I started writing this entry the other day, and in rereading it, I have to wonder why I have been in such a negative, pissy-ass mood all week. I mean, I did not have a rotten time in the Greater New Orleans area (I did not actually set foot in Orleans Parish during the visit, unless the airport counts). I missed my boyfriend, I had a nasty cold, and I was bummed about having too many Family Duty activities and not enough time alone or with friends.
Well, let’s face it, some of that was my own damn fault.
For example, one of my high-school friends wanted to have lunch with me, and I backed out of it because I felt too sick to drive in Uptown New Orleans in my dad’s beloved convertible, not to mention being sociable and friendly, especially if she had her child with her. Okay, I also didn’t want to give her my cold or whatever because she’s pregnant, but mostly I just felt rotten and wanted to curl up in bed or somewhere with wireless Internet access.
I truly do dislike borrowing other people’s cars, which is a big problem when I visit my family and travel by plane. I maybe could have slipped over to PJ’s and had a quiet place to do some work, but I would have had to have borrowed a car. In my defense, my family won’t let me drive any of the SUVs because they think I’m too short and too inexperienced in driving large vehicles, and lots of times my dad’s car wasn’t available. Also, I would have had to tell people where I was going, and they would have wanted to go too, and that rather defeats the purpose.
The point, however, is that if I were better about communicating clearly, I might not end up sulking in corners about this or that. That’s something for me to work on, and not only with the relatives.
Okay, here’s the second part of the Christmas trip story:
My cell phone rang around 7:30 Christmas morning. “She just got up and she’s opening her gifts!” my sister told me. So I pulled on a festive holiday sweatshirt (The Nightmare Before Christmas) and some yoga pants, and walked over to the main house to see my niece on the sun porch, jumping up and down with glee while my sister attempted to assemble the Beauty and the Beast Mini Playhouse, or whatever the hell it was called. Actually, she was not quite jumping up and down because she had on her new “glass slippers” (clear plastic shoes with Cinderella stickers on them) and they were much too large for her.
My niece then dragged us into the living room so we could all open our Christmas stockings. My sister and I knew what was in ours, of course, so we mostly just watched the three-year-old getting very excited about having her very own packet of M&M’s, and a Miss Piggy PEZ dispenser, and so forth. I was glad that my sister decided to spend the night at my parents’ house, because Christmas morning isn’t much fun at all in a house full of grownups who have already given all their gifts. However, it turned out that no one had set up a bed for my niece to sleep in, and she’d awakened several times in the night, and my sister had almost no sleep, so next year I suspect they’ll stay at their own house.
Admittedly I wasn’t much fun myself. Normally we all have coffee and a special cinnamon bread that one of the neighbors gives us for Christmas breakfast, but I felt like nine kinds of crap. I realized that I’d somehow picked up an annoying little cold, so I took my sore throat and congested self back to bed. I practically fell in the bed and slept for a few more hours until my sister banged on the door to see if I was ready to ride to the North Shore with her. I wasn’t, of course, so she left in a huff and I figured I had a lot more time left to get ready until my parents decided to leave. After all, there wasn’t any need to get to my aunt and uncle’s house early, was there?
It turned out I was dead wrong, and next time I need to remember to ask specifically when we are leaving. No one warned me or anything. My mom just banged on the door and said that the Exploiter was packed and they were ready to go, and would I come out now? I had just finished my shower, but it was easy enough to throw on some jeans and a sweater and take my 5,000 pills and grab a bottle of water to drink in the car. No breakfast. No coffee. And I forgot the little presents I wanted to give to my uncle. But apparently we had to get there soon so we wouldn’t interfere with my aunt’s schedule (this is the aunt who was in the hospital so much this year, and who still has to have nursing care and so forth). Well, no one told me.
I guess my parents were mistaken about my aunt’s schedule, or something, because we got to the house and stood around for awhile. My aunt the nun showed up, which was a nice surprise, and my aunt and uncle’s kids were there with their families (well, my Cousin May had her dog, but she had dressed him in a little sweater and spent a lot of time cooing over him). My niece hadn’t had her nap, or much sleep the night before, and she was horribly cranky. Every time someone fussed at her mildly for playing with a knife or doing something else she shouldn’t have, she would start howling for her daddy. The one thing my sister has trouble dealing with is her daughter screaming that she wants her daddy (they’re divorced).
Dinner was great, except that no one remembered to make turkey gravy. We had ham gravy, but you can’t really put that over dressing or rice, much less turkey. I didn’t say a word about it because my aunt the nun did enough fussing, then managed to salvage some turkey drippings to use instead. She brought oyster dressing, which was a real nice surprise that more than made up for the lack of gravy. The cousins all sat together, along with their kids, and the conversation centered around Guy Stuff like LSU football and the nuances of the Star Wars oeuvre. I focused on distracting my niece from the fact that her daddy still hadn’t appeared. (And then when he did appear, she immediately started screaming for her mommy. That child is a player.)
