It's getting to be that time of year again....CHRISTMAS (in july). I effing love Christmas, partly because of the family time and lovey-lovey-ness of it all, but (and let's get real here), PRESENTS is the real reason why people love Christmas.
Now, Christmas in my household is always nuts and it starts right after Thanksgiving. Being as it takes my mother 40% longer than normal people to do just about anything, the tree goes up early because it's going to stay up for a while. I believe the record for my family is the year the Xmas tree was up at Easter. Classy people we are, for sure.
Putting the Xmas tree up can go either one of two ways: if we all help it'll get done in a single night. If only Kelly is doing it, it'll take several weeks, generally culminating in a final family effort late Xmas eve so that there aren't various ornaments lying around on Xmas day. My dad refuses to help decorate the tree. He helps in his own way by making sure all of the Xmas lights work properly. Without fail, it involves a lot of cursing, in addition to bitching about why this family has to have both white lights and multicolored lights in addition to the large multicolored lights and garland. This is coming from the man who likes his Xmas trees with tinsel, which is honestly the glitter/herpes of Xmas decorations because that shit sticks around FOREVER. Even worse, it's a cat magnet. We already have enough problems with our cats attacking the lower hanging tree ornaments without adding some wiggling-in-the-breeze shiny things to the mix.
Then there are the ornaments. All four+ tubs of them. We have so many ornaments that Grammy had to give us her 9ft tree, because our old 6ft tree kept leaning more precariously every year. There are ornaments that I made in preschool, ornaments from when my mom was a kid, sports ornaments, Disney World ornaments, matching ornaments, candy canes--you name it and there's probably an ornament of it on our tree. The worst part is we're still acquiring about five ornaments a year. Without fail my aunt (the one that I don't really like all that much) gives all of her nieces and nephews Xmas ornaments for Xmas (how original). It's always those lamely generic Xmas icon ones from the middle-of-the-mall kiosk that have our names emblazoned on them. She keeps telling us it's "for our own Christmas trees one day". Like that shit's happening. I'll be damned if my future Xmas tree is going to be covered in ugly ornaments that have "SAMANTHA" all over them. I definitely don't want visitors to think that my tree is some sort of shrine to myself. I'm awkward but I draw the line at appearing to have designated the Xmas tree as my personal place of self-worship. Maybe I wouldn't mind as much if she splurged on a badass Hallmark ornament ('cause face it, those things up the swagger of a Xmas tree something serious), but that's not the case so I'm bitching about it.
There's always Dad's work Xmas party to look forward to (NOT), where 'kids' 18 and under get a present from Santa. There's a photo of me at 17 standing next to Santa (some skinny employee with an elastic beard), who is sitting down. Since I was wearing heels (which make me a little taller than 6ft), Santa's face is about level with my stomach. Instead of making me crush him by plonking down on his knees with my flat ass, Santa asked me if I had been good this year (yes...duh), shook my hand, and handed me an envelope with a Best Buy giftcard in it. It was super awkward. Since the party is usually in the beginning of December, I've been spared the embarrassment of attending since I started college. I'm not sure which is worse, having nobody even near my age to talk to, or watching the one family with 10+ kids continue to reproduce (I swear they rival the 19 Kids and Counting family). Not to mention awkwardly meeting my Dad's coworkers who I only see at this party. It's just weird.
Somehow we eventually make it to Xmas eve, which we always spend with my Dad's family by going to Grandma's house. Everybody brings some noms and we eat and carry on and then open presents, going from youngest to oldest. For years and years Grandma got me (and the rest of the grandkids) underwear for Xmas. And it wasn't just normal underwear. No, when I was younger it was Barbie underwear (I loathed Barbies), and when I got older she gave me Granny Panties. I don't understand how she could so grossly overestimate my size. I mean, I know I'm a little chunkadunk, but come on! One year I got underwear that was so large I could literally wear them for a bra and underwear at the same time. The moment that it got to be too far was the year when I got stuck with gross granny panties (yet again), and my much skinnier cousins (who are aprx the same age as me) got thongs. Not that I wear thongs*, but I was indignant that Grandma would treat her grandkids unequally like that. And I was a little jealous too. OK, I was a lot jealous. When I look back I'm a little mad at myself that I was jealous over thongs, especially thongs that probably came from WalMart, but that's the angsty teenage years for you.
