It was the best Christmas I’ve had since I left my parents’ home in 2001.
That first Christmas, I was severely depressed and wanted nothing but to be left alone forever in a room by myself in the dark alone by myself go away. I got to go home to my family, but I was still severely depressed and don’t remember much.
Last Christmas, I was 2,000 miles away from my family, all alone on Christmas Day, and when I went to Gunslinger’s family’s party I was surrounded by strangers who weren’t sure what to make of me.
This Christmas, I’ve been down here for a year and a half, and we’ve been living together since July. I’ve been taken in as a real member of the family. We took a two-hour drive back east to see them over the weekend. Friday morning we got up early, did the presents-exchange thing, and took a leisurely ride through East Texas. Then we went to my favorite pet store and I got to play with a wide variety of well-raised hand-fed birds from my favorites, the Quaker parakeets, to a trio of Eclectus and a tiny little Timneh African Grey who was the cuddliest example of that species I have ever been acquainted with. I love visiting that pet store, and I can’t wait until we can afford to add to our family - I intend to adopt a Quaker from them some time in 2005.
We had lunch at the best hamburger joint EVER - Jucy’s - and were thrilled to see that they had expanded westward. No longer are they limited to Longview, Marshall and Tyler - they now have a location on Town East Blvd in Mesquite! We can stop by for a fabulous lunch next time we go to the Gihugic Mall.
We spent the afternoon with his nuclear family and the evening with his extended family, all of whom were very friendly. We had some drinks and a lot of nachos and quite a few laughs. I sometimes felt rather out of the loop because they were talking about people and places with which I was unfamiliar, but no one was offended when I borrowed the host’s copy of the Darwin Awards book and sat in the living room browsing it while they spoke.
Afterwards we went to KFC - the party was all Mexican food, which my stomach cannot tolerate; earlier at Jucy’s I had tried putting a tiny, tiny little drop of Tabasco sauce on a plate, then dipping the very, very tip of a tiny, tiny french fry into it just for half a second… and it was still too hot for me… what can I say, I’m a Yankee - my mom only ever used salt, black pepper, and herbs from her garden. Spicy hurts me. Luckily a KFC was open, and the guy in the drive-through enunciated PO-TAY-TO WEDGES in a most amusing manner and just made my evening. Then we went to our hotel room, thoughtfully provided by the Mom-In-Law, and watched cartoons all night.
Christmas morning we returned to his parents’ house for a gift exchange, breakfast, and General Hanging Out. Gun’s little brother was 12 when I first met him, and I found him very annoying, but now he’s turning 16 and the more I get to know him the more I like him. He and I discussed fishing, wildlife, and the strange romantic ideas moose sometimes get into their heads regarding people’s cars.
We wrapped up our Christmas with lunch at his Grandmother’s house with his aunt, uncle and cousins, another gift exchange, and a ride around the block in his grandmother’s 1984 Ford LTD Crown Victoria. She’d just bought a new car, and was having transmission problems with the Vic, which we determined were due to the fact that it was two quarts low on tranny fluid. It was decided that the little brother would have Gun’s pickup truck, and the Vic would be ours; he’s going down to trade vehicles tomorrow.
The only sore point of the weekend is that they spent a long, long time going back and forth about what paperwork would be needed to get the Vic put in Gun’s name and how to get the title and whatnot. Their ideas of what was necessary were incorrect and they kept asking each other and giving each other the wrong answers over and over. I just went through that very situation - getting a title transferred to my name in Texas and registering it and everything - and I told them what was necessary, but they ignored me as if I’d never spoken and just kept on going back and forth with the wrong information. All day. Both days. It about drove me crazy and I got snippy with Gun about it on the way home, because I felt that he could have done a better job getting them to realize that I did in fact know what I was talking about because I had done the very exact same thing quite recently. But other than that annoyance it was one of the best Christmases I’ve had in years, as an experience rather than an exchange of presents (which consisted of two or three awesome things, a couple of nice things, and a colossal heap of lackluster items).