We got married on a Friday afternoon in the fall back in 2000. It happened to be that we got married on a football weekend, but fortunately, Notre Dame was playing at West Virginia. If it hadn't been an away game, there's no guarantee that I would have shown up for the ceremony. There would have been less chance that I showed up sober.
I'm a real catch, I tell you what.
Anyway, we didn't tell any of our families that we were getting married. We decided to do it and enjoy our honeymoon--which was really just sex in the top room of the Holiday Inn in lovely downtown South Bend. There was even a duck flying around the top floor of the hotel--or at least something that sounded like a duck. I swear it wasn't my ass.
The following day we decided we needed to call our families and tell them about our nuptials. I decided to go first--only after I watched the first half of the West Virginia/Notre Dame game.
My father was not at home at the time--he was out running some errands or something. So, I got my mother. I broke the news to her, and then suffered through thirty minutes of questions as to why I would do this, why I would take a chance with my education, and why I would marry someone that I had just met a few months prior and whom I barely knew. Fortunately, my father came home toward the end of my mother's aural attack, and she called him over to talk to me.
Mom: Your son has something to tell you. Dad: Hey, son! What's up? Me: [Mrs. MJenks} and I got married yesterday! Dad: Huh. So, you, like, eloped then, huh? Me: Yeah, we sure did. Dad: Alright. How's Notre Dame doing?
The holiday times are upon us once more, and that means it's time to crank up the old family traditions. You know, those things that you don't really want to do, but you do them anyway because you'd feel guilty if you didn't do them? Right. Those things. The holidays are steeped in them.
Growing up, we had a tradition of going to my grandparents' houses on Christmas Eve. Early in the afternoon it was my paternal grandmother's house, and then it was my maternal grandfather's house for the evening. I enjoyed grandpa's house more, mostly because it was bigger and he had a larger, nicer tree. My grandmother's tree was small and white. It felt more holiday-ish at my grandfather's house. Also, my grandmother was a woman who was a bit more prim and proper and so you couldn't hike up on one ass cheek and let fly with a ripe, juicy fart. It just wasn't done. My grandfather would actually applaud you if it was a good one.
High brow lot, my family.
There was also the chance that a game of Trivial Pursuit would break out, which would eventually devolve into a lot of swearing, and when you're a kid, hearing your elders cursing over their lack of trivial knowledge is damned funny. The adults would play the game, the kids would play with our toys or watch the marathon of shitty stop-action animation holiday specials that was broadcast on Channel 55 for the three days prior to and including Christmas Day. It was bliss.
As I got older and my grandparents died, we would just gather at each other's houses for a meal on Christmas Eve, more games and swearing, and more shitty television. The gatherings would just rotate between my mom and her two sister's houses. Now, however, our families are so far-flung (North Carolina, Oregon, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne) that a holiday get-together isn't practical.
Plus, I'm married. Which means that I have a whole new set of traditions to absorb and work into my holiday repertoire. For instance, one tradition my wife and I have is that we don't have the sex for the last three months out of the year. Of course, this doesn't really differ from the other nine months, but now it's more festive because I can hide inopportune boners under Santa hats.
Love ya, puddin'!
The other major holiday tradition that she brings to the table is a heaping, steaming helping of holiday guilt. Traditionally, her parents start layering it on really good and solid starting in about July. It goes something like this:
"I know that it would be inconvenient to you, but we really want you to load up all your family into the car, drive seven hours to a small, cramped house that's not heated and doesn't have cable and has insufficient beds for everyone and uncomfortable furniture and two showers and nowhere for the kids to play. Leave your kids' Christmas presents at home and, even though your husband has nothing in common with the rest of your family, that sonuvabitch better not bring a book or a video game or anything like that to entertain himself with. That fat bastard is going to sit on those uncomfortable couches in that cramped house and be forced to watch marathons of 'Keeping up with the Kardashians' until he wants to go Oedipus Rex on himself with a pair of hat pins or--if he can't find those--corn cob holders, and he's going to like it or else we'll have an intervention where we try to talk you into divorcing him. We don't care if you have to work. We don't care if you don't have vacation. We don't care if your children would rather stay home and play with their new toys. We don't care if you don't want to be here. You will be here or else you'll be further ostracized from the family."
Or something to that effect. Every year. Starting in the summer. Usually, the guilt starts being applied in the hopes that we pick up and drive somewhere for Thanksgiving but then it really gets ramped up to eleven for Christmas. Because nothing says "Praise the birth of our Lord and Savior" like being surrounding by people drinking shitty beer, playing Hearts, sitting on crappy couches in a cold house with no television to watch. God was made flesh to enhance our misery, right? Right.
Fortunately, we now have an ace in the hole: my wife has been promoted to manager, and so she has to be at the store during the holidays. Yahtzee! No driving to Atlanta for us! Ka-loo, Ka-lay!
Granted, this misery could all be alleviated if I simply rented a hotel room whenever we showed up for holiday family functions. That shit's expensive, though. Yet, if I was a rich man...
My mother is the world's finest driver. Unser? Pisshh. Andretti? Puh-leez. Earnhardt? Never heard of him! Petty? Oh, now you're just being ridiculous.
Whenever my mother would set the key in the ignition of her car--any car--Jesus would fart a rainbow down the road along her intended destination clearing animals, cars, drunken hobos, old people, surly county deputies with ticket quotas to fill, and invisibul driving hazards out of the way. She's never hit an animal, gotten into an accident, been issued a citation, had a flat tire, nor veered anywhere outside of the white and yellow lines that confine her lane on the road.
Though, I do find this all hard to imagine. My mother grew up in the fifties, and we all know that women from that time can't drive. Don't you pretend like you didn't see the films in driver's ed. That balding man with the horn-rimmed glasses driving along, hands at ten-and-two, saying "I'll just give her a little honk on my horn to let her know I'm here." Never mind that the honk probably distracted her, causing her to plow through a troupe of nuns on their way to bless the sick. At least she knew you were there!
My mother is this man with the impeccably clean driving record, just with more blue eye shadow. A lot more blue eye shadow.
I know that my mother's driving record is spotless because she began regaling me with anecdotes about what a sinfully perfect driver she was when I was nine years old. Never mind that I was more interested in the day-to-day activities of the Chicago Cubs or whether or not Kelli Vogleman would ever see fit to go with me (the answers: shitty and not-on-your-fucking-life, bud).
You see, at that point in time, it would only be a scant seven years until I was behind the wheel of a car, and so she needed to start the brow-beating then in order to have me properly cowed when I was sixteen to the point where I wouldn't even dream of getting behind the wheel, let alone ask her for the keys to the car.
Her plans failed*. One of my favorite things to do is drive. In that year between college and graduate school, when I was stuck in a dead-end job that I disliked earning far less than a living wage and my relationship with the Ex- was flourishing and subsequently crumbling and I was living with my parents, too boot, I spent a lot of time on the roads of northeastern Indiana, northwestern Ohio and southern Michigan. I would drive and think and dream and see parts of the world I probably would not normally see.
That's kind of gone by the wayside as gas has gotten a lot more expensive, my free time has shrunken dramatically, and North Carolina's roads are not laid out on the convenient grid system that the Great Lakes states enjoy (and, well, anywhere west of the Appalachians).