*A few years later I tried out thongs for real. I bought a thong because my friend convinced me that I couldn't say I didn't like it until I'd tried it. Well, I wore that hibiscus thong around the house for two hours before my ass had had enough. Panty lines are worth every second that I don't have to dig my underwear out of my asscrack.
After we open presents on Xmas Eve we go to Church. My family unit is not religious. Sometimes Kelly likes to entertain the idea of being Baptist (as if), but let me tell you that I could give a shit less, and so could Dad and Danny. Dad's family, on the other hand, regularly attends church and his brother's family are the type that are super involved in youth group and choir (aka my Bible thumping cousins). We are definitely the Black Sheep of the family, if you couldn't tell. But on Xmas Eve the whole family goes, so we go. For the first 10 years of my life or so, it was the only other time we ever went to church besides Easter. After that it was the only time I went to church (until Kelly went on a Jesus binge during my middle school years). I tolerate the Xmas sermon, mostly because the Christmas Story never ever changes (it's the same pastor every year), and because secretly, I'm a mother fucking pyro and I LOVE lighting the candles during Silent Night and then getting wax all over the place. I loved it when I was a kid and I still like that part now. Last year my Dad added a new twist into the mix when he got bored during the sermon and we had a trying-to-blow-the-other-person's-candle-out fight. Kelly glared daggers at us the whole time because we were "embarrassing her". It's possible, since my Dad and I couldn't stop giggling about it like a couple of 5-year-olds. I deemed it the best Christmas Eve sermon I have ever attended.
We get home, go to bed, and then the real magic starts.
Confession time here: I believed in Santa until I was 13. I was that kid, the one that insists that Santa is real even when her friends are telling stories of stumbling upon their parents putting out presents while on a midnight potty run. I don't feel so bad about it, mostly because my brother also believed in Santa until last year (he's 14). The main reason I held my conviction for so long stems from a Christmas Eve night when I was 5 or 6 years old. Now I realize that it was probably raining, but at the time my juvenile mind heard pitter-patter noises and immediately thought that there were reindeer on top of the roof. My conviction on Santa held until I became too hard to buy for and my parents started letting me pick out my own presents, which showed up under the tree as, "To: Samantha, From: Santa". After that I just felt super stupid because I'm sure my friends thought I was an idiot.
Even after I stopped believing in Santa I still had to play along for my brother. We still left cookies for Santa (as a mean joke I would put out the stalest and grossest cookies I could find in our pantry) and "Santa" still left us a letter on the paper plate that formerly held cookies. The letter always told my brother and I to behave ourselves, and there was always a a note in there for me to 'stop talking back to my parents'. Thanks, Santa. On occasion, if Danny gave me trouble while I was babysitting him, I would 'call' Santa on my cell and tell him about all the horrible stuff Danny had been up to. In reality, the phone wasn't even calling anybody, but Danny didn't know that.
The worst part of Xmas is undoubtably the photos. Until I was taller than Santa (ie 13), my Mom made me (and later Danny) sit on Santa's lap in the mall and pose for a picture. If there is anything wrong about a young girl being hesitant to sit on a sketchy old bearded man's lap, then sue me. I hated sitting on Santa's lap. So much in fact, that Kelly used to have to bribe me to do it. Usually it was with $20 or so, but there were no set terms on what my face had to look like in the photo. Generally I was scowling. Or giving a really fake smile. Because I am classy as hell.
Finally, we return to the best part of Xmas: the presents. I've gotten some awesome presents over the years, including: my 1st cell phone! (2005), a basketball hoop (1995), a bike (1998), Guitar Hero (2007), a new laptop (2009, to replace the one I had just broken) and more books than I can count (every year!). On the flip side, if I don't give my parents explicit instructions on what I want for Christmas, I get stuff like this: mechanical air pump (2010), 20 shirts--all of which were practically identical but in different colors/patterns (2001), a group of size 18 clothes (2000, I wear a size 14), ugly watches (07/08/09), and an assortment of other weird stuff that might eventually make its way back to the spare gift bag in Kelly's closet.
