Goonies, goatse, and gospel...what great Christmases are made of

So this Christmas was special for me. This was the first Christmas I've spent with my mom in at least five years. It turned out to be a pretty great one, overall, because it had all the traditional stuff that's great about Christmas, and some random great stuff that kept things exciting.

Saturday night we had Mexican for dinner and went and saw a movie, The Pursuit of Happyness. It was pretty good, though my first inclination was to see Eragon. Unfortunately my mom has an extreme and hateful paranoia of all things reptilian and magic, therefore a movie with a huge magical dragon was barely considered. It ended up being alright. My mom enjoyed it. Whatever.

Sunday morning I got roped into, (alone, because my dear husband was conveniently feeling sinusy) going to church. They took me to an all black (with the exception of us dopey white folks clapping off beat in the back) church. It was an enjoyable experience. The minister was like six foot five with a voice like James Earl Jones and a southern accent you could cut with a knife. It was the kind of voice you'd just listen to read the phone book, much less tell any kind of coherent story. The music was just as incredible as you could possibly hope for. Two of the soloists could have shamed Aretha Franklin off the stage. Most of them came over and hugged and greeted us afterward. No one called us out as tourists, so it was cool.

Another highlight of the holiday was a trip to Stumphouse tunnel and Issaqueena Falls outside Walhalla, SC.

The falls:




The railroad tunnel was started before the Civil War, and they dug some 1,600 feet into the granite mountain before the funding ran out and the War started. Walking into it was like a scene out of The Goonies.



About halfway through the tunnel there was a huge, gaping, dripping ventilation shaft. We obviously dubbed it the goatse hole, because...ew, look at it.



And all this stuff happened before the actual day of Christmas, but after all that we just had to relax and do normal stuff like hang out in our pajamas and eat cookies. Because that's a crazy couple of days, right there.

Nascar Parties Are Like a Box of Chocolates

Because you never know what you're gonna bite into, and they never give you one of those little maps of your chocolate layout, so you can determine which one is the coconut and avoid it like it's stuffed with dung beetles.

Last night was my husband's company Christmas party. As my gigantic readership of like three is probably aware, my husband works on a Nascar team. So last night I got all tarted up to go compete in the unspoken yet totally understood "hottest ball and chain competition". He didn't really have any desire to go, as it's the middle of the work week and this party promised to go LATE. The cheap flyer invitation scheduled the toasts at 9:30pm and some band called Odie McCool starting up at 10pm. On a Wednesday night. At a work function. Who made up that schedule? Steve Carrell on The Office?

So the food was decent and the crowd was enormous. His team has more than quadrupled in size in the last several months, so he didn't even know most of the people there. The Hoochie Factor was surprisingly high. Most surprisingly, though was the Hootie Factor. Freaking Darius Rucker was there. W....T...F?!?

I bet he didn't even know why he was there.

Dude was last seen shilling Burger King Burgers in a silly outfit. Now he's nosedived into hanging out at Christmas parties for companies he doesn't even work for.

And he brought along the McCain least likely to be President: Edwin.

And "I'll be" lost to obscurity, showin' up...with my pal Dariuuuuus."

Actually, before we left Edwin strapped on an acoustic guitar and sang his two big songs and it was pretty awesome. He's still got a crazy good voice. Darius just walked around looking vaguely hostile and more than a little buzzed. He may have got up on stage after we left and brought the house down with Hootie jams, if "I Only Want To Be With You" could actually bring a house down. Doubtful, that.

We also saw Dale Jarrett, as he's going to be one of the drivers for the team next year. He was looking super pimp in a purple button up shirt, with his gleaming silver cropped hair. Michael, of course was also there, with his wife, Buffy. Buffy, like all driver wives, is quite pretty. Michael, on the other hand, still takes the cake as one of the goofiest mofos alive.



We got out of there before eleven, but with no fat bonus check in hand. It is yet to be determined if I hate him, but the end of the year is nigh, and he's real close to incurring my wrath.

We shall have to wait and see.

Less scary, more merry

My dad, after a few fits and starts, including another night in the ER due to overexertion (It aggravated his pneumonia), he's doing ok for now. He had stents put in, and we won't know his long term prognosis until the docs determine how well those are handling things.

I finally got all our Christmas shopping done, and all our shipments sent off to their myriad destinations. Oh, and I got sick last week. I'm almost totally better now, but around last Thursday or so I sounded like Bea Arthur after a glass shard gargling contest. Seriously. Every word out of my mouth made people flinch. If I'd had more sick time, unstead of using most of what I had going to see my dad in the hospital, I'd have been home in my jammies, instead I had stay at work and get my supervisor sick. Oops. In my defense, I did make a concerted effort to keep my pestilent butt cloistered away in my office and away from others. Apparently not a great enough effort was made.