Anyway, my mother would tell me--nearly daily--about what a terrible driver I would be. She claimed she would not get in the car with me until I was much older and those youthfully exuberant urges of youth--excessive speed, one hand on the wheel--had faded from my psyche. Though, it was her self-imposed calling to prevent those silly notions from ever finding purchase within me in the first place.
She was loathe to teach me how to drive a car, even when I had my learner's permit. This is one of the chief reasons that I had no idea what I was doing when I was told to park her minivan in the garage. My only frame of reference--and you'll probably agree that this is quite a brilliant turn of logic--is that there are two pedals in a car with automatic transmission and--lo and behold!--there are two feet on my body. Oh, and I have a foot on each leg, as well. Ladies. *wiggles eyebrows*
I plunked down in the car and put one foot on the gas, one on the brake, and I tried gallantly to move the car by alternating which foot did what. I did an admirable job moving the car forward in lurching, jolting movements, and got it into the garage--mostly--without incident. The final few feet, I let up on my right foot, and the car slowly pulled forward. I watched as the back of the garage moved toward me. When I was in far enough, I decided it was time to brake. Except, I forgot which foot was on the brake.
I gunned it. For about six inches before I remembered my mistake, but that was all it took. I had hit the back of the garage and--most importantly, most deviantly, most dreadfully--I hit my bike, which caused the handlebars to cut a large gouge in the hood of my mother's minivan.
She was livid. The combination of my imbecility--or, truth be told, my innocent naivety--and my bike meant that I would not be driving any time soon. I was sent to my room, told I better have my homework done, and then sent to bed. It was around five o'clock pm.
I did feel a little bad, but not about her fucking minivan. My father had been standing in the garage, trying to guide me in. If he hadn't stepped out of the way before my error of footing, he probably would have been crushed. Fortunately, no one was hurt, save for the hood of the minivan.
As my mother was one to constantly seek sources of embarrassment for me, she has not stopped bringing up the minivan incident to this day. Gathering of people? Let me tell you about the time my idiot son couldn't park a car! Amazing, isn't it? No one told him the proper way of holding his feet, and he goofed. Why, you might even be inclined to call it an "accident".
My father later corrected me on what to do with my feet. I have been largely without incident since. It's not to say I'm claiming to be the world's greatest driver. I'm a good driver, but probably not a great driver. My mind tends to wander from time to time while I'm driving. Especially when the college girls return in the late summer.
Anyway, when I was in college, my dad got me a summer job at his company. I was to drive a mail route (see how that works?) in Fort Wayne. Unfortunately, my hours and his hours didn't coincide very well, so I had to drive myself. While I was working there, my mother started working there, too, doing data entry and such. She was part time-y, which meant that she did not have to be there all day. This meant that she could ride in with me and go home with my father.
However...
Coupled with the fact that my mother is the world's greatest driver is the fact that my mother is the worst backseat driver. You're going to fast. You're in the wrong lane. Pass this guy. Slow down. There's a curve up ahead. Watch for deer. And on and on and on she would natter.
Well, this simply was not going to do. I had no desire to drive my mother around at all. And so, I decided that she would ride with me...once. After that, she would be my father's problem. He married her. He should drive her around.
The route from our house to work went along a rather quiet stretch of northern Indiana highway, which meant it was straight, flat and easily navigable. I could have driven it blindfolded. I could probably still drive it blindfolded. And so we loaded up that fateful morning. I pulled out of the driveway and immediately began punching in the calculations for the jump to light speed.
When we got to the highway, I sped up. And not just sped up. For a second before I truly accelerated, the world became long and tinted blue. Dimensions warped around the front of my car. In my rearview, I could see the road catching fire in my wake, and the asphalt rolling up like a Swiss cake roll.
And then I kicked it up a notch. I passed on double yellow. I didn't use my turn signal. I honked and gave people the finger for no apparent reason. The town of Zanesville was just a dark blur clinging to the sides of the road. The bridge over I-469 was gone in the blink of an eye.
The entry into Fort Wayne from this particular direction involved a wide, sweeping turn which was banked at a most pleasing angle. Trial and error had told me the best way to handle this curve on a good day. That day was a great day, a fantastic day.
And so I took the curve around 80 mph. My mother was already screaming some incomprehensible bullshit in the passenger seat when a red truck pulled out in front of us. It was driven by a clueless old man, which meant that he pulled out and started doing five miles under the speed limit. My mother's scream became a fevered-pitch. She braced for impact and began stomping on an invisible brake. I chuckled.
I waited until the last possible second, when I was mere centimeters from smashing into the back of the old man's truck to make my move. I laid on the horn, flipped the man the bird, and slid up the banking curve in the road like I was making the final pass at Talladega. The old man's hair was fluffed in my wake--never mind his windows were up--and papers hung in the air, spinning wildly on the eddies and swirls of the air currents as I zoomed past. My mother had not stopped screaming. Her eyes were pressed shut and tears leaked from them, smearing her blue eye shadow and mascara.
I turned and looked at her after we had come mere inches from the old man's bumper and, slapping on my most yokel-ish voice, uttered: "Kinda gets yer heart racin', don't it?" She looked at me as if Satan himself were driving the car.
We got to work in record time. I got out and my car heaved a sigh or relief. My mother kissed the earth. She stomped into the building, stammering and swearing, went to my father's office. For the next hour she regaled my father with her harrowing trip to work that day, and when I saw him next, he had a sort of glazed, faraway look in his eye.
"Your mother wants you to slow down," he uttered, only halfheartedly. My father is a college-educated man. I'm fairly certain he saw through my plan and that the distant gaze in his eye was an artifact of knowing that he would now be the one chauffeuring my mother from point A to point B.
But the important thing was, the following morning, she rode to work with dad.
*Her plans failed with me, at least. My brother was terrified of driving when he came of age and didn't get his license until he was 17 or maybe older, and only then because it was a pain-in-the ass to walk to work.
This is the third week of the first intersessionary period for my kids. We do the year-round thing because, oh my fucking God, if we didn't, there'd be troubles. As such, we get four of these "intersessions" throughout the year. It's nice, because they get three weeks off in the fall, winter and spring and six in the summer. It's also nice because, heh heh, you're getting on my nerves--oh look! It's time to go back to school! Huzzah!
As luck would have it, my mother-in-law just happened to be in the southeast last week and volunteered to take the little rapscallions with her for a week and a half. It's been nice, because I was able to fall asleep on the couch in front of the football game Saturday night watch the Notre Dame game on Saturday night uninterrupted.
See, when they're here, they tend to drive me a bit nuts. I'm not saying something that any other parent in the world hasn't thought at least once, maybe twice...an hour after procreating. Being that they're nine and six, there is a lot of arguing, nyah-nyahing and back-and-forth that causes that vein in my temple to throb and for me to seriously consider getting in the car, finding an abandoned mountainside, and setting up a shack. The only problem is, I'd have to polish up my moonshinin' and rough-talkin' skills in order to survive.
*brandishes a large stick* Git! Git! *practices conjugating 'tcheer'* I might just be able to do this!
No! No! Appalachia is not the answer!
