I should be writing an academic paper for my grad school applications, and yet here I sit about to tell you about my life. Although, it could be argued that there is nothing really academic about my choice of topics (the elimination of the mother figure in Disney movies), and probably nothing remotely unique either, and yet, I simply cannot bring myself to do it, feeling it is much more important to update my silly little diary. If this hasn’t further fueled the arguments of certain people in my life that I’m afraid of success, I don’t know what will. But yes, the diary, the DIARY’. All set? Here we go.
I managed to keep my head from exploding and looked smashing while I did so. I worked on Tuesday, but it was a dead dead dead day. All the more lovely, as it gave me ample chances to get caught up on old business and then I didn’t have enough time to start any new projects, thus had a perfect excuse to be a slacker for the remainder of the day. Or work at the same speed as normal people. As God as my witness, something will change in my job in the next six months or I will spontaneously combust.
I ran around looking for last minute gifts after work, but was dissuaded from actually obtaining any of them whenever I’d look at filled parking lots and the long lines in the stores. I’m starting to not enjoy Christmas. Especially because it seems to require a level of organization and forethought that I simply don’t have the energy to achieve. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am relatively organized and manage to select gifts which are just so and it seems to make the receivers very happy indeed. However, I’m still wrapping gifts at the last minute and worrying that I didn’t get enough and that I missed someone and that my cards won’t make it out by Christmas Eve (normally I like to have them done on the weekend after Thanksgiving, but this year, with the 50+ hours I spent on applications, it was an impossible goal, and I got them in the mail with only seconds to spare). I think that I would be a wicked stay-at-home person. Seriously, I would make my own wrapping paper and have cr’me brulee oatmeal each morning and scones with jam I put up myself last summer, made from strawberries from my own garden.
In fact, last night, I dreamed that I looked out my kitchen window at our little potting shed and in the little flowerbed where I planted white tulips and hostas, there were some single lovely tubers of rhubarb sticking out of the snow. Rhubarb? I have never planted rhubarb in my life! What is more, rhubarb, I believe, only grows in the spring, but apparently, this was some very hearty rhubarb, just begging me to make a rhubarb crisp from scratch, which would then be eaten on a back porch that I do not own while sitting upon a porch swing that has never existed. I don’t know what that all means. I think it means my brain was either telling me that even when I thought that time had run out, there was still time. I hadn’t blown it. Either that or I’m jonesing for some rhubarb.
I gave up on last minute gift purchases and went home empty-handed, where Esteban had likewise given up on being productive because his article is kicking his ass. We were both vaguely starving. Esteban wanted poutin. I don’t know why. He didn’t either, but he settled on the rather horrible steakhouse chain near our home, because they have nachos on their salad bar, and he figured that nachos were a suitable replacement for French fries with gravy and cheese. Ugh, I just involuntarily gagged typing that.
We both ate a rather unremarkable dinner (in fact, I left over half of my ‘steak’ sitting on the plate because it was vomity) and then we went home. I got a hair in my butt to sing ‘Santa Baby’, so I called Joel, as Joel and Cheri were my karaoke buddies back when we used to do that. They apparently had too much to do on Christmas Eve and didn’t want to stay out late, so they passed. Esteban offered to go out with me, which is unusual because he loathes karaoke. Thus, we went to the Ass Splinter bar, which followed serious admonitions from Esteban to check everything before I perched my adorable bottom on it. ‘Because going to the emergency room with you really sucked!’ He said. Yes, dear, as I was sitting there with subcutaneous wood and a man named Howard prodding my tender skin with sharp metal instruments, my heart was bleeding for you.
When we walked in, Born to Run Guy was up. Funny how I haven’t done karaoke in Green Bay in well over a year and the same people are still out singing the same songs. Gah. Tone Deaf Karaoke Girl was there and called my name as soon as I gave her some songs. Thus, I did Santa Baby, followed by A Thousand Miles, which I tanked because I had exhausted my feeble bronchial lungs with a big jazz sound on the first song. The Skeevy guy who hit on a bunch of us two years ago (despite his wife) and tried kissing Penny (also despite his wife) was there and Esteban recognized him. It turns out that he’s some vp of a very large local company that recently toured Esteban’s lab. He came up to me later and nervously said ‘I never would have connected you too. I didn’t know you were married.’ And I nodded and said ‘Yep, we’ve been together for fourteen years.’ He laughed even more nervously and then fled the bar.
Esteban got the thrill of experiencing Tone Deaf Karaoke Girl’s braying and then it was my turn again. This time I did suicide karaoke, selecting Norah Jones’s Come Away with Me, despite the fact that I couldn’t remember how it went or how it even started, but I was pretty sure that it was in my range. It was, and it was good, jazzy and mellow and working perfectly with my somewhat congested throat. It’s just synchronicity when you can make your sore throat work for you. Gotta love that.