My family doesn't have many traditions, but of the few we do have a bunch of them focus on Xmas. First off, we always film Xmas. We've done this every year that I can remember. Most years it's kind of dull. I can't imagine that in 20 years I'm going to want to watch myself open gifts at 12. But occasionally there's some weird thing that happens, like my brother calling someone a "fag" and subsequently the entire family yells, "DAN-NY!". It's on video.
On Christmas morning my Dad always makes breakfast. And not just normal breakfast. I'm talking a five-person operation of multiple burners, a griddle, the toaster, and the oven. Breakfast includes: scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, bacon, fried ham, sausage, biscuits, toast, cinnamon rolls, and orange juice. I have to say he's pretty good at cooking breakfast for a man who never eats breakfast.
Generally I spend the next 3 hours in a food coma. I love Christmas.
Showing posts with label Mike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike. Show all posts
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Friday, June 10, 2011
Pillow talk
I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned this before, but my Mom sleep-talks. Generally I like to think of sleeptalking as the compliment to snoring; unavoidable and irrelevant, so not worth talking about. But Kelly's sleeptalking is a little more....interesting.
To begin with, Kelly is a very heavy sleeper. She also frequently complains about how realistic her dreams are. She'll mention something in passing that she thinks I did, and then when I'm like, wtf Mom? she'll realize she dreamed about it and it didn't really happen. Because of these crazy dreams her sleep talking is often kind of funny.
Just last night, she woke my dad up at 2am, screaming, yelling at him to "get the spiders off me!". Kelly is absolutely terrified of spiders. When asked if he was worried when Mom woke him up with her screaming Dad responded, "Scared? Hell no, I was pissed off! She woke me up at two in the morning screaming about spiders! I told her, 'there are no damn spiders on you Kelly! Go back to sleep.' "
When I was a senior in high school I was being an insomniac one night when all of a sudden I heard Mom go (from the other end of the hallway), "Mike!.....MIKE!....GET THE WEEDWACKER!" ...and then silence. It was probably after 2am.
But the crowning moment of Mom's sleeptalking is the Bear Story. I had stayed up late working on a school project and everyone else was already in bed and asleep. My bathroom was being repainted at the time so I had been taking showers in my parent's bathroom. I had stepped out of the shower, put on a towel, and I had just flicked the lights off and was walking through my parents bedroom (to get to the hallway) when Mom suddenly goes, "OH SHIT!". Immediately I freeze. My first thought is that Mom saw a burglar or something. The next thought is along the lines of how I really don't want to be mugged while wearing nothing but a towel. Naked muggings are no bueno. I'm still frozen and listening when the next thing I hear is Kelly say, in a country drawl, is "I'llllll get dem bears!.........fuckin' grizzlies" and then I hear her roll over and start snoring. I think I just about died laughing.
To begin with, Kelly is a very heavy sleeper. She also frequently complains about how realistic her dreams are. She'll mention something in passing that she thinks I did, and then when I'm like, wtf Mom? she'll realize she dreamed about it and it didn't really happen. Because of these crazy dreams her sleep talking is often kind of funny.
Just last night, she woke my dad up at 2am, screaming, yelling at him to "get the spiders off me!". Kelly is absolutely terrified of spiders. When asked if he was worried when Mom woke him up with her screaming Dad responded, "Scared? Hell no, I was pissed off! She woke me up at two in the morning screaming about spiders! I told her, 'there are no damn spiders on you Kelly! Go back to sleep.' "
When I was a senior in high school I was being an insomniac one night when all of a sudden I heard Mom go (from the other end of the hallway), "Mike!.....MIKE!....GET THE WEEDWACKER!" ...and then silence. It was probably after 2am.
