Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra. ra-ra-ra-ra...

Christmas morning was actually fairly peaceful. The kids actually waited patiently until 8:30 to open their presents, and it was fairly organized and non-confrontational. We got duplicates of many toys so there would be no fighting. Now for years I have been against this, insisting that my children just suck it up and learn to share, but my nerves are frayed and I've been reduced to wielding a Sharpie and marking each toy with initials so we know what belongs to who. So far, so good.

The kids only had about an hour to play with their toys before we were stuffing them into Christmas attire and hauling them out the door. First stop: Grandma Hooter's house to drop them off for a couple of hours so we could have dinner with the Chinese in peace. I wasn't too keen on leaving them alone there, since I had found Middle Child puffing on one of Grandma's cigarettes the night before, but at that point we had no choice. I pleaded with Grandma to hide her smokes and left to deal with the other side of the family.

We got to the restaurant to find my Grandfather red-faced and breathing heavy in an empty parking lot.

K: "What's going on? Why aren't you inside?"
G: [heavy, stress-induced breathing] "There's a sign on the goddamned door..."
K: "What?"
G: "They don't open until 1:30. Auntie said she made reservations..." [huff puff...]
K: "Hang on, I'll call her."

A phone call to Auntie confirmed that she had indeed made reservations for noon. The place must have either made a mistake or made a last minute decision to open later. She started ranting and raving that she was going to shove terriyaki up the manager's ass if she ever got her hands on him. I figured that was a good time to hang up.

G: "Goddamned chink shitbirds! They've got a goddamned nerve..." [more racist ranting]

Husband made a quick phone call to a Chinese place across town.

H: "Yeah, what time do you open?"
Chinese Guy: "1 o'crock."
H: "Can you take a reservation for six?"
Chinese Guy: "What time?"
H: "Uh, now?"
Chinese Guy: "20 minutes. You come now! Now!!! We take you erry! [translation: early]"
H: "Uh, ok."

We waited for Auntie, who informed us that my drama queen mother had decided not to come because she was "feeling depressed." Poor pookie. Whatever, more pork fried rice for me, beeyatch!

Our caravan headed across town to the other Chinese place, the LoKai. We were greeted with this on the way in:


Just inside the door, there was a spot where the pay phone had quite obviously been ripped off the wall. What the fuck...

H: "Clearly, they didn't use the Sharpie on their pay phone."

Classy shit for sure.

We stopped going to the LoKai because it's buffet style and the food is usually cold or just plain crappy, but beggars can't be choosers and they were opening early to accomodate us, so whatever. The manager seemed thrilled to see us...I mean, really really thrilled.

M: "Oooooh, I remembah you, you come every year."
A: "Yeah, for many years."
M: "Othah place screw up resahvation?"
A: "Big time."
M: "Oh well, hahaha. Welcome back to RoKai."

We'd been watching "A Christmas Story" all day and night, as it had been on for the 24 hour marathon on TBS, so naturally I looked over at the husband...

K: "Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra..."

It was a moment that was the true culmination of "Hello, we're fucked up and we eat at a Chinese restaurant on Christmas."

We dug into the shitty buffet and the husband claimed to have seen a familiar face walking into the next room: Pat, our daycare lady. I thought the husband must have been crazy because Pat would NEVER be caught dead in a Chinese place on Christmas, so I walked over to investigate. Lo and behold, there she sat with her family.

K: "Fancy meeting you here!"
P: "Hey! What are you doing here?"
K: "Dysfunctional family. What's your excuse?"
P: [hangs head] "I forgot to put the turkey in."
K: "Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra..."

We had a good laugh and exchanged holiday greetings, at which point I was forced to go back and deal with my own family. Naturally, shit was talked about my crazed mother, who started all this drama about coming to dinner for the first time in years and then backed out at the last second. Classic. Whatever, my Christmas was shaping up to be sucky enough, so I was glad to have been spared a confrontation. We finished stuffing our faces and bid each other adieu, each of us relieved that we wouldn't have to deal with each other for another full year.

Back to Grandma Hooter's house to pick up the children, who reeked of cigarette smoke and were covered in candy. Hey, it's the price you pay for child care on a holiday, so we hit them with a few wet wipes and hopped in the car for the 30 minute drive to the father-in-law's house.

We were forced to eat again as soon as we got there, and then it was on to the opening of presents. I came face to face with the strangest presentation of cash I've ever seen:



Fifty ones, crumbled up in a jar. It took me 15 minutes to take the shit out and straighten it. The husband thought it was a riot, but with the weekend I've been having, I was fairly annoyed. Oh that father-in-law, always the prankster...merry friggin' Christmas.

The father-in-law also thought it necessary to buy my oldest son a Nerf-N-Strike:

Notice the giant fucking missile launcher. My father-in-law decided to shoot it at my brother-in-law, who was holding a glass of red wine and wearing a white shirt. Needless to say, he was not amused. He grabbed the smaller gun and it was full-out war, the men running around the house with guns (when you separate the whole thing, there are three working parts), women and small children ducking for cover. The father-in-law's girlfriend got hit in the neck with one of the small missiles, so she took her wrist rocket (which he ironically had gotten her for Christmas) and shot a baby carrot right at his crotch, dropping him to his knees. All in good family fun.

Unfortunately, my son then decided it was ok to run around the house like Rambo, picking off his brothers, so it had to be taken away.

We finally headed home at 6pm, exhausted and stuffed to the gills, with Oldest Child whining that he didn't get everything he wanted. I was fucking FUMING. I told him that I had kept a copy of the letter he wrote to Santa and that I would SHOW HIM that he got all he asked for and 10 times more when we got home. Ingrate!

At that point, we had a chance to open the presents that my insulting Grandmother (she of "you have a big nose and a fat ass") had left for us. We all got matching slipper socks. Fabulous. Mine had cats on them, one of whom looked slightly odd:


The dog got more presents than we did; all kinds of treats that are sure to make him shit up a storm, and a huge dog-shaped cookie jar that screams "WHO LET THE DOGS OUT" when you flip the head open. It's driving me nuts.

Perfectly screwed up ending to a screwed up holiday. I think I'm going to Hawaii next year and telling everyone to merrily go fuck themselves.