Merry Fucking Christmas

Before I embark on this, I should say two things. First, as I grow older, I realize that not everyone's family is like mine. Yes, we all have our Fredo's but no one elses family seems to have quite as many as mine and, at the very least, they all have the self-respect to not invite Fredo to the house for Christmas. Second, I have a big family who, unti very recently we visited all of on Christmas Eve.

Last January, my Great-Grandmother died. (Blunt, no?) In any case this ment that Christmas Eve at Gram's house was off. The prospects seemed excellent. I no longer had to stop in to see all of those Great-Aunts and Uncles that I'm not really a big fan of anyway and, it took one stop off of our already daunting schedule. (I swear to god, I need to get to work on that time machine.) Aside from the whole "death" issue, I was thrilled.

Ah, how naieve I was. It never occured to me, at that time, that if Gram was no longer alive to require my family members to get together in one place at one time, I would never again be off of the proverbial Christmas hook with a one stop shop - what's worse, my mother took her death as an invitation to flee the state and suddenly the 45 minute drive between places turned into a 6 hour affair.

For all the joy that is Christmas to the young and the old alike, to the young couple, the holiday's are thy bane.

Christmas Eve means three stopovers for us - it's up from our previous two but, nevertheless, not bad. A brief stop to see Sis and Frank. I like them, they're good people, but seeing the mother of a friend who died exactly two months ago that day on Christmas, a day when i'm already cranky, is probably not the kind of upper I need. After (or possibly before. The logistics are still a blur) menas a swing over to my Aunt Cindy's house to see my father's parents and my father's brother (whom I haven't seen in excess of the two times I saw him for about 10 minutes since I was 7.) Family history aside, I hate Cindy, my Grandfather is suffering from early stage alzheimers and hearing loss (excellent self-preservational instincts on his part, i think,) my Grandmother is more evil than the Queen of Narnia and, without a lengthy explaination, my Uncle Jon and Aunt Vicky who, in short, suck donkey balls.

Needless to say, two very pleasent stops on a very pleasent day. (When it occured to me that it was the two month anniversary of King's death all I could think was "It figures.")

From there, it's to see Mike's family. This is probably the most low-key event ever and I love them for it. Someone threatens to bring out trivial pursuit, there are cookies and the arguing is generally kept to a reasonable minimum. It's all very happy. (Sad when I consider "not open animocity" a good sign.)

Then, of course, Christmas Day brings an even more festive exchange. As I mentioned, my mother, father and brother can be found in Ohio this year. They've already depearted and they won't be back until the 2nd of January, so yay for that. It does, however, mean that inspite their shirking of family duties (like seeing either of their parents or any of their siblings) I have not been so luckily gifted. At about 11:30 Christmas morning, I'm gathering up my bag of tricks and piling into the car for the doubtless gridlocked drive down 94 and Ciscero to Midway where I can pile, unhappily, into the security line and be poked, prodded and violated until the time comes to actually board my plane. Somewhere in between there I will probably go get some bad kiosk food and a very large cup of coffee. Irish coffee. I leave Chicago at 3:30. Why am I leaving at 11:30 when I live only an hour and 20 minutes away? Because I suspect that between traffic and security I will still be late for my flight.

I should pull into Ohio at about 5:30, local time and there I will proceed to spend the next 3, count 'em, 3 painstaking days in a one bedroom apartment with both of my parents, my younger brother, and my grandparents on my mom's side. Oh yes, it's gonna be great.

On the 28th at about 9am I come back in to Midway only to turn right back around and head in the opposite direction for Madison becuase my idiot parents bought Mike and I tickets to see Trans Siberian Orchestra three days after christmas when they knew i'd be out of state for that time. I wish I had a picture of the face Mike made.

All in all, next christmas i'm renting a hall and sending out invitations explaining that anyone interested in seeing either of us for Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving or any other holiday we may have forgotten can stop in anytime between 6 and 9 on December 24th. BYOB.