But the crowning moment of Mom's sleeptalking is the Bear Story. I had stayed up late working on a school project and everyone else was already in bed and asleep. My bathroom was being repainted at the time so I had been taking showers in my parent's bathroom. I had stepped out of the shower, put on a towel, and I had just flicked the lights off and was walking through my parents bedroom (to get to the hallway) when Mom suddenly goes, "OH SHIT!". Immediately I freeze. My first thought is that Mom saw a burglar or something. The next thought is along the lines of how I really don't want to be mugged while wearing nothing but a towel. Naked muggings are no bueno. I'm still frozen and listening when the next thing I hear is Kelly say, in a country drawl, is "I'llllll get dem bears!.........fuckin' grizzlies" and then I hear her roll over and start snoring. I think I just about died laughing.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Hoarding
Metalhead has insinuated that I am a hoarder. This is totally false. Hoarding is characterized by not being able to get rid of anything. I totally get rid of stuff. I just haven't cleaned out my stuff lately, thanks. :P
I know that I keep stuff that I really shouldn't, but mostly this stems from my environmental compulsion to never throw anything useful away. Mostly it's just me not wanting perfectly fine stuff to go sit in a landfill. I feel guilty when useful things sit in landfills.
Kelly is not so fortunate. My madre has what her counselor calls "an emotional attachment to stuff". She's pretty bad about keeping anything and everything that ever meant anything to her at all. I'm talking bikinis from high school, old Home & Garden magazines, and other various shit. Now, I keep a lot of stuff, but it's stuff that I intend to do something with or stuff that I actually use AND it's mostly contained in my room. Kelly just keeps stuff because she can't stand giving it up and not being able to control what happens after it leaves her possession. Plus her stuff is essentially the entire house.
Take, for example, when I decided to clean out our basement two years ago. We have lived in our house since 1998 and we now have more shit than we know what to do with, so it was about time that somebody tackled that hoarding den that is the lower floor. I came across a box full of Kelly's notebooks from middle, high school and community college. When I took them upstairs to throw them in the recycle bin she had an absolute fit and refused to let me do away with the damn things. I mean, these are notebooks full of writings my mom will never, ever use again. Do you think she knows anything about chemistry or the Latin class she took her freshman year of high school (and failed)? Hell no. Has she touched that box of notebooks in the last 10 years? Yeah right. That, ladies and gents, is a hoarder. Her reason for keeping them stemmed from the "poetry and journals" she wrote in them. Jesus mother, tearing out a couple of pages with your angsty teen diary entries is not that goddamn hard. There is no need to keep an entire notebook that is sucking up space in our already cramped basement so that you can save your stupid doodles. We ended up getting into an argument that-- I kid you not -- consisted of us performing tug of war with a notebook. My father was just sitting in the LayZBoy looking at us like we're nuts. This ended with the recycling of about half the notebooks, and keeping the rest.
Mike the bystander is not so innocent either, he of the can't-find-it-let's-go-buy-a-new-one mentality is another contributor to the household junk pile. There's a giant metal desk that has been sitting in our basement since at least 1999 that he brought home from work. It's still got the plastic on it and everything, but nobody has ever used it. Right now it's just a platform to put more stuff on. He also has this mental disease where he can't resist free stuff. WHY do we need four stress balls shaped like grapes? What about the three kinds of omelette makers? Or the rotisserie chicken cooker that we used once? He brings home so much crap that we don't need and will never use that it's not even funny. It's just a pain in my ass.
The most recent manifestation of this was when I cleaned out our cupboard. Since we moved into our house we've had a coffee maker in the corner of the kitchen. Mike is the only person who actually drinks coffee in the house and he never uses it. Why? Because he loves 7-Eleven coffee and is on a first-name basis with the people who work there. I've never seen him use this coffee maker. The only time it does see use is when we have guests over who want coffee, and even then only occasionally. Usually dad will just go out and get a large thing of coffee from Dunkin Donuts or something. So anyway, I took the coffee maker to the basement because nobody ever uses it and we need the counter space. I also sorted through all the mugs we had because nobody ever uses mugs either (except for hot chocolate) and we had about 50 for four people. I mean, you can only use one flipping mug at a time (and even still, double fisting hot chocolate will bring you to eight) and even with a bunch of guests that number is definitely excessive. So I took about 15 mugs to Goodwill. It took Kelly about three days to figure out something was a little off about the dishes cabinet, and then she didn't speak to me for three days she was so mad. This is the kind of shit I deal with.