On Christmas Eve, we spent most of the day wrapping gifts. Esteban, thankfully, took up his reigns as Chief Gift Wrapper and I oversaw the operation while we watched It’s A Wonderful Life, drank bottled water (but it was Christmasy bottled water!) and argued who did a better Jimmy Stewart shouting ‘Mary!’ (mine is clearly superb). Of course, I made the mistake of trying to get ready for our traditional Eve functions during the part when George realizes that his life is, in actuality, wonderful, and he is the richest man in town and then Sam Wainwright cables that he hears that George is in trouble stop he has authorized his offices to advance him up to twenty thousand dollars stop hee haw and Merry Christmas, well, that was just about the time that I was attempting to lay a precise Cleopatra-esque line of eyeliner over my fluttering gold eyelids. Because every time someone cries and messes up their liquid eyeliner, a drag queen gets her wings. Even with the teariness, I looked lovely, but then made the mistake of thinking about my great-grandmother and how much I would love to go to Christmas Eve candlelit service at her church and how I was wearing her smoky crystal necklace and how much I missed her especially around Christmas, and bam, another squealing drag queen looks FABULOUS.
We had a lovely dinner with Ward and June and opened presents. June clearly had fun emptying my and Esteban’s Amazon wish list and now I have books to read until July, and also several DVDs to round out my John Cusack collection. Then we went over to Esteban’s Aunt’s house, where twenty people crammed themselves into a six person living room.
Quite honestly, I loathe going over there. It’s really stupid. Not only is their house far too small to entertain, but also, Esteban’s family is comprised mostly of Belgian farmers. I, at 5’11’ in heels, was still dwarfed by his cousins and even, in once case, a cousin’s child. This particular aunt has four grown children, none of whom are under 6 feet, even through three of them are girls. (For physical evidence, I offer this rather horrible picture in which you can see that I look like a rather ripe fruit moments before I am swarmed by a tribe of giant men who celebrate Dockers.)
The ridiculous part isn’t that we all cram into her closet of a living room. The ridiculous part is that the very same people then all get up and go back out into our now-cold cars, and drive ten miles away to the house of a cousin. A cousin who had been at the FIRST HOUSE. In fact, the very same people all get up and go to this other house. For what? The cousin has a larger, more appropriate house, you see. It’s far more comfortable to go to their house. You don’t fear getting up to go to the bathroom because your chair will be stolen seconds after you leave it, because there is space for everyone. There are lovely snacks, usually shrimp cocktails and brands of beer that I’ve actually heard of.
But apparently, the aunt is very concerned with How Things Look, and if she concedes the role of Grand Christmas Eve Hostess to her own niece, then that would be admitting to everyone that her home is not as splendid and her cooking not edible and her children freakishly large. And we can’t have that, so instead we’ll create a fire hazard in her little home and count the minutes until we can all flee to the cousin’s house.
Stupid crap. Utterly stupid crap.
To make matters worse, Esteban parked the M in the last possible six feet of space in their driveway, and when I opened the passenger door, I accidentally let it hit their homemade (read: sloppy) raised rock garden. Thus, there is a huge white ding in one of my car doors. Brilliant. God bless us every one.
I secured a spot next to June on the open loveseat and then proceeded to stare blankly into space for the next two hours. They pretty much ignore me. The three girl cousins all enjoy playing ‘One Up’ with each other and enjoy bragging to the point where it is distasteful. In fact, someone gave the youngest girl cousin (the worst offender, because her two sisters both have illegitimate kids and one has been in trouble with the law, thus feels that she is the princess of the family) the perfect opportunity to gloat about how she enjoyed her recent cruise. She began the story ‘It was fabulous. Our third cruise! My husband of five years (can you believe it?) bought me a pink tourmaline ring there.. two carats. And he got my wedding ring reset so that we could have rubies added on. Because I’ve been married for five years now. Would you like to see?’ and then she’d thrust her hand into the face of anyone who turned her way. I don’t know why I’m so annoyed by it, but it’s beyond tacky into embarrassing. I mean, if she really wants to go down that road with me, strap on and hold tight. We can talk about how I am on a salaried career path (arguably one I’m not thrilled with) and she has a job that pays hourly and she will always be doing the same thing for the rest of her life. We can talk about the five trips I took in 2003 and how we’re going to Europe in a few months. We can talk about the two ‘ carat diamond princess-cut diamond earrings sitting in my ears that I didn’t need a man to buy me but I bought myself. Bitch. Go ahead. Belly up to that table and let’s see you how do. Oh no you di’int!
Thus ends the petty bullshit portion of today’s entry.
At one point, June tapped me on the hand and said ‘You’re doing so good! I’m proud of you!’ because apparently I didn’t show signs of impatience or exasperation at the stupid girl crap going on around me. But I think I braved the boredom by simply trancing out, into this weird Buddhist state. It was like I had resigned myself to five hours of cramped boring shyte and therefore went to my own happy place of nothingness. I think that’s how prisoners survive getting sent to solitary.
Then we were saved and went to the cousin’s house, where I ate her cookies, tried to control my allergic reaction to her real Christmas tree, and further continued my zen trance. Esteban rescued me around quarter after 10 and announced that we were leaving, which prompted everyone else to also go searching for their coats. My one Christmas wish is that someday, somehow, someone will realize that it is the stupidest thing in the world and we won’t do it anymore. It’s enough to make ME want to buy a new larger home, just so I can invite everyone over to our house. And then, when the youngest cousin is wandering around looking at all of the lovely d’cor and furnishings, I’ll just be sitting there, acting all ‘Ain’t nothing but a thang, yo.’
Ok, now I really have to write that Disney dead mother paper. More about Christmas later. Happy December 26th!
