Thoughts of Christmas

I hope everyone had fun this weekend. I was damn busy for most of my holidays. It all started when my dad told me when I arrived up north that we were going to visit my grandparents for christmas eve. I was cool with that until it struck me. I just drove 5 hours to get here, and tomorrow morning you are going to stick me back in a car for 4 to 5 more hours round trip? Fucking A. So, instead of having a lazy Christmas, I spent Christmas travelling.

Christmas eve at my grandparents was amusing as hell. Grandpa has a computer now and the best story told that day was about it. The first thing to remember is that my grandparents live in a small farming town in central Wisconsin. They are pretty simple people with not too much excitement in their lives. Grandpa got his first porn spam mail a while back. After seeing it, he jokingly called Grandma over with, "Hey (Grandma's name), how would you like to look at some porn?" I just about died laughing because my grandparents are conservative as hell, and I never thought I'd see that day when the term "porn" came out of both of their lips. After Grandma walked off disgusted, Grandpa apparently looked around for a while (Go Grandpa! *laughs*), which is why I spent Christmas eve cleaning his computer from all the viruses, spyware, and crap and then showing him how to block the spam.

Christmas day was one of relative peace. My Dad and Stepmom argue all the damn time, tho. Big things, small things... doesn't matter. It's not nasty fighting where they are being hurtful or angry, but it gets on my nerves because they are always doing it. I was mixing up some vodka drinks for myself at 1PM thanks to this. If I had known what was coming, I would've added some Jameson into my coffee that morning. Present opening was cool, tho. I got my Dad and Stepmom a Frank Lloyd Wright clock for their new winter home in Arizona. It was from the prarie home design collection, and the stained glass on it looked almost like butterflies. They loved it, which made me happy. My brother was being a whiner before the holidays and said he "didn't want any gifts this year and he wasn't going to give any, either." Well, too damn bad for him. He's into practical things, so I gave him something that was too useful to try to return or give back. He got one of those LED flashlights that can run on all 7 LED's when it has batteries, but if it runs out, it will light one LED for five minutes if you shake it thoroughly.

Dad wimped out on the gift for me in my opinion. I didn't let it show, but when I opened the box to find a hundred dollar bill, I was disappointed. I personally would rather have a $10 gift from the heart than $100 bill any day. Gift giving to me is a way to thank people for what they did for you, and show how glad you are to have them in your life and how much you care. Money just makes me feel like I'm getting a gift because they feel obligated to give me something. Oh well, another reason I was blitzed on Christmas and had to head to bed around 10PM.

Yesterday, I drove from my Dad's lake home to my Mom's back in Milwaukee. I think the coolest gift I got from Mom was a book called "1000 Places to See Before You Die". I have only a couple of the places checked off so far, and while I don't want to necessarily reach all of the 1000, there are quite a few I'd like to see. Another gift was almost as cool. It was a compilation from my mom of all the recipes she made for us or really liked. I know a few of the recipes by heart, some only because I have them written down, but now I have a binder of them all. I'm too domestic sometimes. *laughs*

Only bad part of my Mom's (other than the fact she still hasn't dumped the loser boyfriend) was that I didn't have a gift in hand for her. I'm going to be getting Opening Day tickets for her, myself, and my brother and sister if they want to come. They aren't on sale yet, tho. I have giving promises instead of the real deal on Christmas. Mom's excited though, and that makes me feel good. I like people I care about feeling good.