Twas the Day After Christmas

Christmas is over. Thank God!

I worked the entire weekend, including Christmas Eve. I packaged all the Christmas confections in my house and took them to work, and they may have been the only saving grace for the weekend. My patients were assholes, but I had homemade peanut butter balls, and somehow, that made everything tolerable.

Christmas morning, I get off work and drive home. The PT has a gimpy tire, maybe two, so she shimmies when I drive her. I made an attempt over the weekend to get the car looked at, but with it being the last shopping weekend before Christmas, standard wait was two hours, and simply not doable for someone who was working the entire weekend. At one point, I had made Brother take the car out on Christmas Eve to get it fixed, but the tire place of choice was closed.

So anyway, I get home, frantically finish wrapping the rest of my gifts, and change out of my work clothes while Brother loads the car. We leave, only to turn around and return because we forgot the turkey. One turkey later, we're back on the highway, headed north to Redneck Brother's house. The PT shaking the entire way. At one point, I decide I'm too tired to drive, and let Brother take over. Instead of napping the rest of the way, I'm wide awake because Brother's driving scares me.

We arrive at Redneck Brother's house, and the unwrapping of the gifts ensue. The kids now own the entire contents of Toys R Us.

Dinner later: ham, taters, green bean casserole, etc.

Exhausted, I crawl into Nephew's bed for a nap. I think I manage to get one, too, before I awake to the most painful sound ever. A cross between someone who hasn't taken a healthy dump in three weeks, and someone who is getting their nutsack twisted off. I get up to investigate and find karaoke has been set up in the living room. I'm not talking about just some piddly little set-up you buy a Hellmart. No, this is the piddly set from Hellmart attached to a monstrous sound system. And some guy I've never seen before wailing into a microphone. The guy, turns out, is a friend of the family.

I love my Redneck Brother, but somewhere in life, someone has told him that he can sing. It wasn't me. Now, he fashions himself some sort of future country crooner, when in actuality, his singing reminds me of a manatee getting caught in a boat propeller. Redneck Brother wants to go sing at Harrah's for Lucky Break, with the rest of the retards that can't carry a tune.

Sister-In-Law gets up to sing, and everything goes from bad to worse. If Marianne Faithful gave birth to an Oompa Loompa, and that Oompa Loompa went on to have a child with Phyllis Diller and that child would go on to a singing career on cruise ships, you'd have my Sister-in-Law. Meanwhile, Mom and I are in the next room, trying not to die of laughter. It becomes increasingly difficult each time someone tries to hit a high note. When this happens, Sam starts barking...back at home in KC.

Mom and Mr. Recommendation leave. Sister-in-law is now inebriated and begins serenading Redneck Brother. I decide that I've had adequate sleep to make the drive home. I'll risk a bad tire incident before anymore of my favorite songs are further sodomized by my family.

So now it is five in the morning. I'm awake. Brother is in his room, having brought some skank over for a post-Christmas booty scratch. Apparently, with the demise of his relationship to Special Friend, Brother's response is to try to have sex with every skank who advertises their skankiness on MySpace. There's nothing quite as special as blogging about your holiday adventure with your family, while hearing coital noises coming from the room next door.

I think going deaf would be a fine alternative right now. Another hour of this, and I just might.