Since I've been in college, I've actually gotten much much better about not keeping useless things. I would say about 60% of my stuff is books or clothes, and since my friend Tiedye is about the same size as me (just shorter, with bigger gazongas) I give her all of my clothes that I don't wear anymore, and take anything she doesn't want to goodwill. I would probably also attribute it to reading No Impact Man, which is a book that was made into a documentary. It's about a guy who lives in NYC who tries to live a no impact life with his wife and daughter for a year. It's super funny, and it made me realize that my house had all this stuff sitting around that no one was using. My general rule is that if it's been sitting around for a year and no one has used it, get it the hell outta here. Except then it sets off WWIII with Kelly. Whatever. I'll probably be moving out in a few years anyway.
I know that I keep stuff that I really shouldn't, but mostly this stems from my environmental compulsion to never throw anything useful away. Mostly it's just me not wanting perfectly fine stuff to go sit in a landfill. I feel guilty when useful things sit in landfills.
Kelly is not so fortunate. My madre has what her counselor calls "an emotional attachment to stuff". She's pretty bad about keeping anything and everything that ever meant anything to her at all. I'm talking bikinis from high school, old Home & Garden magazines, and other various shit. Now, I keep a lot of stuff, but it's stuff that I intend to do something with or stuff that I actually use AND it's mostly contained in my room. Kelly just keeps stuff because she can't stand giving it up and not being able to control what happens after it leaves her possession. Plus her stuff is essentially the entire house.
Take, for example, when I decided to clean out our basement two years ago. We have lived in our house since 1998 and we now have more shit than we know what to do with, so it was about time that somebody tackled that hoarding den that is the lower floor. I came across a box full of Kelly's notebooks from middle, high school and community college. When I took them upstairs to throw them in the recycle bin she had an absolute fit and refused to let me do away with the damn things. I mean, these are notebooks full of writings my mom will never, ever use again. Do you think she knows anything about chemistry or the Latin class she took her freshman year of high school (and failed)? Hell no. Has she touched that box of notebooks in the last 10 years? Yeah right. That, ladies and gents, is a hoarder. Her reason for keeping them stemmed from the "poetry and journals" she wrote in them. Jesus mother, tearing out a couple of pages with your angsty teen diary entries is not that goddamn hard. There is no need to keep an entire notebook that is sucking up space in our already cramped basement so that you can save your stupid doodles. We ended up getting into an argument that-- I kid you not -- consisted of us performing tug of war with a notebook. My father was just sitting in the LayZBoy looking at us like we're nuts. This ended with the recycling of about half the notebooks, and keeping the rest.
Mike the bystander is not so innocent either, he of the can't-find-it-let's-go-buy-a-new-one mentality is another contributor to the household junk pile. There's a giant metal desk that has been sitting in our basement since at least 1999 that he brought home from work. It's still got the plastic on it and everything, but nobody has ever used it. Right now it's just a platform to put more stuff on. He also has this mental disease where he can't resist free stuff. WHY do we need four stress balls shaped like grapes? What about the three kinds of omelette makers? Or the rotisserie chicken cooker that we used once? He brings home so much crap that we don't need and will never use that it's not even funny. It's just a pain in my ass.
The most recent manifestation of this was when I cleaned out our cupboard. Since we moved into our house we've had a coffee maker in the corner of the kitchen. Mike is the only person who actually drinks coffee in the house and he never uses it. Why? Because he loves 7-Eleven coffee and is on a first-name basis with the people who work there. I've never seen him use this coffee maker. The only time it does see use is when we have guests over who want coffee, and even then only occasionally. Usually dad will just go out and get a large thing of coffee from Dunkin Donuts or something. So anyway, I took the coffee maker to the basement because nobody ever uses it and we need the counter space. I also sorted through all the mugs we had because nobody ever uses mugs either (except for hot chocolate) and we had about 50 for four people. I mean, you can only use one flipping mug at a time (and even still, double fisting hot chocolate will bring you to eight) and even with a bunch of guests that number is definitely excessive. So I took about 15 mugs to Goodwill. It took Kelly about three days to figure out something was a little off about the dishes cabinet, and then she didn't speak to me for three days she was so mad. This is the kind of shit I deal with.