Sunday night me and a coworker went and saw the Bare Naked Ladies in concert. The opening act was "The chick who used to front Six Pence and None the Richer", AKA the band who sang that "Kiss Me" song from She's all That. Yeah, that one. She sang that song and several more I'd never heard of. BNL was awesome, though. I'm admittedly not a huge fan. I mean, I sang the "One Week" song along with everyone else in college, and enjoyed their irreverent humor just as much as anyone else, but I never bought a cd or anything. I'd forgotten just how many songs of theirs I knew. "The Old Apartment", "Pinch Me", "If I Had A Million Dollars"...all I recognized pretty quickly. And they're totally hilarious in person. Goofy, vulgar and wonderfully enthusiastic. They talked between songs about how they enjoyed authentic Carolina BBQ...at Sonny's. People booed, lovingly of course. Several people held up Canadian license plates and flags. After a few songs one of the guys goes, "We get it. You're Canadian. We're Canadian. You can put the sign down now before the guy behind you shoves it up your ass."

They did some Christmas songs, which did more to get me in the Christmas spirit than pretty much anything thus far. I'm really glad I went. My friend totally loved my Ice Ice Baby shirt, so I recommended some other good funny t-shirt sites. And few things make me happier than to spread the funny t-shirt love. If we all had funny t-shirts, wouldn't the world be a much better place? You know it's true. Don't deny.

Happy Freaking Holidays

New developments in the life of me: my mom and my step-dad bought a gigantic McMansion, complete with three-car garage and back yard koi pond, bringing the wishful daydreaming she and I did in my youth into full circle reality; my husband’s ancient vehicle finally laid down in the driveway and refused to get up, forcing us to get him a new truck, later coming to find out the van just needed an $8 dollar distributor gear (though in our defense, a WHOLE LOT of other stuff was wrong with it, and that would have just been a patch job); and my dad was taken to the hospital Friday night after taking over eighty nitro-glycerin pills in about forty-eight hours (not suicidal, just REALLY serious heart problems).

Yeah. Things went from great, to pretty sweet, to OMGWTFDADDY!!

When I found out about my dad I kind of went a little bonkers for a few hours, I’ll be the first to admit. Dad and I have a curious relationship in that we don’t really have much of one. My dad’s stubborn denial to deal with harsh reality and insistence to only speak in positives while his life crumbles around him splintered our relationship even while I was still at home. My dad is one of the sweetest, kindest people you could ever imagine, but I have no respect for him, only pity. That truth has caused me great guilt over the years, which came to a head yesterday when I came to realize his tenuous grip on this life. I realized that, at that moment, if he were to die, that I would not cry for the man he was, only the man he wasn’t. We have no relationship past a few cheerful exchanged sentences over the phone probably once every six months. He has no role in my life. I would not miss him, because his absence would not even cause a ripple in my life. That reality crashed over me yesterday and it was brutal. It shamed me, yet I know that I made things this way for my own self-preservation.

The last summer after college, in a last ditch effort, I screamed, I railed, I fought for him and with him. I tried persuasion, rationality, and tears. Nothing worked. I was disregarded and brushed aside. My concern was unwanted, and my suggestions were ignored. In his eyes, I will always be a child. He tied my hands, and made me unable to help him. I left, in body and soul, because I could not watch him destroy his life, and the life he shared with my mother. His refusal to make hard, but necessary, decisions not only for himself, but for her, who lived to make his home and raise his children, created a hard seed of anger and spite for him that has lived in me to this day.

I cried yesterday. I cried for him. I cried for me. I cried because part of him lives on in me, and as I shame him, I shame myself.

I found a bit of redemption, though, because I forced myself to remember. I remembered the wonderful dad he was to me as a kid. He made me breakfast every morning, whatever I wanted. He made and packed my lunches that I took to school. He would ask me every night, “How was your lunch? Was their too much mayonnaise on your sandwich?” He would find new and interesting things to put in my little brown paper bags, stacks of Pringles, carefully twist-tied in baggies, various fruit snacks and juice boxes. He was always perfecting it, trying to make it just right. He walked me to school every day of kindergarten, often carrying me on his shoulders. He took me hunting and camping, teaching me to fish and shoot like a little boy, and I loved every minute of it.

The doctors at the hospital said it was a miracle he was still alive. He will need a triple-bypass very soon; otherwise, he could die at any time. I realize now, that I will miss him, and I will mourn his passing when that day inevitable comes. The world would be less fortunate without my father in it, and in realizing that, I heal myself just a little bit. I love you, Dad.