Anyway, this weekend, I have to go and pick them up. The nice thing is, my mother-in-law meets me halfway (in this, at least. The kitchen floor that isn't quite messy enough to mop but still has some dirt on it? Notsomuch.) This means that I'll be spending twelve to fourteen hours in a car, but it will at least be a round-trip effort. We usually meet up in a little town called Marietta, Ohio, which sits right on the river. It's actually a nice little place. They have a brewpub that I visited once, in the time Before, when I could still imbibe of the beverages crafted from fermented grains.
While this seems like a sweet deal, the drive through West Effin' Virginia is not exactly trivial. For comparison, here is what my mother-in-law's drive looks like:
Oh, very nice, very nice indeed. Straight lines. One turn. Good roads the whole way. Not a bad day's worth of driving. Now, let's see what my drive looks like:
HOLY FUCKING HELL! Is that a trip itinerary, or did someone have a bad reaction to their drugs while holding a red crayon???
To say the roads are a bit windy in an understatement as I-77 snakes its way through the Appalachians while transversing that part of Virginia that did not wish to secede from the Union. And the roads cling to the side of the mountain with very little between you and a lifetime of snuggling down in the hairy, sweaty bosom of an Appalachian beauty (gender neutral), eating spam, swilling ditch water and serving as their personal sex dump. I run the risk of looking down to change the radio, sliding off the road, and suddenly finding myself squealing like a pig, Ned Beatty-style.
Is that banjo music I hear in the background, or am I just paranoid?
However, despite all this, I'm heading north this weekend, traveling through four states, to reclaim my wonderful lil punkins. Because, despite the fact that the house has remained clean, there's very little in the way of spillage on the floor in the kitchen, and football time is wonderfully--gloriously--quiet, I miss the little gits. I'm sure I'll be glad to have them home once more.
For about a week. And then I'll be rethinking my desire to go live in a shack on the side of the mountain. *tunes banjo*
Today is my best friend Joe's birthday. Joe attended Virginia Tech, thus the picture of the leggy blond wearing the Tech sweatshirt. I remember it's Joe's birthday--at least, in the time before Facebook reminding me--because today is also my brother's birthday.
My brother didn't attend college, which is unfortunate because I can't post any nearly nekkid chicks sporting his college's colors. He did, however, once get really drunk at a kegger at my undergrad and tried to bang this girl named Linda...which was apparently a Jenks-boy tradition (the trying part, not the banging...mores the pity).
In lieu of scantily-clad whores, I'll give you a charming story starring me, myself, I and my brother. There will be special guest appearances by our cousins, as well.
This takes place during the Christmas of (I think) 1996. We had all gathered at my cousin Napoleon's house for Christmas Eve. Napoleon's older brother (for continuity's sake, heretofore nicknamed Kip) was also there, along with his (second) wife and their little girls. Also in attendance was my cousin Scott (whose last name is vastly different from mine, so I don't feel the need to hide his identity nearly as much) and his parents.
There was also an eight hundred pound gorilla sitting in the corner that went by the name of "Kip and his (second) wife and my aunt and uncle really aren't getting along and the marriage is about to dissolve any second now--Happy Holidays!!!" attending the holiday festivities that year, too.
After the present exchange and before the meal, the tension was growing between Kip, his wife, my aunt and uncle. Because my mother was in attendance, she was also in a bad mood. My father and my uncles did what they did best--slept in front of the television. My cousins Napoleon and Scott and my brother and I sat around staring at one another feeling really uncomfortable with every snarky, snappy comment made between any of the "adults" who were still conscious.
"We should go bowling," someone stated--I'll credit my brother since it was a brilliant idea and it is his birthday, after all.
The plan was made quickly. Napoleon would drive. The other three of us would ride with him. We would bowl, we would escape the house, and we would...uh...not have to put up with the bullshit anymore.
The one snag, however, was going to be asking my mother for permission to leave. Since someone had pried her off the couch at home, she was miserable, therefore everyone else would also have to be made miserable. I knew asking her for permission would be painful.
So did my brother. Which is why he left the house via Napoleon's window. Opened it, raised the screen, bailed, and was already headed toward the car. In fairness to my brother, Napoleon had already done the same.
Scott had been granted permission, but true-to-form, my mother said absolutely not. Fortunately, my aunts convinced her that "the boys don't get to see each other much anymore, since they've graduated". My mother, pissed that she was outnumbered in this, finally relented. I bolted, not even feeling a pang of guilt.
Of we went, down the road, to the sprawling metropolis of Huntington. Being as how my brother was banned from the bowling alley on the north side of town (I'll admit, I'm only telling you that to flash my family's white-trash street cred), we were forced to go to the one on the south side of the city.
Aside from the owner, we were the only derelicts in the bowling alley that fateful Christmas Eve.
We each bowled three games and had quite a good time doing it. I don't know who won--my paltry 111 average doesn't garner me much in the limelight of bowling alley fame--but that's not the point. We escaped the house, we had a good time, and we didn't have to be around the snarling cur that was Kip's (second) wife.
As good things are wont to do, our time at the bowling alley ended. We turned in our shoes, loaded ourselves back into Napoleon's car, and headed back east for home. Now comes the time for the set-up: it was December in Indiana, which means that we had had some snow, but not a lot. There was a bit of a crust of snow along the edges of the road and some snow hidden in the folds between the high clumps of grass along the edges of the fields.
As we were returning, Napoleon was driving the speed limit--not because we were obsessed with being safe (the main roads were quite clear), but because none of us wanted to return to the simmering tension pot that we called "Christmas Eve" that year.
I voiced that opinion aloud: "Wow, I am in no rush to return to that any time soon."
My brother seconded my opinion: "Yeah, we should take a drive through the country."
Napoleon, hearing this, decided it was an excellent time to turn off onto a country road...without slowing down.
A country road that wasn't paved.
A country road that retained some of the ice from earlier winter storms.
A country road with a very steep drop-off past the shoulder.
A country road with a very steep drop-off past the shoulder without a guard rail that wasn't paved and was still retaining some ice from the earlier winter storms.
Tragedy Comedy was about to ensue.
This is the greatest "Oh Fuck" moment of my life, when the brown sedges and grasses came hurtling up toward the passenger side window, when the car was dangerously close to rolling, when we were--most certainly--hurtling toward death.
I felt kind of like Steve Martin to Napoleon's John Candy:
Needless to say, we survived. Unfortunately, we were at the bottom of a very steep "hill" surrounded by woods. We got out to assess the situation.
"I think we can push him out," I offered. "Napoleon, you just need to gun it."
So, Napoleon gets back into the car. My brother, Cousin Scott and I, get behind the car.
"Put it in neutral first" I hollered. We pushed on the car and found that we could move it quite easily. "Put it in drive and see what happens."
Napoleon put it in drive. He started moving, but the ice and snow that was hidden down in the bottom of this hollow did not make for good footing or traction. He threw a lot of mud, but the car was moving some.
"Alright..." I said, seeing the situation was going to call for us to put our legs and backs into it. "Scott, you take the middle. Brother and I will take the sides behind the wheels."
They stared at me with questioning looks upon their faces.
