On Christmas Eve, Estrogen Happy Hour was doing its part to make Christmas bright. Man, I forget how little energy I have, between the cramping and the low grade anemia. I spent the better part of the morning trying to pull together wrapping materials and sitting on the chaise with a heating pad, moaning softly. I really hate being a girl sometimes. I was moving, just at 30 mph rather than 65 mph. I had to prep the nibbles for the Christmas morning get together with my Mom and her progeny as well as the fact that I had, very much like an idiot, volunteered to bring dessert for our Christmas Eve dinner with Ward and June. And you know, I don’t talk small when it comes to Christmas prepping. It’s all big talk here, ganache cakes and Morello cherry sauces, that kind of thing. I am stupid. But I did have a David Glass truffle cake in the freezer, so I pulled it out and then whipped up a very simple cherry sauce that came out looking and tasting a hell of a lot like canned cherry pie filling, only not as glossy. Did I mention that I am very stupid sometimes?
Around 2 o’clock, Esteban announced that he had finished the reports that he had to have done by Tuesday, so he was ready to perform his Elfly duties in the wrapping of presents. Which was good, because I had wrapped exactly four things, which meant that there was one million minus four presents left to wrap.
While Esteban wrapped, I did some sous cheffing, cubing cheese and whatnot. I had specifically purchased a bunch of very easy nibble fodder at Trader Joe’s, so mostly I had to just drag out my hostess trays and clean the kitchen, then sit on the chaise and write name tags for Esteban while we watched “White Christmas” and talked about scarily thin Vera Ellen (which was because she was severely anorexic and according to IMDB, all of her costumes were designed to hide her neck, which was prematurely aged due to her condition) and also wondered about the heights of the four leads. (The shortest was Vera-Ellen at 5’4″ and the tallest was Danny Kaye at 5’11”.)
By 3:30, we finished up and were getting dressed when the first plaintive ring of the phone happened. It was the traditional call from Ward and June, asking when we were coming. They get so antsy. It’s pretty cute, actually.
Christmas Eve at Ward and June’s, which was delightful as usual. June has introduced me to the wonder that is a Brandy Old-Fashioned (my traditional winter drink) that is made with apricot brandy instead of regular old boring brandy. I am totally a convert now, because damn. Damn.
After we opened presents and had dinner (and my homemade canned cherry pie filling), we headed over to the insane gathering of the Gigantic Relatives. It reminds me of an episode of How I Met Your Mother, where Lily and Marshall go to Minnesota to have some holiday with his family. Marshall is 6’6″ and, as it turns out, is the runt of the family, while Lily walks around looking very much like a toddler. This is exactly what it’s like to spend Christmas Eve with Esteban’s relatives. At 6’2″, he might be the shortest male in his generation. His cousins are all giants. I’m 5’9″ and I would definitely be standing in the front row for a group picture of the females, along with the second cousins who are all under the age of fourteen. One is 11 and she’s almost as tall as me. Next year, I’m going to have to wear heels.
I should clarify that when I said in the above paragraph that it was the ‘insane gathering of the Gigantic Relatives’, I am not saying that they are insane. But rather, I’m commenting on the fact that they insist upon gathering at the smallest house ever. There aren’t enough places to sit. People crawl over each other trying to find space. It’s like a life raft and we’re all just trying to make it out of there alive. And the cousins all keep having kids. A couple of basketball centers just had twins and by next year, I expect that they’ll be patting me on the head and calling me Wee Little Esteban’s Wife. Because I swear half of them don’t remember my name. Ok, just one of them doesn’t. But he makes a point of stumbling to remember it every damn year. I mean, I know it’s been fifteen or sixteen years since we were introduced, but come on man, weren’t you paying attention at our wedding? I’m pretty sure that they said my name at least once during the ceremony.
It was even crazier with the addition of the twins, although their presence tempered some of the materialistic bragging that seems to happen at this particular gathering. It did not, however, save me from the curse of the child-free. I already had to deal with one comment earlier in the evening when I was talking about a problem with my birth control pills and June said ‘Well, why don’t you just stop taking them then?’ implying that I should not replace them with anything. That’s pretty harmless, since I can just roll my eyes at her and life goes on, but at this Gigantic Cousin gathering, where everything is about which rings you are wearing and which cruise you just went on and sideways slams between three sisters about how fat they are or aren’t, it’s so on display and everyone just sits there and waits to see what I am going to say in rebuttal. This time, his Aunt Neat said ‘Weetabix! Look at how happy June is holding that baby! Do you see what she wants?’ and everyone laughed. I just nodded and smiled and then his Aunt Neat said ‘I can give her the other twin too… that would make her really happy! Weet! Do you want me to give her the other twin too? Because that’s what she wants! Are you going to give her what she wants?’ and everyone laughed again. I shrugged and then stared off into space. His Aunt Neat is an absolutely adorable lady and I like her and her husband quite a bit, but man, it is so not funny. Why do they assume that it’s solely me making this decision? What if I couldn’t have a baby for some reason? Or shouldn’t have one for some reason? What if we were trying and failing? Why this pressure is considered funny in a social setting? I just don’t get it.
This is the same group that made a point to comment about an 11-year-old’s weight problem and make her announce to everyone how much weight she’s lost since starting an exercise program with her aunt. And then one of the three adult sisters called another one a cow. Never too early to start kids out with body issues.
Normally, the tradition is that we all wait at the smallest house ever and then everyone packs up, gets into their respective cars and drives out to a second house. It’s the same people. The people from the second house are at the first house and the people who were at the first house go to the second house too. I guess it’s because no one wants to suggest that the Aunt’s house is too small and that her niece’s house is much bigger and, therefore, better. So we suffer through the first half of the evening with the promise of a large room and plenty of seating waiting at the end of the night.
However, I had settled into a nice Zen mind trance, staring off into space, when Esteban came out of the kitchen (where the menfolk were’ I am not even joking, it’s ridiculous) and announced that we had to go and sorry, we wouldn’t be going to the second house.
Could this be? I am usually the one who wants to leave early and skip everything, but since Esteban wants to be there, I suffer through it. However, an unexpected Get Out Of Jail Free card? Rock the fuck out.
In the car, Esteban admitted that he just wasn’t having any fun and really could only sit there and think that he’d rather be working than sitting there, which is a sign that it was time to go. Besides, we both had to finish wrapping each others’ presents to be ready to open in the morning.
We went home, took turns shooing the other out of the living room and stowing our presents under the tree, and then I headed off to bed while Esteban played his dwarf and troll game. Around 4 am, I woke up and Esteban still wasn’t in bed, so I got up and he had just started the dishwasher and was coming to bed. I asked him what he had been doing all night and he replied ‘Flying around the world in a sleigh, delivering presents to every good boy and girl.’ Normally this would be the part where I would offer witty rejoinder about coming down chimneys but given my abdominal stress, I just took another two Advil and went back to bed.
I am no fun at all.
