Yes, I know. I'm a lousy blogger. I've been busy.
Christmas is upon me, yet again, and thanks to a new job (full-time, yea!), I can do some of the things I've wanted to do for the past four years.
That doesn't mean I won't have a little fun, Grinch style.
Like most families, we have a tradition. We don't simply wrap gifts; we make the recipient work for it.
The tradition began in the early '80s when my baby brudder announced to all that he no longer believed in Santa. Taking him at his word, Mimi wrapped all gifts without anything from the white-haired one and packed us off to Big Grandmother's house (I had a boatload of grandparents, all named Grandmother and Grandaddy. I was a confused child.)
Picture the scene: children's bedtime, Christmas Eve. All is good until my baby brudder announces to the adults that he's going to sleep by the damn tree so Santa will step on him and wake him up. You can imagine the words out of my mother's mouth, and in front of her grandmother to boot.
Yeah, it wasn't a pretty picture.
Long story short: Santa arrived as scheduled and the baby brudder will never live it down. Since then, many gift-giving occasions have been opportunities for mayhem.
There was my 16th birthday when I returned from my grandparents house to be handed cleaning supplies, necessary to remove all the toilet paper from the huge bois d'arc tree and the painting mess left behind. Apparently many insults were painted onto my walls as they redid my room, complete with redwood furniture.
There was a dismantled oboe for Mimi, used to make a Christmas tree. Poor oboe. They don't reassemble well. Fortunately the real oboe was in another room.
There was a humongous box on my baby brudder's 16th, filled with car keys to the Thunderbird, a pilot's log, pilot lesson books, and covered in mountains of trash which he had to sort through to find every last stinking gift.
Another large box, filled with weights, hid Mimi's 1st VCR.
Oh, the memories! What fun!
This year, I haven't done that much evil. Just one gift wrapped in plastic wrap for the Mimi and another wrapped in zip ties for mi espouso.
Been nice knowing y'all!
T.
