You might be wondering how the last five days went. I've been busy learning valuable life lessons.
Like: Never leave your car door open at a farm. Or: SUVs can run considerably far on gas fumes and swear words.
But I'm not gonna give any more life lessons away for free. Oh, no... I'm going to make you read this whole story to learn them along with me.
Foreshadowing is a real thing.
We pulled away from my parents' house on Friday with my dad at the helm of my Suburban and my mom perched near the kids. I asked if we were coming home on Sunday, and my mother paused.
And hesitated. We were thinking probably Tuesday or Wednesday.
I'm not sure why I didn't roll down the window and jump out there.
While a large vehicle can physically hold six people for five hours, it probably shouldn't be done. Ever again.
This one should be fairly self-explanatory.
Name exchanges never work. It is a known fact. Don't think that you'll be the one to change that because you're just gonna be the asshole who ruins some kid's Christmas.
Despite having to drive five hours to get there, we were one of the first families to arrive at "the farm." This was my mother's parents' house, and it didn't take long for her many siblings to filter in and fill the dining room table with all sorts of artery-clogging and delicious sugared treats. (I chose the chair in front of the only thing I wouldn't eat - cold cocktail shrimp. Ick. My ass would thank me later.)
In previous lifetimes, every person in the very large family picked a person's name from the hat in order to buy them a gift, but this tradition had been given up since it always seemed as though one person (my cousin Ryan) would be screwed out of a present, for whatever reason. It was like magic, every single year.
Well, they brought back the exchange for the little kids. Turns out my cousin Cody is the new Ryan. Congrats, Cody! And Merry Christmas. I hope your brother enjoys his two exchange gifts.
The teenager will get the sexually inappropriate present.
Instead of a name exchange for the adults, each woman brings a female gift and each man brings a male gift to put under the tree. It then becomes a game of stealing and unwrapping the best gifts.
Leave it to my barely-out-of-high-school cousin to get the silk Playboy thong and my other relatively young cousin to get my crotchety old Uncle Rick's precious bottle of Crown Royal.
Alcohol can't solve your problems, but it's pretty good at numbing emotional pain.
Saturday's plans were a bit more sedate. Literally.
Before heading to my dad's mom's house for our Christmas gift-opening (with a much smaller crowd of sixteen plus two dogs, I might add), I was told to make a quick stop at the local grocery store where we bought over $80 in booze.
It was going to be a Merry Christmas after all!
I needed a drink to numb the pain after I snapped my finger with a smooth bead so quickly it busted the skin and made my finger puff up.
Then my dad explained to his mother that at 89, she probably shouldn't be driving, even if the DOT renewed her license for 8 more years without a driver's test. She laughed anxiously and said, I suppose everyone knows I hit the brick wall with my car at city hall.
Every head in the room nodded and my dad laughed, It's practically on the internet.
When my father is giving directions for a shortcut, "How adventurous do you feel?" is always a bad sign.
I had four dad-mixed cocktails at Grandma's and enjoyed opening some lovely gifts. We snacked and chatted and made merry before I scraped off the car, packed gifts children and parents in, dropped gifts children and parents off at my aunt's house, and headed down a lonely and snowy country highway to meet my cousins for a couple games of bowling.
I asked my dad if there was a better way to get to that next town, and he rattled off a combination of turns and highway letters. It turns out "the sign is really small at the turn" is code for "you're going to completely miss it so use your natural sense of direction to find your way and godspeed."
I made it in record time, in part due to my natural ability to find shit if people just leave me to it, and my adopted motto: drive fast, take chances.
Like gray hair and sore thumbs, sexual frustration sticks out in a crowd.
I started chipping away at the Budweiser sticker on my beer bottle when my cousin asked, Why do you always do that?
Her husband piped up, Did you know that peeling your labels off is a sign of sexual frustration?
Interesting as that may be, I told him I didn't need a bottle to tell me I was sexually frustrated.
Later in the night a man walking to his car yelled jokingly to me, What did you say about "breakfast"? Maybe he saw my beer bottles and took a chance. I declined, but horrible pick-up lines never fail to make me laugh.
You can never outgrow your childhood.
Aunt Judy (or as the girls had taken to calling her: Auntie Hootie Zhoodie) had a Packer party on Sunday. If there was any moment where the trip took a turn for the worst, it had to be around that time.
It started with a smart-assed remark from crotchety old Uncle Ricky-Tikki about my too-long two-minute story and how I needed to "come up for air."
It ended with me saying, I guess I don't drink enough to have anything in common with some of these people.
Sleepwalking takes no vacations.
While dreaming about something pleasant, I knocked over my aunt's heavy birchwood coffee table in my sleep, sending potpourri everywhere but waking up just in time to snag the table and prevent it from slamming into the ground. After that I moved the table away from the couch before bedtime. And I'm pretty sure my dreams were less pleasant as well.