"Brother and I can go home and change pants; Cousin Scott can't," I explained. It was one of the most brilliant things I had ever thought through. Because, you know, if we came back muddy from having pushed the car out of the ditch, my parents would have killed my brother and I for surviving a wreck on Christmas Eve.
More importantly, we would never be allowed to escape family gatherings ever again.
And so we took our positions. I signaled Napoleon, who gunned it. We pushed. The car heaved forward. He gunned it more. We pushed it more. The car found traction and climbed the least steep part of the hill and found purchase on the gravel of the road once more.
I looked down at my pants. They were coated in a layer of mud at least half an inch thick. Brother's was the same.
That's when we started laughing, because when you go through a harrowing experience and don't die, shit gets a lot funnier. We laughed so hard we doubled over. We finally climbed into Napoleon's car and were off, all four of us laughing until tears streamed down our faces.
Napoleon drove brother and I home, where we quickly changed pants. As Napoleon lived only about three blocks away from our house, we weren't late in returning to the Christmas Eve emotional bloodbath. We finally stopped laughing in Napoleon's driveway, put our game faces on, and re-entered the house in time for the meal.
Awesome.
To this day, I'm still amazed that we somehow were able to pull that shit off without even the barest hint of suspicion out of any of our parents.
So, happy birthday to my little brother. I'm glad we made it through the best--and worst--Christmas Eve ever.
Last night, my daughter went through her "bridging" ceremony for girl scouts. I guess she graduated from a Brownie to a Junior. I don't remember such a thing for going from Cub Scouts to Webelos to Boy Scouts. Basically, I earned my bobcat, wolf and bear patches and moved on.
Anyway, the Bridging Ceremony, as it is called, is a highly symbolic and terrifically ceremonial rite that hearkens back to the very foundations of our civilizations. Like most secret, fraternal (or sororietal) organizations, to witness such a ceremony is to behold a very spectacle for the senses, and it shouldn't be shared with the outside world.
However, if they wanted to keep this quiet, they shouldn't have invited a mouthy blogger who likes to fill his slice o' the internet with stories of his life.
So...the Bridging Ceremony. It was fabulous, filled with deep meaning, and powerful. They called my daughter's name, she took two...maybe three...steps over a wooden bridge in the middle of the room...and became a Junior.
Um...what I meant was...uh...well, it's like...huh.
Remember in Finding Nemo when Nemo had to swim through...THE RING OF FIRE!!! in order to be accepted by the other fish in the tank at the dentist's office? And when he finally went through with the ceremony, it turned out that all he did was swim through the bubbles produced by the fake volcano? And in the end was like "That was it?"
Yeah. Like that. But with less bubbles.
So, anyway, Sharkbait, Hoo Ha Ha! my daughter is now a Junior. Also, she got several awards for all the work she did this year with the girl scout troop. She earned three badges, which is exactly three more than I ever earned in my entire scouting career (minus the four patches I earned to graduate from one level to another, and my Arrow of Light). But then again, I never truly made it to Tenderfoot before baseball and a serious fascination with titties ended my scouting career.
She also won an award for the second most cookie sales for her troop. Second! Impressive. She sold 248 boxes, which is two shy of 250 (I can do math, me), and was also two shy of first place. If only her grandparents or her uncle would have ponied up and shelled out the money for two boxes of cookies, she could have been top dog...er...Brownie. Instead, poor little Sharkbait, Hoo Ha Ha daughter mine will have to languish in second place. Forever.
I think I just decided not to send my mom her Mother's Day Card.
As my children have gotten older, they've become increasingly more computer game savvy. My daughter, like me, enjoys sitting and playing Civilization III for hours on end. Both my kids fight over the use of the Gameboy, and they even act civilized toward one another long enough to make it through missions of Lego Star Wars together. It's truly a feat to behold when they actually work together to achieve a common goal.
If only something like that would happen to the living room floor.
I digress, however! My daughter--my eight-year-old daughter--knows just enough about Civ III to be dangerous. She knows the mechanics, but the finer aspects of the strategy are still eluding her. For instance, she'll start a war with a neighboring civilization, but not have enough soldiers to complete the overall invasion and conquest of said civilization. It's something that, I assume, she will develop and learn to appreciate over time.
As much as she enjoys playing the game, she also enjoys watching it. This entails her standing at my right shoulder, staring at the screen.
Since I'm still in an emotional trough--though it's big enough now to be a cellar, I assume--I've been cranking through some Civ III for a the better part of a week and a half now. For some reason, it's a little bit cathartic to sit and play and watch the pixels take out my frustrations on my neighbors. France, I have my eyes upon you...
Sunday night, after an afternoon spate of cleaning and organization that left our house slightly less chaotic but much better smelling, while I dinner was cooking and while my wife and I both were winding down from the day, I popped in the Civ III disk and started playing.
My daughter came in and took up her usual place at my right elbow, watching. Except, the problem is, she's an eight-year-old girl, and so her mouth never. stops. making noise.
(Before anyone gets bent out of shape, the five-year-old boy only falls silent long enough to swallow his food and to sleep.)
And so here she is, going to town, telling me what I should be doing in the game. "Oh, you should irrigate there!" "Are you going to fight them?" "You should research gunpowder, it gives you musketmen." "Oh, oh, you definitely need to research and build Sun Tzu's Art of War!"
And on. And on. And on.
Being that I've been married for ten years, I'm fairly good at tuning out female voices. However, when it's one long string of syllables mashed together at such a rate and quantity that it's impossible to decipher where one word or thought ends and the other begins, the task of tuning someone out becomes a lot less easy. My last nerve was being poked and prodded and trod upon verbally to the point where I thought I was going to snap.
However, as much as I wanted to turn and scream "SHUT THE FUCK UP!", some part of my subconscious said, "Hey, Father of the Year, maybe take a moment and tell her why you're doing what you're doing, so that she can learn. Also, it's not cool to scream 'Shut the fuck up' in an eight-year-old's face."
Sage advice, that.
And so, what began as an exercise in frustration and annoyance turned into a lesson in how to play Civ III for her, and a lesson in patience and tolerance for me.
So, I was going to put together a TMI Thursday post last night, but I was busy having sex.
Hmmm...I guess that itself is a TMI Thursday post...
Well, thanks for stopping by.
What? Three lines doesn't do it for you? Fine.
It was really good sex, too.
Still not sated? Okay, okay.
There won't be an official TMI Thursday post, nor will there be a Friday filled with dead language pick-up lines and insults. So, this post will have to fill in for tomorrow's, as well. If you're nice, I might be back on Saturday!
However, this is a grim day, my friends. You see, my carefree life of being a young, married man with no children has come to a screeching halt.
I have to go get my kids tonight. They've been visiting their grandparents (my wife's parents) for the past week and a half or so.
That means I'm making the roughly seven-hour drive to Knoxville tonight after work, power sleeping on a couch for a few hours, getting up at the ass crack of dawn and driving back home from Knoxville. Who needs sleep when you can be driving???
And, Sweet Baby Jesus, forgive me, but if I'm hauling my ass to and from Knoxville in a span of time less than what it takes the Earth to orbit the Daymoon sun, then I'm eating meat on Friday during Lent. And I'm going to enjoy the fuck out of it.
