It's that time of year again, for feasting and visiting and so forth. At one party, I commented that the sound of screaming children always puts me in mind of Christmas.
"Or water parks," someone else noted.
"Yeah, but those remind me of Christmas, too. My family was cruel and cheap."
My family's normal Christmas ritual is to go to my grandparents', about a 2 hour drive away, and have dinner with my mom's brothers and sisters and their families. For various reasons, my mom is hosting this year, which means there will be 8 people staying over tonight. To accomodate all these relatives, my parents have borrowed an RV. A 34' long, powder blue RV. As I arrived and saw it from a block away, I couldn't help but be put in mind of Randy Quade in his short robe and flapped hat waving his beer and yelling, "shitter was full!"
We've had the local radio station on for the last day. They promised 36 hours of Chritsmas music with no commercials. This promise quickly began to ring hollow as we realised that, although they will be playing Christmas music for 36 hours, they can't have more than about 4 hours of Christmas music on file.
My favourite moment of this year was when my step-dad gave my mom her card. It was one of those standard mushy Hallmark "to my loving wife" bla bla bla cards. That's why it was kind of funny when he pointed out that the envelope, which came with the card, included a marking in the corner indicating "Additional Postage Required."
Merry Christmas, everyone!
