It Looked Good On Paper
Surely, famous last words of many an intrepid traveller. My Thanksgiving should have been perfect. It should have been fun. It should have been relaxing. It was none of those things. This post will probably turn out to be very long, so if you'd rather not listen to my ranting or just not taint the fond memories of your Thanksgiving, please hit the "Home" button now.
It all started off innocently enough. Met my mom at Mass Mills after I got off at work, packed my clothes and ski stuff, put her car in the parking garage across the street and we're off. I'd put it at 3 in the afternoon. Before we left, we looked at the directions to Attitash and saw that they wanted us to travel on what was essentially a back road all the way from Portsmouth to Conway. I thought this was rather silly and that there must be a better way. According to the map, we could take 93 the whole way up and take a different, albeit much shorter back road and get right to the mountain. Should have saved us a lot of time. Really really looked good on paper. So we get up 93 easy enough, even though my "navigator" was too busy with clients to have a decent conversation with, and we get to the exit. We pass Loon on our way east, which looked like it had snow, so that's a good sign, right? We continue and find we're entering the White Mountain National Forest. Also pretty cool, but it was dark so we wouldn't be doing much in the way of sightseeing. Then we start going up. And up. And up some more. The temperature had fallen to 11ºF and it was snowing by the time we got to the top. There was no cell phone service either. If we had any car trouble, we were stuck there. Well, not on my watch. We started to descend at a 7% grade for about 10 miles, but it felt like forever. No way was I getting stuck on this damn mountain. We finally get to the bottom and I see our turn. Only it wasn't our turn because the road was closed. We were told later that it was probably because of moose. Of course. As a result, we ended up going into Conway anyway and it only took 4.5 hours. Not all that bad, unless you consider that it only took us 2.5 hours to get home on Sunday.
We get to the hotel and go up to the penthouse. It was nice. Not really what I was expecting in a penthouse, but it was big and it was on top of the hotel, so it meets all the necessary criteria. I took plenty of pictures. If I ever figure out how to display them in a decent fashion, I'll link it up. Anyway, I barely get the fireplace on and my tired butt on the couch when my mom tells me we're going food shopping. Right now. We brought NOTHING for Thanksgiving dinner. This was the plan all along too. Nothing too exciting to talk about there. Food shopping is food shopping. Another 2 hours and $250 later I was finally allowed to lie down. I was tired. I had a headache. I was eating dinner at 10 PM. At least I was fortunate enough to snag the only single in the place. A single with no windows. Yep, my bedroom had no windows, like it was a back closet or something that they threw a bed in so they could charge more. It was surreal, waking up and having no idea what time it was. No matter, it was a nice room with its own TV and one of the bright points of my trip.
Thanksgiving Day was nice. Brandon hadn't arrived, it was snowing, and I got up just in time for the parade. CBS did a decent enough job with it. At least it wasn't the horror that was the NBC broadcast. It was as if they were running Broadway commericals all day with the suspicion that there might be some kind of parade going on somewhere in the city. They didn't even report on the light post that fell on that crowd. I'm sure they were re-running that shitty song and dance number from the "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" show. Who the hell decided to make that into a Broadway show? Arrggg! Brandon arrived a few hours after the parade ended and I knew my vacation was over. He wanted a fight, he needed to fight. I was watching the Avatar marathon on Nick when he walked in, watched it for 5 minutes, then told me I always watch stupid crap, while in the same breath asking if I had brought any good movies to watch. Well shit Brandon, I doubt it, seeing as how I always watch stupid crap. Dinner was no better. Nobody could say anything without causing him some sort of affront. Luckily, he stumbled into world socieo-economic policy halfway through the turkey, so I quickly and soundly destroyed him. His only and repeated defense was that his sociology book told him these things, so he must be right. Yea, and I don't read. He slinked away from the table and was quiet for a while, until he got a few more beers in him, but I was done for the day by then and retired to read for a bit before going to sleep.