Since I've been in college, I've actually gotten much much better about not keeping useless things. I would say about 60% of my stuff is books or clothes, and since my friend Tiedye is about the same size as me (just shorter, with bigger gazongas) I give her all of my clothes that I don't wear anymore, and take anything she doesn't want to goodwill. I would probably also attribute it to reading No Impact Man, which is a book that was made into a documentary. It's about a guy who lives in NYC who tries to live a no impact life with his wife and daughter for a year. It's super funny, and it made me realize that my house had all this stuff sitting around that no one was using. My general rule is that if it's been sitting around for a year and no one has used it, get it the hell outta here. Except then it sets off WWIII with Kelly. Whatever. I'll probably be moving out in a few years anyway.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Stupid fights
My parents are probably the weirdest married couple I've ever met. I don't know what it is about their personalities but they just fight about some of the dumbest shit ever. For example, the most classic example is the house thermostat.
Mike is probably the most penny pinching man with a three-figure salary that I know. My father is so ridiculous that he steals ketchup packets and napkins from fast food places. Seriously, we haven't bought napkins in years. At the peak of his thriftyness, we would wait until there was literally nothing but pasta and canned vegetables in the house and then go mass grocery shopping after cutting coupons en masse and grabbing all the sale papers. Then we would go out and hit like five grocery stores to get the best of what each store had to offer. It drove Kelly nuts and eventually rising gas prices stopped those extreme measures, but anyway, you get the point.
In summer the thermostat in my house is usually set to 63 degrees. Kelly likes it to be at 62. They have literally had angry blow-out fights over one goddamn thermostat degree. I'm talking like to the point where they don't speak to each other for a couple of days. Dad gets angry because his argument is that you can't really feel a one degree difference, but your bill will reflect a one degree difference. Kelly, who is going through early pre-menopausal symptoms (ie hot flashes) disagrees on both counts and insists that one degree makes all the difference and that she refuses to 'sweat in her own house'.
So what basically ends up happening is this: Dad leaves at 5am to go to work and doesn't get home until about 3pm. Whenever Kelly makes it out of bed (she is notorious for sleeping in) she will go and turn the thermostat down at least one degree (but probably more) and then turn it up when she leaves for work. Her idea is that Dad never need know. Sometimes she forgets and thats when the argument starts all over again. Literally, the same argument will happen again. You'd think they would learn.
Another constant fight is Mom's lateness. Kelly has some of the worst ADD ever, and it's a partial cause to her chronic tendency to arrive anywhere late. She couldn't be on time to save herself. It used to embarrass me terribly as a kid, because nobody likes being the last kid picked up from school, from activities, etc. Especially because generally she's not just late, she's like 25 minutes late. And then I'd feel bad for making somebody else's parent have to wait for me. Let's just say that I actually made it to my dental appointments on time when I started driving myself. And it's not like we don't try to help her out. We've tried setting all the clocks in the house 20 minutes fast, told all her doctors to call and remind her that her appointment is at least 30 minutes earlier than it actually is, etc. Nope, doesn't really help much.
Dad, on the other hand, is a 'if you're not early, you're late' kind of person. He's almost obsessed with getting places right on time. This mentality comes in handy for doctors appointments and stuff, but when you're going to a party or a family gathering it's awkward being the first people there. Mike cannot for the life of him understand the concept of 'fashionably late'.
So really, everything we do as a family is basically a ticking time bomb. Dad's parents (Grandma & Grandad D) live about 45 minutes away. This is a typical family outing:
Days in advance Dad will tell Mom that he wants to leave at 1:25pm. The get together probably doesn't start until at least 3pm. At 1:25pm Kelly will probably have just gotten out of the shower. It doesn't really help that aside from being late, Kelly has a terrible time making decisions and does everything at the speed of a prehistoric tortoise. She is just really slow in general. So it will probably take her at least another hour to get dressed, do her hair, and pick out jewelry. And that's if she's rushing like mad.
2:30pm will roll around and Kelly will at least be clothed. If it's a good day, she'll be ready to leave (ie she will be dressed with her hair in rollers and she will do her makeup in the visor mirror of the van). If it's not a good day she'll be another 20 minutes.
