Christmas with the 'Beat clan

Took a family photo at the mall here today. I've seen photos of hostages that look happier than I did. Told the guy at the studio that the next time I take a picture, I'll be wearing a paper bag.

 

This is why I offer to shoot the photo myself. Not only do I detest being in photos, but I usually look like I'm about to maul the photographer.

 

H_B, I know you'd rather be hanging upside down by your toenails than there right now, but that was comedy gold.

 

Do you hold your family outings at Knick games?

 

I said wearing a paper bag, not holding an indictment for sexual harassment.

 

Hang in there, HB. Just catching up on this thread. Hope the rest of your stay goes better.

 

maybe try the airing of grievances or the feats of strength to lighten the mood...

 

It certainly helped at my (parents') residence. ...

 

i told you fuckers to start drinking. when are you going to listen?

 

I used to like my in-laws better than I liked my own family. But I've been married 17 years and 50 weeks, and, well, I'm just not like them. They start talking about guns and tractors and chainsaws and motor lifts and driving in the mud, and my irate soccer mom stories just don't fit. Thansgiving is usually better. At least then I actually get to fire a gun at the annual skeet shoot. At Christmas, invariably I get left in a room by myself. We spend more time there than we do with my family, which takes the guerilla approach to the holidays: Coupla hours. Eat. Open some gifts. Get the hell out before the collateral damage can be counted.

 

At a party Saturday night and I was beered out so I had a glass of wine. The host decided he'd have one too. Sister in law walks in and says "What a Brokeback Mountain moment."
At best, I deal with her; at worst I've gone months without speaking to her. I told her to fuck herself.

Tomorrow ought to be fun.

 

Lord, beer me strength.

Last night, as my wife went to bed, she reminded me to wash the kitchen and bathroom floors and said thanks for all the work I'd done cleaning up over the last few days. Emboldened by the COMPLIMENT (hi Slappy!), I washed the floors. But I was tired and wanted to finish the SJ Xmas story and wanted to get some sleep, so I left the chairs from the kitchen table in the living room along with the two piles of laundry I had to take downstairs and some random odds and ends I had to put away. I also had to vacuum the spare room. It was half an hour of tidying up, tops.

So imagine my surprise when my wife shook me awake at 8:15, a good two hours before I was supposed to get up. "This place is a mess!" she said. "It's awful! I don't know whether to puke or cry! And the lip of the sink is stuck and the water won't go down!"

I got up, figuring it'd take me five minutes to fix the sink and put the chairs back. Of course, it was easy to fix the sink and put the chairs back. Then I hear her yell. "THE PHONES DON'T WORK!! GODDAMNIT OF ALL THE DAYS FOR THE PHONES NOT TO WORK THEY DON'T WORK TODAY!!!"

She tells me to go into the spare room and check the modem before she calls the cable company. I see the modem unplugged. I plug it in. Problem solved.

But of course, it didn't end there. The phones working, my wife calls my mother-in-law and vents to her. So mother-in-law says she's coming over earlier to help. Never mind my mother-in-law has been a hypochondriac since 1872 and is too sore to do anything.

"Hurry up and finish everything!" my wife says.

"I thought she was coming over to help," I said.

"She is but we have to clean this mess!"

"But that's why she's coming over: To help clean this mess."

"Just clean everything!"

"If you'd told her to come at her normal time, we'd be done by then."

She spun her head around and around and started spewing pea soup. Then she starts the ranting and raving about how next year we're not hosting anyone or doing anything for her birthday.

"Fine by me," I said.

"WHY IS THAT FINE BY YOU?"

My mother-in-law and wife's grandmother get here and the house is clean. Then my mother-in-law starts complaining about how she's stuffed. It's 10 fucking am on Christmas Eve and she's stuffed. That's a lot like feeling winded in the first mile of a marathon.

Of course, stuffed is a relative term. She's 105 lbs. She keeps telling me how much she ate for breakfast. "What'd you have?" I say. "A few nuts, a protein bar and my coffee." That's not even a snack, I think to my fat self.

Then grandma wants to put her coat away, but she tells me the coat rack--which she gave us--needs to be raised because otherwise the coats will brush against the floor. I say OK. But after we lift it, she tells me one side is a little looser than the other and we have to fix it b/c the rack might collapse and, you know, coats might fall on the carpet. They can't handle that. And never mind we've had this rack since last Christmas and it's fallen all of zero times. She insists I must screw the other side into place. She's 85 and a saint so I don't lose patience with her.

instead, many, many attempts later, I politely give up and my wife--who has since explained to me the reason she's in such a bad mood is because she had a bad dream about her best friend, I kid you not, who can make this shit up--figures it out.

Now she's talking to her best friend and laughing and singing Christmas songs with my mother-in-law. And we're still 24 hours away from landing in the relative sanity of my parents' house. Beer. I don't drink but I need beer.