Bad things happen in threes and fours. And fives and sometimes sixes.
The plan on Monday was to take the kids sledding at the farm, and later to go from house to house to view Christmas decorations. (That's code for: have a few cocktails then drive to the next relative's house and have a few more.)
We packed the car up Monday morning and it was at that moment I realized my wallet was not in my purse. I racked my brain. Where could it be? Where was the last place I saw it?
I had a slow-motion flashback to the bowling alley two days prior. I tried to stay calm as I called and was told they had it at the bar. My parents offered to take the girls sledding while I drove the 15 miles to my wallet.
Unfortunately, I was almost out of gas. And my dad had little to no money that day. And my wallet was in a fucking bowling alley.
After emptying the kids and parents out of the Suburban, I climbed into the driver's seat and threw it into reverse. I looked back to see a huge calico cat sitting two feet away from me, wide-eyed as if to say, I don't know how the hell this happened, either. Where are we goin'?
I evicted the cat, limped the car along country highways to the nearest gas station, put five gallons of gas in the Suburban with dad's money, and drove to the bowling alley.
Money does not grow on trees. Which is why people steal it out of wallets.
I was relieved to arrive at the bar and see my wallet by the cash register. The bartender mocked me when I said I was going to check to see if everything was in place. My credit cards and pictures were there, but when I went to retrieve my $60-100 in vacation money - going to tiny podunk Northern Wisconsin City with few ATMs is the only reason I carry cash - I saw it was completely EMPTY. The bartender gave me a fake sympathy sigh and said At least they left the credit cards.
I imagined grabbing her by the back of her hair and slamming her into the bar top while yelling:
Sometimes there really is no "bright side" to look at.
Oh, that and: I'm related to someone who's related to the owner of this place, so watch out because I can pretend to be important!
By the time I got back to the farm, I had had my limit. I even gestured this fact to my parents in the hopes that my mother would sense my fragility that today might be the day I put a sledgehammer between someone's eyes.
Alcohol and guns mix.
So while I was kind of pissed off already, we went house hopping. At the first house, my one aunt was waving around an empty 9mm handgun she'd won at a raffle. A few people took turns shining the laser around the room when I pointed out that drinking with guns probably wasn't the best idea.
Until I decided I wanted to shoot a few people. Then it was the best idea ever.
Turns out my crotchety, ornery old uncle hadn't gotten enough mileage out of his "I shut Loren up" story, and a few other slightly-intoxicated specimen were getting in some hilarious jabs.
I asked my dad where my aunt had set that gun down. He laughed because he knows we all love each other deep down, but just in case that love wasn't strong enough to prevent homicide, I took the kids back to Judy's after only the second house.
Gas pumps hate me.
On the way back, my gas was low. Again. I limped the truck all the way in town while the gauge read: E. When I got there, my debit card didn't work in the gas pump. No reason. Just didn't work. Awesome. Anyone with three small children knows what a pain in the ass it is to run in to pay for gas.
Holidays can make you vomit.
At dad's suggestion and my agreeable nodding, we left for home on Tuesday.
Because everything seems to revolve around my hatred for gas pumps... We were only halfway when we stopped to fill up. For whatever reason, the gas pump accepted my card but didn't pump any gas into the truck. My dad and I switched places so we didn't realize what had happened until the truck's gauge continued to read 1/4 tank miles down the road.
So we stopped again about an hour later. This time, I put the card in, it worked, the gas started, and I left the family to go to the ATM machine inside. When I came out a few minutes later, it had only pumped 3 gallons. THREE. We ended up settling for 8 just to get home.
In a final moment of awesome vacation hellishness, we drove through a gorgeous park of Christmas lights where my Suburban told me its "reserve brake" needed servicing. Whatever that is.
I yelled, AWESOME! JUST AWESOME! in my happiest, most sarcastic voice.
And then I had to hold back the anxious vomit while the kids waved happily to the Santa lights.
I need vacations after my vacations.
After getting the kids settled into their own beds at 10 o'clock tonight (did I mention we started this fantastic voyage home at 11 AM?) I unloaded the entire truck.
It was then I realized how easy it would be to throw my still-packed suitcase in the car and take a mini-vacation to recover from this holiday vacation.
Think Mike would mind? I think he misses the girls bad enough he might fall for it.
In a nutshell: I injured myself, almost injured several other people on purpose, ran out of gas repeatedly, had my money stolen, had meals consisting mostly of carrot sticks, pretzels and cookies, tried to convince an old lady she's going to run over a pedestrian someday, nearly took a cat for a ride in my truck, almost vomited from stress, got a late-night phone call from Mike saying he missed the kids, and basically vowed to join whatever cult I have to just so I don't have to do holidays again.
In other words...
It's good to be home.
Instead of all that fun church stuff, I'll drag my children to my parents' house for yet another week of Packer football. (Pathetic, I know, but I look forward to spending time with the old farts.)