Mike, of course, wanted to leave at around 2pm, regardless of what time he told Kelly. He gave her a 1:25 start time with some leeway built in, but once it gets past 2pm he starts to get mad. [As an aside, Danny and I were both most likely ready to leave at 1:25pm]. He'll tromp upstairs and start nagging her to get a move on it. By 2:30 they're yelling at each other. It's not like his persistent nagging is helping her get ready any faster. In fact, it probably slows her down since Kelly is incapable of doing two things at once. They'll fight for a few minutes and then Mike will give some sort of ultimatum (like 15 minutes or so) and stomp downstairs. He'll yell at Danny and I to get in the car.
With us in the car, Dad will start the car and grumble to himself. Mike doesn't have a long fuse on the best of days and once he gets mad he stays mad. And then it's like some nasty demon from another dimension takes over his mouth because he does not know when to shut it. Even after a fight is over he will continue to grumble ugly things under his breath and talk to himself. It really only makes things worse. He'll do that while he sits in the car, which is running. My parents will have been married 21 years this April and sometimes I don't understand why he doesn't just accept her lateness as a thing that happens. Or maybe not quite accept it, but stop to seriously work himself up over it. I mean, Kelly has been chronically late for most of her life and after two decades of marriage nothing much has changed. But Mike for some reason just can't get this through his neanderthal skull.
After another 10 minutes of car idling (which drives me nuts, because it's pollutionatory) he will angrily shut off the car and stomp back inside. He will yell something like, "FUCK THIS. I'M NOT GOING" and plop himself in the recliner and turn on ESPN.
That's when they both play the "I'm not going" game. Mike will refuse to go, and then Kelly gets pissed. If she fails to get him to come with us, she'll make me or Danny go in and beg him to go with us. Or if that fails, Kelly will declare that she's not going either. It's really really wack.
What usually happens after this is that we all end up going but Kelly and Mike will argue with each other for the first half of the car trip and then sit in stoney silence for the second half.
It's really weird, and really awkward and totally screwed up, but it's my family and I have to live with it. All I can really do is roll my eyes and slowly shake my head.
Now that I'm older and have actual social skills, I have attempted to mediate several arguments between them. Usually I didn't volunteer for this job, I just got dragged in. Somebody will be looking for validation for their points, and since I'm the only one there (besides Danny, and he doesn't count) I get hooked in. It's really hard to mediate between them because they both want to 'win' the argument. Generally I try to play the fence by validating some of both of their points but also pointing out their own faults. This usually doesn't go over well and then they just get mad at me too. And then everybody is all mad at each other. I just can't win.
Depending on the severity of the fight, they'll be back to normal in a few hours or they won't speak to each other for several days. It's really just a toss up after one of their stupid fights.
Mike is probably the most penny pinching man with a three-figure salary that I know. My father is so ridiculous that he steals ketchup packets and napkins from fast food places. Seriously, we haven't bought napkins in years. At the peak of his thriftyness, we would wait until there was literally nothing but pasta and canned vegetables in the house and then go mass grocery shopping after cutting coupons en masse and grabbing all the sale papers. Then we would go out and hit like five grocery stores to get the best of what each store had to offer. It drove Kelly nuts and eventually rising gas prices stopped those extreme measures, but anyway, you get the point.
In summer the thermostat in my house is usually set to 63 degrees. Kelly likes it to be at 62. They have literally had angry blow-out fights over one goddamn thermostat degree. I'm talking like to the point where they don't speak to each other for a couple of days. Dad gets angry because his argument is that you can't really feel a one degree difference, but your bill will reflect a one degree difference. Kelly, who is going through early pre-menopausal symptoms (ie hot flashes) disagrees on both counts and insists that one degree makes all the difference and that she refuses to 'sweat in her own house'.
So what basically ends up happening is this: Dad leaves at 5am to go to work and doesn't get home until about 3pm. Whenever Kelly makes it out of bed (she is notorious for sleeping in) she will go and turn the thermostat down at least one degree (but probably more) and then turn it up when she leaves for work. Her idea is that Dad never need know. Sometimes she forgets and thats when the argument starts all over again. Literally, the same argument will happen again. You'd think they would learn.
