Yee-haw. *cracks the whip*
God. Well, this year, Christmas was quite a circus. I do not mean that literally, thank goodness; no clowns invaded, nor did I have to face down wild cats, but it was a long and draining experience.
It began on Wednesday, where after much delay, Bob and I finally managed to depart (in the lovely chilly rain) to my mother’s house. She was annoyed with our late arrival, having wanted to make Christmas Cookies in the afternoon rather than the evening, an entirely understandable desire. However, there was naught to be done about it at that point. My other brother arrived and we all sat down to dinner.
After dinner, mom rushed off to church (alone), while Bob, my brothers, and I lazed about the house. Or, well, Bob and I lazed, The J-twins, having finished their Christmas shopping mere moments before dinner, were in a frenzy of wrapping and last minute preparations.
When mom returned, we sat down and opened some gifts. Bob opened all of his, as he was leaving at the crack of dawn, and the rest of us opened one or two. Then we turned to the horror that is Christmas Cookie baking.
When I was little, we used to use colored sugar and sprinkles on the shortbread to decorate them. This provided us with somewhat messy, crudly decorated cookies and created a great deal of mess for my mother to clean up in addition to the mess that baking cookies of this nature already creates. So one year, she found an article or saw a newsmagazine segment which suggested combining food coloring with egg yolks and painting the cookies. Then they would be baked and any concerns about egg contamination would be eliminated.
So for years now, that’s what we’ve done. Many many years — I don’t know exactly when the changeover occurred, but Jeff, at 17, doesn’t remember doing cookies any other way. And over the years “traditions” have developed. Four of the ‘bear’ shapes must be transformed into Ninja Turtles. Several of the stars need to be rainbow. All of the god-awful Santa Heads must be made to look demonic. Several of the cookies need to be painted so much that they turn into a big black mess (These are the “Jonathan” cookies, because that’s how Jonathan always used to paint them when he actually participated.) In any case, the painting of a single cookie sheet’s worth of cookies can take over an hour. Usually, by the time it’s over, mom and I are the only ones painting — dad never did, Jonathan would do it badly on purpose, and Jeff tends to get bored easily. It’s a very long and drawn-out baking session and I know my mother dreads it every year.
And we did it again this year. Mom had bought some of those food coloring markers in the hopes that they would make things faster and easier, but unfortunately the brand she purchased was absolutely terrible. I believe they were Betty Crocker (DON’T BUY THESE). The tips were as flexible as paintbrushes, so there was no way to apply pressure to the cookies with them. The food coloring was nowhere near “flowing” enough for these brush-like ends to be successful in making any but the most faint marks on the cookie.
By the time we were done with cookies, it was past 11. People headed off to bed, though I stayed up for a while puttering around online.
Thursday morning began early when Bob got up around 3:30 to head for the airport for his 6am flight. I fell back asleep almost immediately after he left the bedroom and didn’t wake up again until around 9 or 9:30 when my mom came in and got me. We headed downstairs to do presents, which was much calmer this year than in the past. I got a nearly complete new set of dishes, which, as my mom well knows, will not do more than serve as decorations — she bought us another new set back in August already, and we were not low on dishes prior to that. I also got some DVDs (West Wing season 1, Buffy season 2, Coupling season 2) and some gift certificates. Overall, not bad.
We had our traditional dinner of roast beef and then mom drove me up to the airport so that I could catch /my/ flight out to Wisconsin. I connected in Detroit (which had wireless in the airport!), where the plane was delayed, so I didn’t get to Madison until nearly 8pm. We all went over to my brother-in-law’s house for a pick up meal and family present exchange.
Unfortunately, this was not a very pleasant evening for me. I was very tired by the time we got to their house (which is new and very lovely), and they have pets. A dog /and/ cats. After about 5 minutes I was wheezing and I spent the next 3 hours absolutely miserable and trying to pretend I wasn’t. I don’t think I did a very good job of it.
Although I was tired as hell by the time we got back to Bob’s parents’ house, I was still having trouble breathing and felt very blah, so going to sleep was not much of an option. Bob and I stayed up and watched our new Pirates DVD, but even after we went to bed, I didn’t fall asleep for several hours.
Happily, when I woke up in the morning, my lungs had cleared up and I felt better. This was short lived, since we then piled into the car and headed off to Green Bay to visit yet more relatives. These were cousins and uncles and aunts who, though I’ve actually been around since 1996, I had never yet met. This was somewhat stressful, and, of course, the uncle whose house we were at had a cat. We got there around noon, before anyone else at all, and we were there for about 7 hours. I was having trouble breathing again by the time we left, but since it was only a cat I recovered more quickly this time.
Saturday was more lazy, but Bob’s brother’s family came over in the afternoon and hung out all evening. I felt like I wasn’t exerting myself enough to talk to them (or to his parents), but I’m not sure what I would have done or said. I could have helped in the kitchen, but I would only have been in the way. *sigh*
My flight on Sunday morning was way early, so we left at the crack of dawn for the airport.
Amazingly, all the flights were on time and I got back at exactly the time I was supposed to. But then…
Because Bob and I were on separate flights both to and from, he had taken the car up to the airport on Thursday and parked it. I was to collect the car on Sunday and come back to pick him up when his flight arrived later in the afternoon. So I made sure to ask him “Where is the car parked?” before we left. He was very certain of his answer: It’s at E8. I saw the sign when I got out of the car, it was right there.
Now, I had not parked a car at this airport before, so I assumed that he would have given me enough information to locate it. If he felt E8 was enough, then that, presumably, was enough. So I got back, got the suitcase and headed across to the parking garage. Except, hmm, the parking garage has 5 levels. So I looked around level 2 and found a row A with lots of sections, a row B, a row C, a row D — no E. So I went up to 3. Again, ABCD with no E.
I took the elevator up to the other floors just to be sure. No section E8 in the parking garage.
Muttering, I dragged the suitcase and my rather heavy backpack back toward the airport. As I arrived, I noticed signs for the buses — B lot, C lot, D lot, E lot, G lot. Excellent! I thought. That must have been the mistake. Of course he would be in one of the more distant, long-term parking lots. Though there was a little nagging voice in my head that told me he would have mentioned taking a bus if he’d had to take one, I ignored it because there really was no other option. I got on the bus to E lot and headed out there. No car at E8. No car at E3, E6, E9, E13 — none of the numbers that looked at all like 8’s. So I sat and waited. And waited. And finally the bus came back and returned me to the terminal.
At that point I had a few options. Option 1) Sit around the airport for 4 hours until Bob’s plane returned. Option 2) Drag the heavy luggage around to the other parking lots on the off chance the car was in one of them. Option 3) Take a cab.
I opted for 3, being in no frame of mind to sit calmly at the airport (I was absolutely furious) and in no physical shape to do to (I had already dropped my backpack — containing the laptop — down the steps of one of the buses because my arm was numb.)
So I got back to the condo, vented about the parking situation online, then returned to the airport to pick up Bob later in the afternoon. I handed him his keys and told him to find his car. Which he then proceeded to do. (It was in C lot, not anywhere near an 8.) But by that point I had expended most of my irritation, so he was spared the full brunt of it. We went to Olive Garden for dinner (Thanks, grandma.) and then home.