps, we headed back to the kitchen to finish the food and play a little texas hold 'em, which was basically my aunt stealing everyone's money. Ouch. Then we ate WAY too much food...it was seriously Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings multiplied by 10. And enjoyed with another couple glasses of wine. We had just gotten the dishes cleaned up when Clayton and Curtis' family stopped over, followed by a few other people from the night before. Which turned into more drinking, my 30+ year old cousin performing magic tricks, more texas hold 'em, arguments about whether a Wyland painting was a bottle-nosed dolphin or a pilot whale and, finally, bedtime around 2:00 am. My head was spinning. The bottles of Captain and Jose Cuervo were gone at the end of the night.
- Monday: Spent most of the day riding around on a golf cart while my bro, dad, aunt, uncle, and cousin played 18 holes at the golf course they live on. It was a balmy 65 degrees down there the whole time if you can believe it. What I thought would be a boring 5-hour outing turned into hilarity, as NO ONE could hit the ball to save their lives. So many shanks and drops, it was ridiculously funny. Pretty sure half of us were still hungover. The night was topped off with leftovers and a couple of movies.
So all in all, a very fun but tiring trip to Missouri. 'Twas good times. And I'm so not ready to go back to work tomorrow. Ugh. Anybody get anything good for Christmas? My rum balls were an instant success, naturally. Although, considering my dad's side of the family are a bunch of drunks, there sure were a lot of comments that the rum balls were pretty strong. Wusses.
Oh yeah, and in all of my ramblings about the fun of the holidays I must've pushed to the back of my mind one very important thing. My dad told us last Thursday that my aunt in Cedar Rapids, the one who we always spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with, the one who was so amazing in helping us with my mom during and after everything, has multiple sclerosis. They think she may have had it for 20 years, give or take, but my uncle in MO (he's a family care doctor specializing in geriatrics) said it takes a good 10-15 years to diagnose it. But basically, things don't look good for her. She's already having trouble with stairs, having to rest for quite awhile after going up or down them. Before we know it she'll be in a nursing home or the hospital with a feeding tube. Just what this family needs.....Bitter, party of one?