Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear
Damn, I haven't eaten this much since I was pregnant 16 years ago.
How y'all feelin' out there! Had a good "Chrismukkawanzaawalidan", I hope? Well, even if you didn't, at least you're still here to bitch about it so it can't be all bad. I'm pretty depleted of the holiday spirit, to tell you the truth. I can only be so nice for so long before I start to piss myself off.
Here's how it went in my neck o' the willowy woods:
Christmas Eve was spent at my mom's with various relatives. As is tradition since the olden days of my ancestors, gifts were opened at the stroke of midnight. This night is mostly reserved for the young offspring of the family since it's roughly a 10 gift per 1 child ratio. If we made time for the adults, too, we'd be there til noon.
Of January.
It went alright, I guess. I arrived just shy of midnight because I had to work and by that time, the only people really excited were the ones too young to know what a farce the Santa shit all was. Everyone else was rather apathetic considering that they've arrived at the culmination of weeks and weeks of high stress and should've felt relief. (Well, they were almost apathetic. Or kind of apathetic? Eh, I don't care.)
All I know is that there were a lot of people who had already fallen asleep throughout the house and my mom had already told her best stories. I ate leftovers.
The next day: Christmasation!
Christmas was spent at my favorite aunt's house with various cousins and that was way better. WAAAY better. Her house is always the more informal of visits and infinitely more lively since we can dress like we want, act like we want, drink and carouse like we want. Wrecking of furniture optional. She's so cool.
After bestowing the European double-cheek fake air kiss on everyone and pouring the first of many glasses of Argentinian Merlot, I took my shoes off and sat on the floor. I had already gotten my main gift -- an upgraded stereo system for The Nostromo (the name I lovingly christened my truck when I bought it five years ago) -- so I just settled down to yet more vilification of The Man Jesus and watched the greed unfold.
This was the first thing I laid eyes on as I walked into the living room -- my aunt's treasured nativity scene. She fashioned it herself using a bunch of cardboard boxes, a brown tablecloth, and a whole lot of naivetee on the religion thing.
I felt sorry for Frosty so I placed him next to the Baby Jesus. I figured one mythical character was just as good as the other and no one should feel left out. I wanted to put Frosty IN the crib, but my staunchly Catholic mother was scandalized as it was and probably would've had an aneuryism.
My cousin Richard got a gecko pipe from his sister, my cousin Veronica (they are the only two children of favorite aunt). Don't know if you can quite see the googly eyes of the thing, but it was pretty entertaining. Even more entertaining was the fact that my mom kept remarking how she never knew Richard smoked tobacco and asked what flavor he liked. Maui Wowie jokes abounded while she remained clueless.
But that wasn't the best gift. Oooooh, no. Because when my cousin Veronica received HER gift from her brother? Squeals of "No way!" and "Are you kidding me?!" and "Dude!" filled the room. Behold:
OMGWTF ATARI!!!
The box was promptly torn from her hands, opened, and a spare t.v. was dragged from the hall closet and set up in the dining room. We dearly wished to have plugged it into the big screen, but the "adults" of the family were currently watching -- and cattily snarking at -- the spanish music awards and it's scantily-clad recipients. (I quickly lost interest when told Antonio Banderas wasn't scheduled to appear anywhere.)
The first game we played was:
Freakin' Centipede, y'all! The seven of us jostled each other for turns and spent about three hours in heated competition. I won second place, but that was only because my high score went bye-bye when I got up to get more wine and one of my cousins "forgot" to keep the game paused.
However, my turn had to come around again some time, didn't it? Of course it did. And so cold revenge was met when people got their cheating asses handed to them on this next game:
River Raid. None could withstand my Fighter Jet of Justice. And I did it while half in the bag, people.
I sat this next one out because it was a little too cheesy even for me:
Frog Pond. All you do is jump around and dart your tongue out to catch flies. Or "flies" because they just looked like square pixel things you could probably do a better job drawing with your mouse.
Now this game was the shiz:
Outlaw. Just look at the technology. You've got two horse wranglers dodging and weaving around a lone cactus plant trying to take each other down with a not-very-swiftly drawn Ruger. When you score a hit, your opponent doesn't really die...he sort of flops down on his chapped ass with his legs sticking straight out in front of him as if to say, "Whoo doggies! That tires a feller out!" I cried laughter playing this.
And that's another thing, the laughter. There are only two people in my entire family who can match my crazy belly laughs: my sister and my cousin Veronica. The others are just poor imitations. Oh, but put all seven of us cousins together and you've got a cacophony so obnoxious the "adults" in the other room finally gave up shushing us and just turned the big screen on louder.
Good. Bleepin'. Times.
So that's Christmas in a nutshell, you may now consider the bitch celebrated. Too much food, too much liquor, hella laughter and a kickass family. I'd rather have that than all the car stereos in the world...
...actually, that's pushing it because I did get a pretty sweet system.
