It is currently 7:17 a.m.
I have been awake for two hours.
God help me and my stupidity.
But first, yesterday:
Esteban and I always have a rule about non-Christmas holidays’ whichever family invites us over to dinner FIRST gets us. We hate eating two big meals in one day. We hate shuttling ourselves all over creation for some dry turkey or overly-salty ham.
Hate. It.
June called me a few weeks ago, as she has gotten the hang of this ‘early request’ stuff and has had the pleasure of our company on major holidays for the past couple of years now, and invited us to Thanksgiving with her and Ward. Great! Thanks! In all honesty, I didn’t really feel like eating at Mafia Grandma’s anyway, with the strained relationships we had going on there. Plus, as much as I love her, Mafia Grandma isn’t the greatest cook in the world. June is actually a fairly acceptable cook’ she relies on a few standards that are pretty difficult to fuck up, like frozen corn, Grands biscuits, and the like’ but I already knew that she was planning on getting a catered dinner anyway. For whatever reason, she doesn’t like cooking on Thanksgiving. I didn’t really have a problem with that. It was scrumptious, but it was definitely better, on a whole, than dinner at M.G.’s house.
Fine. Then we find out that M.G. wasn’t HAVING Thanksgiving at her house and what was more, we weren’t invited to Aunt Brunhilda’s, which is where M.G. would be dining. Suddenly, my mother and little brother would be eating Thanksgiving dinner alone. Mom asks if Esteban and I would like to eat with them. I explained that we had already accepted a dinner invitation at Ward and June’s house, but we could stop over before that for awhile. Mom said, ‘Great, I’ll make appetizers then.’
Wonderful! Brilliant! All was right in the world of family holidays.
Wednesday night, she calls me and asks me to look up grilling instructions for turkeys on the internet. Then she rattles off everything that she is making for us. And asks if Esteban likes celery and onions because if not, she’ll make a separate batch of stuffing without celery and onions especially for him.
Fatal tragic error coming up here: I couldn’t say ‘Stop the Presses! We’re not eating a full-blown meal at your house!’ I couldn’t do it. She was so excited that we were coming to HER house, that Esteban (who doesn’t really end up at her house very often) and I were spending time in her little home, along with my sister Mo and niece Abby. I felt so bad for her, realizing that all along, we’d only gone to family gatherings at M.G.’s house but now my mom’s a Grandma too and she wanted her own family traditions.
Thus, I made the decision, in my mind, that we would be eating two Thanksgiving dinners and forgot about it. Forgot to tell explain it to my husband, too. Thursday morning, I mention to him ‘Mom’s making a special batch of stuffing for you without onions and celery, so make sure to take some.’
(cue sound of cars coming to a screeching halt)
‘WHAT?!?!?!’ Esteban said. ‘WHAT?!?!?! I thought it was just going to be appetizers!’
Oops. My bad. So then we had to have an entire discussion about why this year, I acquiesced to having two dinners and why I felt that I had to do it this year and next year it wouldn’t be a problem, yada yada yada. And we both got grumpy with each other and there was much crossing of arms over our chests and pouting and the like. Stupid thing. I hate holidays sometimes. They’re stressful.
Around 2:00 we went over to my mom’s house. I was so proud of Esteban, he was Johnny-on-the-spot with helping Mom get the turkey off the grill. We watched the Packer game and then Abby and Mo came over. We had the most wonderful meal too. Mo and I were raving about it. My mother was actually giggling like a school girl. I had forgotten how great of a cook my mother is. My little brother even made a dish called Kugel, which they learned about in Social Studies, studying other cultures. It was like rice pudding, but with noodles instead of rice and it was actually fairly good!
Later, we retired to the living room to digest and watch the Dallas/Denver game (where Dallas got trounced’ he he he!) and play with Abby.
At one point, Mo had her legs crossed and Abby licked Mo’s exposed stubble-ridden leg. We all started laughing because that was rather funny. Mo asked her ‘Abby, what did my leg taste like?’
Abby replied, ‘It tasted like itch!’
I almost fainted from laughing so much. Of course, my laughter one fueled her desire to lick Mo’s leg.
A good time was had by all.
Then we packed up and went to Ward and June’s house. There we sat down to eat with them and basically picked at things. My attitude was that if it didn’t taste incredible, I wasn’t going to eat it’. And while it was very good, it wasn’t incredible so I didn’t stuff myself.
7:00 pm rolled around and Survivor came on. I went into the living room to watch on their ginormous television with the surround sound crap, but not only were they washing dishes loudly, running the garbage disposal and talking, Esteban was also playing Cowboy Be-Bop anime on his laptop at fairly high levels, so I pretty much missed most of what was said on the show. I didn’t get to hear why Frank was doing that weird bonding thing with the elephant. The blond skinny young chick made a bunch of faces but I didn’t hear what she was talking about. I think Goober Pyle must have said something dumb at one point because that’s generally a given with him, but I totally missed it.
I wanted to leave after that, but they wanted to watch CSI, which was the first time I’ve ever watched that show. I think the producers of that show are on drugs. At one point, the camera followed a bullet as it went into a person’ yucko when you’re overly stuffed and ready to puke.
