The Day After

Well, it was a lovely Christmas season. In keeping with my new upbeat live style I'll tell you all of the things that made it so wonderful.

There was a time when I "loved" to fuss over detail. Now I satisfy that compulsion through working the fine details in my art. The Christmas tree had to be just so or it wasn't right. The gifts would have to be decked out in bows and ribbons with tags with names attached written in a fancy script. Christmas morning I'd be showered, brushed, made up and decked out before the gifts were opened since I knew it was being video taped. I'd feel bad about going to dinner somewhere and not provide something for the host. I'd pitch in and help to either prepare or clean up afterwords. Well, not so much now.

The kids let us sleep 'till 7:30 am. That's not normal I realize, but I didn't wake them to complain. After a long day of lazy, we headed out to my brother and sister-in-law's for dinner. My parents and Grandmother were also there. We arrived at 5pm sharp and went right to the dinner table. Talk about timing! I brought a squash. It had a face drawn on it from Halloween. I felt a bit funny about bringing a used squash for dinner, but it wasn't like they were going to eat the face. Since dinner was being served it was too late to cook it. Darn.

I was seated beside my almost 96 year old Grandmother, Rita. Yes, if you've read my blog in the past, she is the one who wears leather, rocks to Billy Idol and keeps telling us how lovely our dog is as if she had just met him for the first time, every 5 minutes.

We've started a new tradition in recent years. Every Christmas dinner I bring the crackers. That's the blow up, filled with a prize, corny joke and stylin' party hat kind of cracker, not the needing a glass of water 'cause I just stuffed my face and boy that horseradish dip is hot kind. My mother also bought crackers apparently because two is not enough for everybody.

I opened the first cracker as everybody was vying for time to belt out their corny joke. I reached for my second. Apparently Rita didn't realize this year we all had two or more lying beside each plate. Let me just say when I let that baby blow, Rita just about hit the ceiling. It's amazing how fast a 96 year old can move when she wants to. Nothing wrong with that woman's hearing!

I enjoyed sitting beside her and seeing her pleasure at visiting my brothers brand new home again and again and again. Just as she has every other time she's visited for the past two years that he's lived there. She's happy to see him settled and doing well, but just keeps forgetting she's been there before.

For the first time ever in the history of a family dinner, we managed to make it through without taking about hemorrhoids, penis', farts or other bodily functions.

We moved to the living room and took pictures as we do on every occasion. We always have to get a picture of everyone with my Grandmother because....well, you know. She's 96 almost! She'll probably outlive us all. If she's anything like her mother, she'll be here for a long time to come. It was great to be able to spend that time with her.

I got to sit on the couch with my "5th" child who picks on all of the other real children until they're all hopping on top of us and he's "accidentally" hitting me with his elbow. Last year we were at his office party for the kids when he started playing knuckles with one of the bigger kids. He held his hand over top of me so that the child would hit me instead of him. When I had the shock of a hard smack out of the blue I looked over at him at smacked him as hard as I possibly could (Mr. P I mean!). He yelled like a baby and feigned surprise that I would abuse him like that. By this time all of his coworkers were staring at Mr. P and his shrew of a wife. That wasn't the first time either, yet I somehow found myself seated beside his yet again.

We made it home safely and managed to make it through the whole night before the next bought of stomach flu hit the next child in the family. It was a happy Christmas! Hope yours was too!