After dinner, I mostly spaced out on a sofa and tried to be social. I talked to my cousin’s wife about antibiotics. I think I looked at some photos. I tried not to fall asleep. There was a weird moment when I realized that one of the Christmas standards that was being performed by a tenor and choir on whatever CD my uncle was playing, was John Lennon’s “And So This Is Christmas/War Is Over” (or whatever you call it).
And I realized that my family never leaves anywhere quickly, particularly my mom. This was something I observed over and over during the trip, maybe because I had noticed that I do it myself sometimes. My boyfriend is ready to go run errands and I have to make a list of where we’re going and what we need to buy, or I have to pee, or brush my teeth, or find a coupon. I agree that it’s time to leave a party, and then spend a half-hour saying goodbye, trying to extricate myself from a last-minute fascinating conversation, etc. My mom is the queen of this, though. I was thrilled and relieved that it was time to leave, because I was tired and sick, and then I had to stand around for almost an hour while she talked to my cousins, packed up food to bring home, helped other relatives pack food, and I don’t know what all else.
I managed to catch a nap on the drive across the Causeway, because there’s not much else to do, which was good because the minute we got to my parents’ hosue and unpacked the car, my mom decided she should get back in the car and drive to her parents’ house to bring them Christmas dinner leftovers. I went with her, because I am a good little granddaughter.
My dad claims that my grandparents don’t eat the food my mom brings them. Either they find something wrong with it, or they say they have too much food already. My grandmother did say she had been wanting some sweet potatoes, though, so maybe it wasn’t a total loss. Besides, I think they were pleased to have company. I realized I was definitely sick and not just being a hypochondriac when I started shivering in my grandparents’ house, because they always have the heat cranked up to 80 degrees at least. I nodded and smiled and listened to more compliments about the photo calendar I’d made for about 45 minutes, until my mom said we probably had to get going, and we left about 15 minutes later. (I realize now that if I really wanted to get home, all I would have needed to do was have a coughing fit, because my grandmother is paranoid about catching other people’s germs. I guess I’m not quite that mean.)
When we got back to the house, I tried to use my parents’ dial-up Internet access. This time I plugged the cord into the phone jack by the TV. This wasn’t any better than the kitchen phone jack. My dad wanted to watch the TV news, although he had the sound turned down. I had to bend down to use the laptop and my back started hurting. Every few minutes, a dialog box popped up saying that someone was on Call Waiting, usually my sister. My baby brother wanted to check his eBay auctions. My boyfriend wasn’t online and I couldn’t IM him, so I sent him an email message (probably a grouchy one) and shut everything down.
My mom and I have a Christmas Night tradition. We try to watch a movie, only we can’t agree on one we both want to watch, and then we end up watching old family Christmas videos. I suggested that this year we skip the unsuccessful movie-selection bit entirely and go straight to the videos. The videos get a little sadder every year, because someone else is dead, or sick, or divorced, or whatnot. This year it was sad to see my Aunt Ya-Ya, who suffered an aneurism this year and still isn’t well, and my Uncle John, who isn’t an uncle but actually an old friend of my grandparents. When I was younger, he reminded me a whole lot of Dean Martin. In fact, I still can’t see Dean Martin without thinking of him. Anyway, he has Alzheimer’s, although a lot of people are in denial about it, and some other medical problems, and he probably won’t be around much longer. There they all were in the Christmas videos, along with my other set of grandparents, some cousins in Alabama and Georgia whom I haven’t seen in years, and my sister’s scary Meg Ryan hair.
But the scariest silly moment was in a 1991 Thanksgiving video that one of my cousins had taken and sent us. We had been making fun of my sister and her large poofy perms (her hair is quite nice now, mind you) and I pointed to the frizzy head of hair on the TV screen and said, “Damn, that’s the worst one yet!” Only it wasn’t my sister. It was me. I’d forgotten that I had a bad perm in the summer of 1991, and by Thanksgiving, it was a real mess. Not well maintained big hair like my sister, but a big mane of crap that I could not be bothered to deal with (it was my first semester of grad school). In the video, we see my baby brother giving me a baseball hat to put over it, because it kept falling in my face and he was uncertain I would be able to eat properly.
I wish I could take a screenshot of me with that hair and print it and show it to everyone who tells me that I should grow my hair out because it would look so pretty if it were longer. Riiiiiight.
Laughing at me and my bizarre hair was a very good way to end Christmas with my family. I escaped into the back room, took various drugs to battle my cold, and called my boyfriend. And enjoyed a very good night’s sleep.
I want a screen capture!!!