We went home and I proceeded to scout the sale ads. In previous years, I’ve gotten up and gone out shopping for really good deals out of necessity. Now, it’s not such an issue, my budget is not quite as tight, but I’m still not going to pass up a good deal on something if I see one. The toy store had a Talking Woody doll for $12.99, regularly priced 39.99 and Abby is in love with Woody. Also, there were a few things at other stores that I was willing to get up for. I set my alarm and went to sleep in my sweats.
Roughly three minutes later, my alarm went off and I jumped out of bed. I had slept in my sweat pants, my GB Packers t-shirt and socks, so all I had to do was throw on a sweatshirt and a pair of shoes. I didn’t even stop to put a bra on because I figured I looked like hell anyway, why bother with lifting and separating?
First stop: the toy store. It was 5:10 A.M. when I pulled up’ the store had been open for ten minutes and the parking lot was full. Across the mall, people were lining up for Shopko, which opened an hour later. I groggily made my way into the toy store with flyer in hand, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.
Inside: mayhem. It was a milieu of ugly sleep deprived parents. All I wanted was a talking Woody doll. After fifteen minutes of circumnavigating around throngs of people in lines, I found Woody. Score! I also found an Operation game for $6. Woohoo! If I didn’t use that as a Christmas present, I would keep it for myself.
Now, to find a line. For whatever insane half-asleep logic I had, I determined that the shortest lines were in the front of the store. I found a line and got in it. The girl in front of my was chipper and sweet, with hair done in a perfect Malibu Barbie ponytail. While I had eye boogers, she had mascara. Where I had floppy southward pointing mammaries, she was pert and chipper. I started to hallucinate that she was a Skipper doll, come to life. Ahead of her, another woman who was wearing full makeup but to another extreme. She looked like a mix between Large Marge from PeeWee’s Big Adventure and Mimi from the Drew Carey show. (Here’s a little trivia for you: Kathy Kinney, the woman who plays Mimi, hails from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where I went to college!) Large Marge wore a zebra printed sweatshirt which someone had attacked with a BeDazzler’. Because zebra prints aren’t fancy enough, see. Her husband was wearing a John Deere hat that looked as though had been lost in the bottom of an outhouse, but someone found it and see, it’s still good. For their lucky children: an Easy Bake oven (gotta make dinner some nights!), three guns and four of those toy Monster Truck things.
I entered the line at 5:20 A.M. At 5:40 A.M. we had not moved. The cashier was roughly sixteen years old had no sense of urgency. The line across the store was moving. I hated the people in the line across the store. Hated them with the fire of a thousand suns.
We sent an emissary up to the front of the line to determine why we had not yet moved. It turned out that there was a second line which was coming from the aisles and merging with our line. ‘That’s not fair!’ my fellow shoppers screamed.
At that point, I would have paid $5 for a cappuchino.
I watched as the seemingly second person in line, a sleepy-eyed flat faced girl with a tie-dyed shirt, continued to be the second person in line for fifteen minutes. I tried to incite a shopper riot.
‘She’s impinging on our shopping rights, letting those other people in front of her!’ I said.
I now focused my hatred upon Tie-Dye girl. Hate her. Look at her, standing there, holding up the line with her stupidity. She looks like she had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She should go back to the Drunk Baby Halfway House where she belonged!
Finally, our line started moving. Tie-Dye checked out. I continued to focus my thoughts of death and illness upon her, until she left the store.
At that point, I would have paid $10 for a cappuchino.
I started to fantasize about hiding my items in the shelves and coming back after the lines had finished. My back started to hurt’. Apparently the cat-like stretching I do in the morning is an important thing and when I don’t do it, I stiffen up like a teenage boy watching a scrambled Playboy channel. Plus, I didn’t realize it but shopping without a bra is really not a good option for me. I mean, no one could probably tell I wasn’t wearing one, but man, my girls were just… uncomfortable. And I was starting to sweat in my sweatshirt, but I couldn’t take it off because THEN it would be fairly obvious. I would have made Large Marge look classy if I had been standing there, booger-eyed and loose breasted.
At 6:02 A.M. I was twenty feet from the cash register. Apparently, the store manager had come in and inflicted a little justice on the cashier for allowing the people in the aisle line to cut into our line.
At that point, I would have shown someone my unencumbered breasts for a cappuccino.
I finally left the store at 6:30 A.M. Total savings based off the suggested retail price of the two items I purchased: $36. Probable actual savings of the items: $14.
Yeah. That was worth it.
My plan had been to then progress to Kohl’s and then to Fleet Farm, but Kohl’s had been open for almost a half hour and the parking lot was packed. Fleet Farm, on the other hand, had yet to open, so I talked myself out of braving Kohl’s and instead drove to Fleet Farm, where I sat trying to stretch out my aching back in the parking lot with a lot of other fools.
I really needed caffeine at that point. Plus, I needed to go to the bathroom. The store wouldn’t open for another twenty minutes. Apathy set in’ knowing that I had saved only $14 for that entire hour and a half in the store really pissed me off. I really didn’t care all that much. I wanted to go to the bathroom.
Fuck it. I drove home to use the bathroom. Then I sat down to get my email. Now it’s much later and I don’t think I can bear going out again.
Maybe for a cappuccino.
Hope that your holiday was lots of fun!