I can ski! I know, it's crazy. I haven't skiied in 5 years and it's like I never stopped. On Friday, we went up to Bretton Woods to ski because Attitash wasn't open, didn't have snow, and didn't look like they were attempting to make snow. Brandon decided to not go with us for whatever reason, so of course my mom was worried that he had just up and left while we were gone and how terrible that would be and blah blah blah. Tell somebody who cares, would ya? I wasn't going to let her ruin my first outing in so long. The trails that were open were moderately groomed and exactly the way I like them. It should be challenging, not just a flat sheet. It's harder to spot ice when it's all flat anyway. Adding to the challenge were all the beginners making their way down the mountain, in snowplow formation, taking half the damn trail in each turn, and generally making the hill twice as dangerous. I mean, you don't want to stop in the middle of a good run just because of these guys, but you don't want to zoom past them, catch an edge on something, and end up having a yard sale either. I managed to keep it together for the 90 minutes we were able to ski. Yes, 90 minutes and yes, able. My mom is falling apart and between not having any duct tape on hand and her worried about her favorite son, we had to go. After we got back we watched Shaun of The Dead and Noises Off, which were total crap according to Brandon. We had dinner, mom and I went for a swim, then I took a shower and went to bed. Terse ending, I know, but it's all kind of a blur.
By Saturday, I wanted to have nothing to do with Brandon. I was done already. It felt like I was in prison becuase god knows what would have happened if I tried to leave. Heaven forbid! So I faked a sinus attack and read Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix all day while everyone else skiied, taking breaks to watch it snow and fix myself more tea. When I go, mom can ski for 90 minutes. When Brandon goes, she can ski all bloody day apparently. He's such a good boy. They came home, we had dinner, then we all took up seats around the TV. I'm on the other side of the room, furthest from the TV, when everyone decided that they wanted to watch Office Space. Great, I love that movie! Then I realize everyone is staring at me. These people, sitting at least 10 feet closer to the TV than I was, needed me to make it go. All I could think was, "It's a DVD player, not a freaking particle accelerator!" I then understood, perhaps for the first time, what a real Baby vs. Rhino scenario is. I refused to get up. They were going to at least try to operate this mystical machine and make it spew forth Office Space. After much huffing and acting quite put out, my mom put her glasses on and, by some miracle, got it to work.
This wasn't the end of my trials with my tribe though, since Brandon made it a point of ruining the movie. I admit I do this sometimes, where I'll say a line out loud and not even realize I'm doing it, but once I catch myself, I'm pretty good. Brandon? No way. He was saying at least every other line and looking quite pleased with himself, as if he was telling the jokes. He was at least 5 "Yeah"s ahead of Lumberg when he made the mistake of asking my mom if she liked the movie, to which she replied, "I might if I could hear it." "What's that supposed to mean?" I'd had enough, "It means shut up!" "Why don't you go fuck yourself?" Excellent idea, Brandon, I might just do that. I can see how I totally deserved that one. Beyond having enough at that point, I retreated to my bedroom with no windows as soon as the movie was over and read some more. Everyone else was tired, so they went to bed and didn't tell me. They didn't need to, it was the first time it was quiet since they got home.
Sunday was impossible. I told my mom the night before that check out was at 11 AM. I was up at 8 so that I could be packed and showered by 9. Everyone else? Nah, let's take our time. Thank god Ashley was there or I would have killed the lot of them. She was great all weekend. She helped me pack all the foodstuffs and literally kick mom and Brandon out the door by 11. We have all our stuff in the right cars, we've said our goodbyes, and Brandon wants us to check out this awesome lake...somewhere. My mom is absolutely horrified by my callousness that I didn't want to go. Too damn bad, the bus is leaving and I'm the driver. I drove home in silence. My mom was busy making excuses for Brandon's performance, but I wasn't having any of it. The best one was, "What are you so upset about? Brandon picked on Ashley a lot more than you." Super! That makes me feel so much better! After many delays and general dilly-dallying in Lowell that included leafing through all my mail, my mom finally left and I was alone. My neck and shoulders were killing me. I could feel my eyes closing of their own accord. How does somebody go on vacation and come back in worse shape than when they left? But oh no, it wasn't over. When my mom was on the ferry, she called to tell me that the Giants and Seahawks were tied and there was no way to watch / listen to the game on the boat, so she wanted me to do the play by play for her until somebody won. Read it again, I had to. Yea, she didn't care what I was doing. I was Al fucking Michaels until somebody won. She let me go early, since I wasn't "into it". I guess I better not quit my day job.
Why am I going home for Christmas? What purpose could there possibly be to subject myself to this again in one month's time? At least if I stay here alone I can precisely meter out how miserable I'll be, instead of going to a house full of allergens, IT assignments, and people who get off on making me upset AND will forget my birthday, just like last year. Why should I even bother? Would anyone even notice? I wonder.