And it has an off button which is something my family lacks.
How y'all feelin' out there! Had a good "Chrismukkawanzaawalidan", I hope? Well, even if you didn't, at least you're still here to bitch about it so it can't be all bad. I'm pretty depleted of the holiday spirit, to tell you the truth. I can only be so nice for so long before I start to piss myself off.
Here's how it went in my neck o' the willowy woods:
Christmas Eve was spent at my mom's with various relatives. As is tradition since the olden days of my ancestors, gifts were opened at the stroke of midnight. This night is mostly reserved for the young offspring of the family since it's roughly a 10 gift per 1 child ratio. If we made time for the adults, too, we'd be there til noon.
Of January.
It went alright, I guess. I arrived just shy of midnight because I had to work and by that time, the only people really excited were the ones too young to know what a farce the Santa shit all was. Everyone else was rather apathetic considering that they've arrived at the culmination of weeks and weeks of high stress and should've felt relief. (Well, they were almost apathetic. Or kind of apathetic? Eh, I don't care.)
All I know is that there were a lot of people who had already fallen asleep throughout the house and my mom had already told her best stories. I ate leftovers.
The next day: Christmasation!
Christmas was spent at my favorite aunt's house with various cousins and that was way better. WAAAY better. Her house is always the more informal of visits and infinitely more lively since we can dress like we want, act like we want, drink and carouse like we want. Wrecking of furniture optional. She's so cool.
After bestowing the European double-cheek fake air kiss on everyone and pouring the first of many glasses of Argentinian Merlot, I took my shoes off and sat on the floor. I had already gotten my main gift -- an upgraded stereo system for The Nostromo (the name I lovingly christened my truck when I bought it five years ago) -- so I just settled down to yet more vilification of The Man Jesus and watched the greed unfold.
This was the first thing I laid eyes on as I walked into the living room -- my aunt's treasured nativity scene. She fashioned it herself using a bunch of cardboard boxes, a brown tablecloth, and a whole lot of naivetee on the religion thing.
I felt sorry for Frosty so I placed him next to the Baby Jesus. I figured one mythical character was just as good as the other and no one should feel left out. I wanted to put Frosty IN the crib, but my staunchly Catholic mother was scandalized as it was and probably would've had an aneuryism.
My cousin Richard got a gecko pipe from his sister, my cousin Veronica (they are the only two children of favorite aunt). Don't know if you can quite see the googly eyes of the thing, but it was pretty entertaining. Even more entertaining was the fact that my mom kept remarking how she never knew Richard smoked tobacco and asked what flavor he liked. Maui Wowie jokes abounded while she remained clueless.
But that wasn't the best gift. Oooooh, no. Because when my cousin Veronica received HER gift from her brother? Squeals of "No way!" and "Are you kidding me?!" and "Dude!" filled the room. Behold:
OMGWTF ATARI!!!
The box was promptly torn from her hands, opened, and a spare t.v. was dragged from the hall closet and set up in the dining room. We dearly wished to have plugged it into the big screen, but the "adults" of the family were currently watching -- and cattily snarking at -- the spanish music awards and it's scantily-clad recipients. (I quickly lost interest when told Antonio Banderas wasn't scheduled to appear anywhere.)
The first game we played was:
Freakin' Centipede, y'all! The seven of us jostled each other for turns and spent about three hours in heated competition. I won second place, but that was only because my high score went bye-bye when I got up to get more wine and one of my cousins "forgot" to keep the game paused.
However, my turn had to come around again some time, didn't it? Of course it did. And so cold revenge was met when people got their cheating asses handed to them on this next game:
River Raid. None could withstand my Fighter Jet of Justice. And I did it while half in the bag, people.
I sat this next one out because it was a little too cheesy even for me:
Frog Pond. All you do is jump around and dart your tongue out to catch flies. Or "flies" because they just looked like square pixel things you could probably do a better job drawing with your mouse.
Now this game was the shiz:
Outlaw. Just look at the technology. You've got two horse wranglers dodging and weaving around a lone cactus plant trying to take each other down with a not-very-swiftly drawn Ruger. When you score a hit, your opponent doesn't really die...he sort of flops down on his chapped ass with his legs sticking straight out in front of him as if to say, "Whoo doggies! That tires a feller out!" I cried laughter playing this.
And that's another thing, the laughter. There are only two people in my entire family who can match my crazy belly laughs: my sister and my cousin Veronica. The others are just poor imitations. Oh, but put all seven of us cousins together and you've got a cacophony so obnoxious the "adults" in the other room finally gave up shushing us and just turned the big screen on louder.
Good. Bleepin'. Times.
So that's Christmas in a nutshell, you may now consider the bitch celebrated. Too much food, too much liquor, hella laughter and a kickass family. I'd rather have that than all the car stereos in the world...
...actually, that's pushing it because I did get a pretty sweet system.
And it has an off button which is something my family lacks.