Got laptop battery back from China! Oh and also, tree is up! Finally!!

So on Saturday we all got up and realized two things. The first thing was that the Special Christmas Dinner we have every year was that night. The second thing was that our stupid green piney excuse for a Christmas tree was not yet up and decorated.

Yep. Hannibal forgot.

It was approximately eight AM when I bolted up in bed and shouted, "WE HAVE NO TREE!" It was an epiphany of sorts. I suppose Hannibal must have heard my shriek of terror from the barn because five minutes later, he was inside the house, shouting about "silly American traditions" and "Christianity", and also at Johnny, who was in the kitchen mentally wrestling the wok into submission.

Michael came downstairs, and by this time I was pacing in the living room, and I was all, "Michael! We have no tree." And he just shrugged like the arrogant teenager he is, picked up the cordless phone and hit speed dial. "Yeah. My mom's taking a total shit fit because Hannibal forgot the tree. ... Yeah? Yeah okay, right. Just get a tree. I don't care how tall it is. Shut up. Yeah well your mom's a bitch. Whatever. K."

I frowned and said, "Michael."

He's all, "What? Jason's house has woods in the back."

I could have argued with him for about seventy-six minutes on the subject of unlicensed tree-chopping being an absolute, complete felony, but what would have been the point really? After all, my son is a fourteen-year-old rebel, and as a result, he obviously knows everything, MOM.

So I just said, “One day you’ll get your bachelor’s degree in applied forestry just like your infirm aunt Beatrice wants, and then you’ll see how wrong it is of you to impose such a liability on your poor dear dyslexic friend Jason Vrees.”

Michael just looked at me like my face was a toxic waste plant in its disgusting, smelly entirety, and he’s like, “Oh my God mom you’re embarrassing can you not speak English for two seconds?”

So Jason shows up ten minutes later in a hijacked baby pink van with the inscription “Crystal Munchies” in big huge swampy green bubbly letters on the side. Atop the van was one massive mother of all trees. It was nice and green, but it shedded a lot into our driveway and that made me assume it would also shed excessively onto our living room floor, and I felt kind of bad for Hannibal, who would have to clean it all up in January.

“Jasonyouactuallychoppeddownatree?” I exclaimed, shocked beyond my wit. That’s an expression my mother used a lot, “shocked beyond my wit”. And by a lot I mean teeth-grindingly, nerve-splittingly, horrendously OFTEN. She’s dead now. My mother, I mean. She was murdered by a group of teenage boys in the woods a few blocks down. It was disastrous. They cut out her jaw.

Jason just got out of the van and he’s like, “Yup. Well – actually I kinda got my drunk dad to help me out. That’s why the bottom of the stump is a little bit jagged. I hope you don’t mind.”

Michael came outside and looked at the tree and then looked at me and then at Jason and then back at the tree. He was all, “Dude, the HELL is up with your van?”

Jason’s all embarrassed. “Tsmymomsasshole.”

I don’t think Michael noticed his justification for the fluffy pink cloud-van, unfortunately for Jason. He lunged toward the tree on the roof of the van and I had to somehow hold him back so he didn’t harm himself. Hannibal came out with his duster and several portions of a vacuum cleaner and started untying the tree in the frigid cold. We pretty much just went inside.

The actual decorating of the tree was fairly uneventful, so instead of wasting your precious Christmas-season Wal-Mart-hopping time (speaking of, would anyone be willing to give Michael and company a drive home from Wal-Mart on Sunday night? I’m afraid they might just steal some poor sap’s vehicle if no one picks them up. I promised Johnny I’d go to his thing. Which thing this is, I’m still not too sure.), I will simply condense my rambling into a clear-cut, simple point-form summary of what happened.

Actually no, you know what?

I’M GOING TO MAKE A TOP TEN LIST! Like the ones on Yahoo! News every second day, except way more accurate.


The top ten happenings during Gertie’s Christmas-Tree-Decorating Shenanigans (this one’s for you, Edna!)

10. Tree goes up with rope Michael keeps in his room (look, they’re even in present tense!). Slightly drunk Johnny comes into living room and says “Shiznatch”.

9. Michael and Jason have slight quarrel over who gets to hang the sandy bell. Everyone holding breaths hoping the tree and house stay up.

8. Frederick Krueger shows up. This is an event upon itself.

7. Robert starts singing “Jingle Bells” from upstairs; everyone laughing and spilling eggnog all over the place (non-alcoholic eggnog – what kind of a mother do you think I am?). Hannibal gets mop.

6. Mary-Sue Vrees calls me to warn me not to give her child alcoholic beverages because his “life-threatening fear of water” is “worse when he’s loopy”. Dear sweet Lord mother of all that is holy was that ever the most awkward phone conversation.

5. Jason has slight breakdown over crystal ornament shaped as raindrop.

4. Frederick “goes to the bathroom” and now there are no eggs in the fridge.

3. Hannibal announces halfway through that he needs to go take a piss. TMI, Hannibal.

2. Hannibal very nearly drops the bucket of hooks and goes “UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH!” like a legitimate hippopotamus in heat.

1. Michael pretty much in hysterics over Hannibal’s hippo noises. Angry Hannibal takes large bucket of dirty mop water and throws in Michael’s face, thereby splashing Jason. Michael goes to the bathroom for two hours. Jason in foetal position on living room floor for three and a quarter. Upon getting out of the bathroom Michael tells Jason to “fuck off and get out of my house”. Jason still on floor until people get here for dinner.