So, in case you were curious as to why or how I was eating my dinner in the buff the other night, that's why. It was just me and the wife.
And lots of sex with the bedroom door open.
Loud, raucous sex, without having to explain to anyone that we're just "exercising".
But all of that comes to an end tonight when I go to reclaim the kids from my mother- and father-in-law. Along with the kids, I have to collect their stuff, and then I have to bring back all the shit my parents have foisted off on us.
My mom and dad went to see my kids for the first time in...a year or so...last weekend. I don't know if I've told you this or not, but my mom refuses to visit because she's batshit crazy afraid that bears will attack the car as she's traveling through the Appalachians.
...
Just sit back and let that one sink in for a while.
Anyway, whenever my parents go to visit my kids while they're at my wife's parents' house, they always bring a carload of shit to pawn off on me and my wife. Once, we got a napkin ring. A single. Fucking. Napkin ring. I don't remember what else we've "inherited" over the past ten years or so, but the napkin ring was pretty fucking spectacular.
So, instead of spending time ignoring my son with their grandkids, my parents bring along my niece and allow her to run the show hand over stuff to my in-laws with order to pass that shit along to me. I then get a phone call a couple of hours later telling me about how the kids have grown--no shit, they do that when you see them only once a year--and just how much taller my daughter is than my niece...despite the fact that I'm taller than my brother (not to mention far more dashingly handsome) and my daughter is almost a full year older than my niece.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go to Sonic's website so that I can pinpoint the location of America's Drive-In that is approximately two-and-a-half to three-hours away.
I had never been to Charleston, SC before this past weekend, but everyone who goes there raves about their experience. So, I was looking forward to seeing the city, mostly because it was before the summer, with the high humidity and the sticky heat. Though it wasn't going to be hot and humid, the weather was still going to be warm, sunny, and generally pleasant.
With that in mind, we got up Saturday morning and began the five-hour drive down to the city, a ride which was highlighted by a stop in Lumberton, NC to pee. Did you know that Lumberton, NC smells like shit? Neither did we. And that was before we went to the bathroom.
The second highlight of the trip was finding a Sonic in Manning, SC (which I referred to as "Peyton's Place", because I'm fucking clever). With the juicy deliciousness of a Super Sonic and tater tots in our bellies, we set out again on the road with Charleston in our sights.
Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the drive, however, were the groan-worthy road signs for this theme-park-ish place called "South of the Border", which is literally just south of the North Carolina border. The entire way down I-95, the route is littered with large, black billboards featuring this characture of a Mexican guy named "Pedro" and bad, bad, terrible puns. The place looked as corny and as bad as the billboards promised. Silently, I vowed to ruin a weekend in my children's future by taking them to Pedro's South of the Border.
Anyway, we get to the hotel, get checked in, take brief power naps, and then get dressed and ready to go. We have a rehearsal at four and the wedding is at six. So, we drive down into downtown Charleston where my wife's parents are staying. There, the kids change, I watch five minutes of basketball, and then we're heading down to the lobby and the bar area, where my wife's family is congregating before heading over to the church.
Now, my wife's family is very huggy. Time to greet one another? Hugs! Time to say good-bye? Hugs! You just ripped a big fart and a look of complete bliss is covering your features? HUGS!
With that in mind, as we're standing down in the lobby, I see my wife's aunt come wandering toward the bar area. I look and say to myself, "Oh, my wife's aunt got her hair done. How nice. Well, might as well get this over with." And, as she approaches, I throw my arm around her to give her a hug.
About halfway through the embrace, I suddenly realize, Oh fuck, this isn't my wife's aunt. Instead, I hugged my wife's aunt's sister, who was very confused and who shunned me for the rest of the weekend. I guess I shouldn't have grabbed some ass while in the hug.
Thankfully--blissfully--it was time to walk over to the church. "It's only a couple of blocks away!" I hear. This will become a theme. Apparently, in Charleston, "blocks" means "time zones", and the walk seems even longer when you have dress shoes on that don't really fit all that well.
So, after wandering to almost the Georgia border, we finally find the church, which is a lovely old complex--probably as old as, or as close to as old as, the city itself--where we have the rehearsal. The problem is, my son and I aren't in the rehearsal, and he's bored and, well, frankly, so was I. So we went for a walk and eventually found our way into an old graveyard. It was magnificent, looking at all those old graves, but I worry that Charleston might have a vampire problem, based on the number of broken graves I found.
Finally, it was time for the wedding, which was short and lovely...kinda like my wife. Hi-yo! Anyway, after pictures, it was time to--guess what!--walk to the reception. "It's just over a block and down three!" someone said. And so, away we went.
And went.
And went.
And went some more.
It seemed to take forever, but there we were, in the Exchange building, where there were seats and food and drinks. Except, the alcohol was beer and wine. That's cool and all, and the bar was an open bar, but I needed something to drink and with my inability to drink beer, that wasn't an option. Also, since my taste in wine tends toward the "alcoholic kool-aid" side of the spectrum, that was kind of out, too.
But, man, did I drink a lot of free Sprite.
The food was excellent. I went back twice for Shrimp 'n Grits alone, and the roast beef was melt-in-your-mouth tender and delicious. Yes, please, I'll have another. And, as the food line finally began dying down, the dancing revved up.
And the scene was stolen by my five-year-old son. He took to the dance floor like no one I've seen before...and the sad thing was, he danced really well. I guess that's what happens when you're completely uninhibited. He would dance, and then he would come and eat some pretzels and color, and then he would dance some more.
And, Gwen...he came up to me and said, "I want someone to show me how to do the Electric Slide." I think you owe him five bucks.
I mostly stayed around the fringes, reading some of the historical notes about the city and such and talking with family members. My wife's cousin, the one who got married? His new wife is an old family friend. Her father is the president of the University of Louisiana-Monroe. And, he's also, possibly, one of the nicest men I've ever met. Friendly, gregarious, tall and with a solid handshake, I took an instant liking to him. I liked him so much, I didn't even hit him with the "Why are you trying to ruin the NCAA tournament?"
He's on the board that is looking into expanding the tournament next season from 65 teams to 96. I have a bad feeling that, had I asked him about it, he would have convinced me that it's a really, really good thing. He seemed eloquently persuasive like that.
Finally, we were calling it a night. Tank had danced himself out and my feet hurt so badly I wanted to cry like there was a snake in my kitchen or something. So...we walked back to the hotel. Except...we didn't know where we were going, so we kind of went for a little ways and then turned and walked longer and longer and longer and, finally, we found Meeting street (one of the main thoroughfares) and worked our way back to the hotel from there. Fortunately, we didn't meet any sketchy characters (nor vampires), and we sat in the hotel bar for a while and had a generally nice time until the kids complained that they were "tired" and that "their feet hurt" and they wanted "to go to bed." So, we got in the car, drove back to our hotel, and crashed.
We were up again before the sun and made our way downtown again for brunch. Goddamn, I love grits. We then decided to wander the streets a little bit and explore the city and eventually we'd eat lunch, say our good-byes and drive home.