Another constant fight is Mom's lateness. Kelly has some of the worst ADD ever, and it's a partial cause to her chronic tendency to arrive anywhere late. She couldn't be on time to save herself. It used to embarrass me terribly as a kid, because nobody likes being the last kid picked up from school, from activities, etc. Especially because generally she's not just late, she's like 25 minutes late. And then I'd feel bad for making somebody else's parent have to wait for me. Let's just say that I actually made it to my dental appointments on time when I started driving myself. And it's not like we don't try to help her out. We've tried setting all the clocks in the house 20 minutes fast, told all her doctors to call and remind her that her appointment is at least 30 minutes earlier than it actually is, etc. Nope, doesn't really help much.
Dad, on the other hand, is a 'if you're not early, you're late' kind of person. He's almost obsessed with getting places right on time. This mentality comes in handy for doctors appointments and stuff, but when you're going to a party or a family gathering it's awkward being the first people there. Mike cannot for the life of him understand the concept of 'fashionably late'.
So really, everything we do as a family is basically a ticking time bomb. Dad's parents (Grandma & Grandad D) live about 45 minutes away. This is a typical family outing:
Days in advance Dad will tell Mom that he wants to leave at 1:25pm. The get together probably doesn't start until at least 3pm. At 1:25pm Kelly will probably have just gotten out of the shower. It doesn't really help that aside from being late, Kelly has a terrible time making decisions and does everything at the speed of a prehistoric tortoise. She is just really slow in general. So it will probably take her at least another hour to get dressed, do her hair, and pick out jewelry. And that's if she's rushing like mad.
2:30pm will roll around and Kelly will at least be clothed. If it's a good day, she'll be ready to leave (ie she will be dressed with her hair in rollers and she will do her makeup in the visor mirror of the van). If it's not a good day she'll be another 20 minutes.
Mike, of course, wanted to leave at around 2pm, regardless of what time he told Kelly. He gave her a 1:25 start time with some leeway built in, but once it gets past 2pm he starts to get mad. [As an aside, Danny and I were both most likely ready to leave at 1:25pm]. He'll tromp upstairs and start nagging her to get a move on it. By 2:30 they're yelling at each other. It's not like his persistent nagging is helping her get ready any faster. In fact, it probably slows her down since Kelly is incapable of doing two things at once. They'll fight for a few minutes and then Mike will give some sort of ultimatum (like 15 minutes or so) and stomp downstairs. He'll yell at Danny and I to get in the car.
With us in the car, Dad will start the car and grumble to himself. Mike doesn't have a long fuse on the best of days and once he gets mad he stays mad. And then it's like some nasty demon from another dimension takes over his mouth because he does not know when to shut it. Even after a fight is over he will continue to grumble ugly things under his breath and talk to himself. It really only makes things worse. He'll do that while he sits in the car, which is running. My parents will have been married 21 years this April and sometimes I don't understand why he doesn't just accept her lateness as a thing that happens. Or maybe not quite accept it, but stop to seriously work himself up over it. I mean, Kelly has been chronically late for most of her life and after two decades of marriage nothing much has changed. But Mike for some reason just can't get this through his neanderthal skull.
After another 10 minutes of car idling (which drives me nuts, because it's pollutionatory) he will angrily shut off the car and stomp back inside. He will yell something like, "FUCK THIS. I'M NOT GOING" and plop himself in the recliner and turn on ESPN.
That's when they both play the "I'm not going" game. Mike will refuse to go, and then Kelly gets pissed. If she fails to get him to come with us, she'll make me or Danny go in and beg him to go with us. Or if that fails, Kelly will declare that she's not going either. It's really really wack.
What usually happens after this is that we all end up going but Kelly and Mike will argue with each other for the first half of the car trip and then sit in stoney silence for the second half.
It's really weird, and really awkward and totally screwed up, but it's my family and I have to live with it. All I can really do is roll my eyes and slowly shake my head.
Now that I'm older and have actual social skills, I have attempted to mediate several arguments between them. Usually I didn't volunteer for this job, I just got dragged in. Somebody will be looking for validation for their points, and since I'm the only one there (besides Danny, and he doesn't count) I get hooked in. It's really hard to mediate between them because they both want to 'win' the argument. Generally I try to play the fence by validating some of both of their points but also pointing out their own faults. This usually doesn't go over well and then they just get mad at me too. And then everybody is all mad at each other. I just can't win.
Depending on the severity of the fight, they'll be back to normal in a few hours or they won't speak to each other for several days. It's really just a toss up after one of their stupid fights.
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