Oh, and since you asked, the dinner went well, too. I mean, it went so much better than expected, considering. We had turkey, stuffing, cucumbers... you know, the regular. Sam Loomis now has a healing black eye, Stephenie Meyer had to put Sella in therapy, Freddy refused to eat his cucumber, the house is now three feet farther away to the left than it used to be thanks to Samara and Sadako, Edna’s son Damien pretty much recited the entire Necronomicon to us, Michael and Jason currently are not speaking to each other, and Johnny is still drunk.

But hey, it’s better than last year! Right folks?

Update you again soon! Time for a little shut-eye... that is, if Johnny ever stops dancing with the broom and humming “Here Comes the Bride” downstairs.

Love you all! :)


Hugs,
Gertie

P.S. – I’m feeling much better now that my battery is in my computer and not in China. Thank God Sella Bwan’s relatives didn’t get their hands on it, is all I have to say!

Now I know what to get Michael for Christmas - a dream dictionary! :)

This morning Michael came down to the living room a little earlier than usual. His eyes - which are the only part of his face I ever see - spoke of nightmares.

"Mom..." he said tentatively, sitting down on the couch beside me and my knitting equipment. "You've read one of those dream dictionaries front to back, right?"

"DID YOU HAVE A NIGHTMARE?" I exclaimed, dropping my knitting. This was extremely shocking because Michael has not had a dream he could remember since he was three and he dreamt this evil psychiatrist with a trenchcoat and a chubby face with a few remnants of beard was chasing him. I remember this because one week later, he donned the mask. I also remember it because oddly enough, the evil psychiatrist turned out to look exactly like one of Edna's more recent husbands, Dr. Sam Loomis. Which is weird because he is also a psychiatrist.

"No," said Michael quickly. "I did not have a nightmare. I had a dream, is all. Jesus Fudge."

"Watch your language."

"Man, whatever."

So I'm all, "What was your dream about?"
Michael looked profoundly disturbed for a moment. And then suddenly he started talking, and it all spilled out. "Mom, I had a dream I was twenty-one and I broke out of a mental institution on Halloween and then Edna's husband was chasing me and then I killed people and then I got caught and I got shot six times but it didn't hurt because it was a freaking dream and I just got up and walked away!"

I smiled at him. This was the most emotion I’ve seen in Michael’s eyes probably since he yelled the shit out of Sella Bwan this one time. “Hon, it was just a dream. Now, you know that’s never going to happen.”

“HOW?”

“Because Edna’s husband would never chase you, you would never kill anyone, and I would never have you committed in the first place."

The look in Michael’s eyes clearly stated he doubted all three of these statements. I ignored this and went into the kitchen to make some grilled cheese. Turns out Jason Vrees likes grilled cheese better than pancakes. Whodathunk? Jason Vrees went home yesterday, but still, this restores some of my faith in my most beloved breakfast item and my ability to successfully cook meals.

On his way out the door to catch the bus, Michael informed me that he would be staying late at school to work on a project.

“Oh, you’re such a hard worker,” I said. “Which project?”

Michael grinned. “English movie thing with Jason and Freddy. We’re filming ‘Freddy vs. Jason 3.5’ today. It might take a while. Don’t expect me home until 7-ish.”

“Okay honey. You have lunch money?”

“Yeeeesss, moommm...”

“By the way, did you get your results for the cooking project yet?”

Michael slowly turned his head to the side. This is what he does when he is confused. Personally, I think he may have a neurological imbalance of some sort. Then he was all, “Oh, that. Yeah, I got an A-.”

“Well that’s good!”

“Yeah, she said I would have gotten an A+, but I guess I forgot to use the damn peanuts. Oh well. Anyway, how the hell did you know about my cooking project?”

I trudged back into the living room. “Have a nice day at school, honey!”

Rolling on the road

It was slightly drizzling as Stephenie Meyer and her Chinese adopted daughter Sella Bwan rolled down the street. This wouldn't have been nearly as awkward as it was if they had actually been in their vehicle.

I saw them and I was all, "Whaaaaaaaaaaat?", so I went outside onto the porch and I said, "Mrs. Meyer! Are you all right? Don't you think you might catch the swine flu?"

"Sella has a fever!" shouted Meyer. "She is not okay! She probably already has the swine flu!"

And then as I watched, Sella Bwan actually stood up and started hyperventilating like Mary-Sue Vrees would if her poor sweet innocent dear child was run over by an eighteen-wheeler and then shot by a tank and then trumpled by five angry werewolves the size of cows, all of this in the slight drizzle.

They are still out there now. I just told Hannibal, who is not yet gone "to the casino", to please barricade the door. And now Michael is angry because he wanted to go to Wal-Mart. So I told him that if he gives me his mask, I will momentarily take the bars off his windows so that he may head on over to Wal-Mart in the slight drizzle.

As I look out the window, Johnny is screaming at the wok in the kitchen again, and I am not sure quite what the angry man expects the wok to do, but he sure is raging... and Stephenie Meyer just tackled Sella Bwan, screaming, "GET BACK ON THE ROAD AND ROLL."

So I told everyone to please stay inside.