Now, this is where I truly saw Charleston, and the residential part of the city is as-advertised. The gardens probably weren't at their peak yet, but what I saw was certainly beautiful. I'm sure it's even more lovely with the leaves on the trees and such, but the buildings and the architecture and the gates and ironwork were magnificent. We walked down to the Battery, which overlooked part of the harbor and you could see Fort Sumter in the distance. We saw some dolphins, we saw big, replica cannon and statues of naked Greek soldiers (I don't know either).
And we saw rain. Falling on our heads as we made our way back to the market area for lunch. And we saw more rain. And, eventually, we saw a downpour as we were just a little bit away from our lunching destination, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Having just tortured myself watched Forrest Gump a couple of weeks ago, this was kind of cool. I knew it was one of those over-priced chains established with the sole purpose of luring in tourists to part them with their money, but it was a place that was easily found and could seat a large group (I think there were fourteen of us). So, there you have it.
I opted for the shrimp 'n grits again, because it was affordable. It wasn't nearly as good as that offered at the reception the night before, but it was still acceptable (though the ham had been heat-lamped to a stringy, rubbery, inedible mass). We ate, walked back to the hotel, got in the car and took one last turn down by the water and the enormous cruise ship that was in port because it was afflicted with norovirus, and then we came home. Fortunately, Bubba Gump and brunch sated us enough that we didn't need to stop to eat on the way home and we all came in, fell into bed, and slept.
Except for one of us, who battled fever and the desire to puke and a lot of rumblies in his tummy. But that's a story for another day. That day being yesterday.
As far as TMI Thursdays go, this one is pretty mild. If my salient stories about failed phone- and netsex sessions with the Ex- don't sate your need for inappropriate stories, try LiLu's place, which is the home of TMI Thursdays!
So, as I've referenced before, I have an active account on a certain social networking site. I reactivated it last November, after I drove back from Tennessee where I spent time with my wife's family for the holiday.
*glassy-eyed stare*
On my way home, I thought about my friend from Tennessee, and so I decided to netstalk her look her up online. When I got home, I fingered Googled her and found her page. So, I activated my account, sent her a message, we exchanged life update emails, and...well...haven't really spoken too her much since. Hooray for getting reconnected!
So, that initial night, I went through, picked up a handful of friends, and then, because I felt the need to be nice, I added my brother. I'm still not sure why, since we haven't spoken in...I dunno...a long time. We'll just say that.
A few days later, we had our company Christmas party, and on my work's intranet, there were some pictures of my kids sitting on Santa's lap. So, I figured, in order to avoid shooting pictures of the kids around on the emails and unnecessarily sucking up large amounts of bandwidth, I would just load the pictures onto my page and then the wife could also check them out and link to them or whatever the fuck it is that people do on there with pictures.
My brother then apparently showed the pictures to my mom. And here is where the proverbial wheels came off the cart, because this was the catalyst that caused my mother to open an account on the site.
And I've pretty much wanted to put a bullet in my brain ever since.
My mother is the Queen of Non-Sequiturs. She doesn't mean to be, but she is. And she feels the need to comment on every. single. post. I. make. It's enough to bring a man who cries less than Chuck Norris to tears.
She also is painfully unaware of what it is I do for a living. For one, she apparently thinks I went to medical school (I had a minor in biology) so she asks me about all of her health issues. She also is convinced that I work for a company that makes generic pharmaceuticals (we currently have no products on the market), and so she asks when her cholesterol and diabetes drugs will be on the generic markets.
So, you can imagine how all this misinformation of hers plays out well with my status updates and minor posts. Comedy ensues.
To compound this, she suddenly decided that I needed to connect to her through Yahoo!. I'm not even sure what that means, but I knew that I didn't like it. So I blocked her.
Yeah. I blocked my mother. Wanna make something of it?
My mother--like with so many other things in life--thinks that she's an expert in computer usage.
Allow me to dispel this notion.
Remember ICQ? A happy little chat program that was kind of big during the late 90s before AIM pretty much dominated until the rise of Twitter? It was invaluable for someone whose girlfriend lived hours away.
It was also a convenient way for my mom to chat with my bed-ridden aunt, because my aunt lived in Fort Wayne and we lived in podunk little Markle. This meant that, in order for my mom to chat with my aunt, she had to dial long distance. This was before digital phones, so long distance charges could get costly.
Being that I was a good son, I set my mom up with an ICQ account. I also set her up with her own email account. Neither of which she would use. She would use my accounts because she was too...lazy...to be bothered with learning how to log someone else out of a program and log herself in.
She would also check my email for me. And since she was...too lazy...to bother to learn how to pronounce anyone's last name, she would garble them, badly. You can imagine what she did with things like "Grzegorek" (Grez-gore-eck) or "Jarowicz" (Jar-o-witz). Once, much to my horror, she informed me that I had an email from e-moaning. When I looked, it was from my friend, one Mr. E. Moening.
With all this in mind...one night, during my college years, I was home. I was upstairs, probably rotting my mind with video games or *gasp* reading or something. My mom was downstairs on the computer, chatting with my aunt. All is well with the world.
And then the Ex logs in and sees that "I'm" on ICQ. So, she messages "me." She hits "me" with this doozie:
"So, you gonna stick that big old cock of yours into me, or am I going to have to get down on my knees and beg for it?"*
Now, remember...the Ex and I were very sexually active. But, since we spent a lot of time apart, we had to resort to phone- and cybersexing. And, this mostly worked while we were apart, and then in those rare times when we'd be together (before she moved to the greater Fort Wayne area after we were both out of college) we'd fuck like hounds.
My mother, of course, was completely fucking oblivious to our fucking. It was fucking great. Fucking.
Therefore, a highly sexually-charged introductory message in a chat session was pretty much par for the course between us.
However...I wasn't the one receiving the message.
So, my mother responded to her, in very unflattering terms, that it was not me using the computer right now and that she did not appreciate such language. I'm pretty sure she called my girlfriend a whore, and probably a slut. And any number of unkind terms implying that she was loose in the knickers.
Later, when I finally was able to use the computer, I got a message from the Ex.
The Ex: Is this you?
Me: Uh, yeah.
The Ex: WHY THE FUCK WAS YOUR MOTHER USING YOUR FUCKING ACCOUNT EARLIER?
Me: Excuse me?
The Ex then related the story to me. I about pissed my pants myself laughing (I took them off when I got on the computer, anticipating the cybering). Fortunately, since this was just internet chatting, she couldn't hear me laughing. I explained to her about my technologically-challenged mother and her refusal to use the accounts I set up for her.
The Ex: So...
The Ex: What are you going to do about this?
Me: I think I'm going to make you beg.
The Ex: ???
Me: Instead of sticking my big old cock in you, I'm going to make you beg. I like it when you're a dirty little girl and need some punishment.
Me: Get down on your knees.
Me: And fucking beg for it, bitch.
The Ex: You're a fucking pig.
Me: And that makes you a pig fucker.
The Ex: You know, I WAS horny earlier.
Me: Before or after talking to my mom?
Me: Oh...oh God...was it during?
The Ex: Okay, seriously, fuck you.
Me: Isn't that what you were trying to get earlier?
The Ex: You're such an asshole! [log off]
For years, my mother brought this story up at every family gathering in some weak attempt to embarrass me. I just always kind of shrugged it off, and threw back in her face, "It wouldn't have been a problem if you had ever bothered to learn how to access your own account."
"But, Son, I wouldn't be able to embarrass you so if it hadn't."
I guess she was right; I was embarrassed for her. I'd roll my eyes and just let her keep going in her own happy little world.
Just to steer this ship back onto the TMI Thursday track, the Ex came back fifteen minutes later and we had the cybersex. I think twice. I mean, I had my pants off already and everything. Never let a good boner go to waste.
And now that I think back...I mercilessly abused myself autoerotically in the same chair my mom sat in when she dinked around on the computer. Revenge is a dish best served naked...and musky...and possibly with traces of semen on it. And a few ass hairs and pubes for good measure.
/rant
* This all happened fourteen years ago, so I'm paraphrasing here. Just go with it.
Like I said yesterday, my wife and I have decided to start playing a drinking game anytime we're around her sister. She's a spectacular piece of work. As I alluded to yesterday, her greatest joy in life in making others feel bad. She carries an air of superiority about her that is nauseating, at best, if it doesn't make you want to rip her throat out with your bare teeth. That is, if you want to get that close to her.
Anyway, I was on my best behavior during the 48 hours or so that I was around her. Still, I had to seek refuge in the basement, away from her, on several occasions. It just got to be too much.
For starters, she brought a gallon of organic whole milk for her kids to drink. They drank nothing but. Because her kids drink organic whole milk, they don't get sick. *ahem* Oh, I'm sorry. I had a little tickle in my throat. I think I picked up a cold from my nieces as they were dribbling their runny, snotty noses all over me and my kids.
She also canceled most of her cable, which means that her kids don't watch cartoons. Their first priority is to play outside. They don't play video games. However, they both climbed all over my daughter to watch her play her hand-held gaming device. Coincidentally, my daughter also caught a cold from the children that never get sick.
She also went apoplectic about my kids really enjoying their pie from the post-dinner catastrophe that still has my OCD flinching and squirming like a bug that's just smashed against your windshield. I mean, they both had one piece of pie after dinner and one more piece of pie before bed as a treat. My sister-in-law kept going on, "I just don't understand your kids and their obsession with pie. My girls don't like pie. They'd much rather have tomatoes."
Well, here. Here's a shit pie. Serve yourself a big slice. My kids get pie at Thanksgiving and Christmas and occasionally during the spring when I remember what day Pi day is (March 14). So, fuck you very much when it comes to your kids not liking pie. Besides, I have theory as to why they don't like pie, but it's kind of mean. I'll just say...do any of you remember on Family Guy when they cut to the scene at John Goodman's Thanksgiving table? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
I'd say that she has a "my shit doesn't stink" attitude, but her attitude is more of a "I don't poop at all, and I only fart rainbows and fairy dust." Can you imagine what would happen if she took a tour through this joint on a Thursday? Heh. I think I might go to Blog2Print, publish a copy of my finest, shittiest TMI posts, and send it to her for Christmas.
Anyway, remember how I mentioned she was religious. Well, Wednesday night, we all met at a restaurant for a pre-Thanksgiving gluttony fest wherein we destroyed some chicken wings. As the evening wore on, my children were getting bored, as were my nieces. So, my daughter got up and played with my youngest niece, and they were dancing around in circles together. This upset my older niece and, because she was upset, she turned and faced the brick wall behind the table and, I shit you not, started praying. Like, sign of the cross, folded hands, forehead against the wall praying. For a second, I thought I was at Knoxville's version of the Wailing Wall. My mother-in-law asked my niece what she was doing, because my mother-in-law saw that my niece was clearly upset that she wasn't playing with my daughter and my other niece. My older niece then turned to my mother-in-law and said, "I'm saying a prayer." Rather emphatically at that. She then turned back to the wall and restarted the prayer!, sign of the cross and everything.
This was a sign of things to come (no pun intended). For nearly 48 straight hours, my sister-in-law told us about what was going on at the church, about the new priest, the shut-ins, the Hispanic population--oh, no, wait, I'm sorry, the Mexicans, said with just enough disdain to let you know clearly what she thinks of them. She talked about counseling, about holy sacraments, about various pieces of church equipment that had been purchased, about retreats and about the "nun run".
You know what a nun run is? It's where the diocese charters a bus and hauls your ass around to all of the convents, seeing if you get a good feeling about joining any of them.
I'm not sure what the capper was, though. It was either when she was complaining to my father-in-law for not finishing the kneeler she requested he make her last Christmas, or the "love retreat". The love retreat was particularly awesome because, if you go on the love retreat, you're not allowed to say anything all weekend long, unless it's inspired by love. I'm going to guess I'd get kicked out when, during circle time, I'd pipe up with "Boy, I love masturbating. And cheese fries."
And if she wasn't yammering something about the church, she was talking about her friend Lisa, whom she met at church and is pretty much the same as my sister-in-law.
This is what caused my wife and I to come up with the following drinking game:
1) Every time she talks about church, that's a sip. 2) Every time she talks about Lisa, that's a sip. 3) Every time she says "Let your joy out" (or whatever the Virtue of the day is), that's a sip. 4) Every time she mentions retreats, counseling, or any other Holy Rite, that's a sip. 5) Every time she mentions Lisa AND church in the same story, that's two sips. 6) Every time one of her children spontaneously burst into prayer, finish the drink. 7) Every time she makes some backhanded insult as to the way we're raising our children, finish the drink and bash her fucking skull in with the bottle.
I see this game catching on very well with my wife's family.
As reported here on these electronic media Saturday, I safely traveled to and returned from the great state of Tennessee, and in case you didn't read it on Saturday, Tennessee truly is a great state. Minus Bruce Pearl. I kid, I kid. Sort of.
Anyway, I have much to tell, much to tell indeed! So, I've broken it up into compartmentalized story form. Because I'm lazy like that. And because otherwise the post would probably be really effing big if I didn't do that.
Diminished: Let's start with the meal, shall we? Or, the rather spare offerings otherwise mistaken for "Thanksgiving Dinner." While my greatest hopes were achieved in that I could fall asleep in front of watch the Packers game Thursday at noon, I was getting hungry toward the end of the game. Fortunately, in the middle of the fourth quarter, when the game was pretty much finished, anyway, the dinner bell was rung.
I would have happily slept longer watched the rest of the game if it meant having more food.
Being the loving and caring father that I am, I stood up to get my kids their plates first. Knowing that they both love mashed potatoes (because, really, who doesn't love mashed potatoes?), I went straight for the potatoes, expecting to find some massive, heaping amount of deliciously boiled and creamily-whipped spuds. Instead, what I found was a meager pile of gunpowder spuds that had no pepper, no butter, no chives, no milk, no flavor and nothing really to make me think "mashed potatoes". And, considering there were 20 other people who would also want some potato flakes mashed potatoes, I served up a teaspoon of mashed potatoes for my child (I think I had Cookie's plate). Other "side" dishes suffered from a similar paucity. Again, small spoonfuls of everything was served up. With this, it was time to get to the meat of the meal--the meat! All morning, my wife's cousins and my brother-in-law had been manning the turkey fryer, so I was looking forward to some sumptuous turkey as well as the afore-promised Honey-Baked Ham.
Sadly, I got to the meat platters and found that the turkeys (well, the ones that were done, at least) had been carved with the delicacy and precision of an amphetamine-fueled axe-murderer. Picking through and getting some smaller portions that, you know, someone other than T. rex would eat, I turned to the ham.
Have I mentioned how much I love ham? This is a genetic thing, because my children both love ham, too. No, wait. There's no ham-loving gene. We love ham because it's so fucking delicious!!!
As I said to my wife later, when it was just the two of us: "Who the fuck serves a cold ham? We could have gone down the street to the grocer and gotten some cold cuts. Isn't the whole point of having a Honey-Baked Ham is that it is fucking baked???"
Mmmm...butchered bland turkey and cold ham. Two strikes and you're out, right?
I figured I could make up for the lack of everything else with rolls. Unfortunately, someone had planned ahead really well, and cooked 16 rolls. For 21 people. Like so many other aspects of the dinner, it could all be summed up fairly easily: Swing and a miss.
Fall on Me: Around the "dinner" table, conversations were shared, but mostly about people I didn't know. Being that my wife and her siblings and her sister's husband all went to the same high school, they knew the same people. At one point, we were talking about running, and about how it's difficult for women to run (you know, 'cause they got boobs). Suddenly, the name Erin Hill was brought up (I think that's the name...I got distracted during the telling of the tale...as I will recount shortly).
Apparently, Ms. Erin literally hit herself in the face once during gym class. It was at this point that I took my wife's arm in my hands and said, "You have my attention. Do go on." Ms. Erin was not one to do things half-assed, from what I can gather, and when she went through puberty, she really went through puberty, erupting forth with lovely, heavy Double-E cup breasts on her somewhat slight frame.
My sister-in-law then informed everyone that Ms. Erin's large breasts caused her some troubles and really "screwed up her back". My mother-in-law then interjected that, no, her back got messed up when she was in a bus accident and they had to go in and do surgery.
The table fell silent for a moment and I added, just loud enough for everyone to hear, "Well, hell, they probably saved her life!"
Comedy: it's all in the timing.
King of Comedy: My brother-in-law (my wife's brother), is perhaps the one person in the family most like me in terms of sense of humor (though my mother-in-law does have a very twisted sense of humor...she just feels bad about laughing at poop jokes and Carny folks). Many of my brother-in-law's friends rely strictly on shock value for their jokes. During the "meal", my BIL got a text message from his friend Marcello that my BIL had to read to the family: "Ha, Marcello says that he just clogged up his in-laws' toilet!"
"What the hell," I added to the end. "Doesn't he realize that you have to break up the fleet before jumping to hyperspace?"
People laughed, but as the words were finally sinking into my mother-in-law, she laughed the loudest and the hardest. So, I successfully offered up the two best lines of the entire weekend.
Stand: One of the major problems of the entire holiday was that there were 21 people in the house and two dogs. This, in and of itself, should not have been a problem. However, it was a problem when the only seating is a loveseat, a recliner, a rickety rocking chair, two barstools and two other straight-backed chairs.
As such, I spent most of the holiday downstairs, in the basement, on the couch. I sat there. I read there. I worked on the laptop down there. I slept there. Pretty much, by the time Friday afternoon rolled around, I had worked a pretty good ass-groove into the couch. Awesome.
Orange Crush: I didn't think it was possible to ruin French toast. I mean, it's pretty simple: soak it in an egg-and-milk mixture, sprinkled heavily with cinnamon and nutmeg, cook. Serve with syrup.
My sister-in-law, who enjoys nothing more than making others feel bad, brought a bunch of breakfast casseroles for Thursday and Friday. Thursday was a bunch of quiches, which were tolerable. I'm not a big egg fan, for reasons that I won't broach here (think biochemistry lab, if you must have some form of explanation), but the food was free and I could have a couple of slabs of it to tide me over for the rather sparse offerings for Thursday afternoon.
Friday was this French Toast Casserole thing. And, while I like French Toast, I don't like it with orange zest. Nor do I like it without cinnamon and nutmeg flavorings. I like it even less with caramel sundae sauce spread on top of it. However, since I was trying to be polite, I choked down my initial two pieces. With it, I ate a single piece of bacon and a single sausage patty. Talk about being made a sad panda...
Imagine my distress when my father-in-law loaded two more slabs of French Toast Casserole onto my plate. I suppose his heart was in the right place, but... Since I was severely lacking in the whole breakfast meat department, I went ahead and ate them. They laid in my stomach like rocks. Bland, chewy rocks. Bland, chewy, there's orange flavoring in here where citrus overtones should not be rocks.
Fortunately, I was able to steal a single sausage patty off the plate headed toward the dog's bowl before it got there.
Shiny Happy People: My sister-in-law is a very religious person.
When, you know, she's not making fun of Mexicans.
I digress. My sister-in-law is a very religious person.
She has foisted the great love of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Holy Spirit, Saint Wenceslas, the Holy Sepulcher and transubstantiation onto her oldest child. Well, it's both of her children, but her oldest seems to be the one who suffers has responded to it the most. Pretty much from the moment we got there until we left, it was one long, constant stream of things that are happening in her church. If it wasn't what was happening in the church, it was what her friend Lisa was doing...Lisa, whom she met at the church!
It came to the point where my wife and I are going to make a drinking game out of it the next time we're around her.
Possibly the most annoying thing (other than making her children say prayers when they are being punished...) was that, whenever one of the girls would be angry or frustrated or anything else that might be construed as negative in any way, my sister-in-law would command them to "Let your joy out."
Can't do a cartwheel? Let your joy out. Can't play with a toy because someone else is playing with it? Let your joy out. Not enough mashed potatoes on the buffet table? Joy, it's what's being let out.
So now I'm torn. I don't know what to do. If I'm ever told to "let my joy out", should I drop trou or just bust ass really loudly? I'm leaning toward the latter, and then sighing heavily and saying, "You're right, I do feel better." And then, if I can, to release a little trouser sneeze as a follow up and toss in "Oop, a little more joy for you all."
And then leave the room.
Sweetness Follows: My fear about the pies was relieved a little bit when my mother-in-law showed up with four pies. That upped the pie:person ratio quite a bit. Unfortunately, there were now two pecan pies floating around the place.
This did not make me want to let my joy out.
However, there was enough pie for everyone. It was the, uh, getting of the pie that was most troublesome.
No one cut the pies.
Instead, I was handed a pie server and told to hack off a piece of whatever I wanted. I wish I was lying. It was so that you could sample all of the pies. Personally, I don't see why I couldn't just take a pie back to the corner that I was standing in (remember, seating was very limited) and just go to town.
My joy would have been released then.
Instead, there was a mad rush and a fight for the serving utensils. Pies were carved up in any manner which suited the last person at the pie pan. My OCD tendencies were not amused by this ignorance of proper pie protocol. Hysteria rocked the masses. The sun looked as though sackcloth had been drawn across it and the moon was the color of blood! A dragon with thirteen heads appeared! Lightning! Thunder! Office supplies! The Apocalypse!!!
I will say, though, that my wife's pie was the tastiest. So was the sweet potato/marshmallow cream pie that she made.
