My Time

Spent Saturday ringing in the 80th birthday of my Grandmother with family and friends. The party itself was great, lots of food, retro candy bars, pink lemonade, sweet-ass cupcakes and entirely way too many songs sung by my aunts and uncles. Yep, you heard me right, during the speechifying portion of the party, several of the children sang their tributes to my Grandma and it was…well, kind of a freak show.

It’s not to say they can’t sing, because some of them totally can, but, wow…watching these grown-ass men and women duke it out for their solo in the spotlight was beyond unsavory. Fearful that one of his siblings might be getting more attention than himself, one of my uncles actually started juggling in the middle of the after-party at my Grandma’s house. Juggling! He even brought his own juggling clown bowling pins and shit. Like I said…total freak show.

Anyway, at that same after-party I struck up a conversation with one of my singing aunts (who is usually my favorite of the freak show faction of the family) and told her how great she looked. “Have you lost weight?” I asked. “Yes, almost 25 pounds!” She purred back. I pressed her further for details — which wasn’t hard, considering how much this aunt likes to talk, especially about herself — and she explained that she too was on Project X.

Hearing this, I got very excited and told her that Mrs. Yeti and I were trying really hard to stick to the tenets of Project X ourselves. Hearing this, my Aunt stopped cold, quickly scanned my body from head to toe and said: “Well, when it’s your time, you’ll stick to the diet.” She then leaned in real close, put a hand on each of my shoulders and said: “But, hey, you’re good as you are right now too.”

Silence. I just stood there for a stunned beat, staring at my aunt. Did that big old pot just call my kettle ass fat? I mean, wow, if she’s this nice when I compliment her, just imagine what she’d be like if I said something mean. Of course, I knew her heart was in the right place and that she didn’t mean to sound like a smug, little, newly-thin bitch, but, unfortunately, that’s exactly what she sounded like. And, instead of thinking of some pithy comeback all I did was grumble silently to myself, for like, fifteen minutes straight, while she spouted off all the great things that have happened to her since she lost the weight. Seriously, she was giving me recipes and shit. It was brutal.

Luckily I was pulled away to the living room at that point by Mrs. Yeti (good save, sweetie!) so, I never got the chance to punch my aunt in her newly flat gut or lay her low with some snappy, withering comeback. But, trust me, I’m working on it, and the next time we meet in the field of battle, dear Auntie, I won’t be so easily defeated.

In the meantime, back to Project X. One week to go till the reunion and whether it’s “my time” or not, I’m gonna lose me some more weight…if for no other reason than to shove it down my Aunt’s warbling gullet. Ah, ain’t family grand?

A chipped beef Christmas

OK, so, last time I wrote, Greta had proclaimed herself “healed”. Well…big shocker…she wasn’t. In fact, since my last post, she has been pooping up strangely cream-colored gravy. I know that sounds gross, my apologies if you’re eating your lunch or something when you read this, but, that’s what it looked like. Pale gravy.

Actually, I’m feeling the writerly compulsion to get a little more specific than “pale gravy” here. So, weak-stomached readers, please, feel free to totally free skip to the next paragraph. Anyway, when I was a kid my Step Mom used to buy these weird chipped beef and gravy packets for us. They came in these little plastic baggies that you plopped into boiling water for a couple of minutes and then slit them open and poured the chipped beef, gravy and everything over some toast. I remember it being pretty yummy, but, man alive, it looked like shit. Literally. And now, I can say with some certainty that it looked exactly like what Greta was serving up late last week. Chipped beef deluxe. Extra runny.

Anyway, so, she’s got the shits — or as she so eloquently put it as she thrust her crap-covered hand in my face on Wednesday morning: “Daddy, I threw up in my butt!” — for a couple of days. Then I get the shits, real bad. Then, my Mom arrives Friday afternoon ready to drive with us to my Grandparents house in the middle of nowhere for their annual, all-family, early-Christmas blow-out. Deep down I knew we shouldn’t have gone, but, hey, we were already packed, Mrs. Yeti was working all weekend, and, hello, my Mom did drive way out of her way to commute with us to Grandpa’s. So, I popped my daily limit of shit pills, changed Greta for the tenth time that morning and hit the road. On a Friday. At rush hour. In Los Angeles. As you can imagine, it was a lovely ride.

What should have been an hour-and-a-half drive turned into a three-and-a-half hour slog from hell. I’m not kidding, walking would have been faster. So, we get there, hang out a little bit and have some pizza. Yeah, I know, bad idea. Actually, the pizza was the first of several bad ideas. Let me just say this, when you’re shitting brown water in the morning and you cork it up with diarrhea pills in the afternoon and then hop into the car for a three-and-a-half-hour slow boat to China, pizza is not your friend. I literally felt like I was gonna explode after I ate my first piece. I drank a soda to help me burp it down a bit, but, nothing worked. I couldn’t burp, I couldn’t fart, I couldn’t poo…urgh…I felt like Augustus Gloop stuck in that chocolate tunnel in “Willy Wonka”. Ah, who am I kidding? It felt like Augustus Gloop was stuck in my chocolate tunnel and I wanted him OUT!

So, we’re tired, our hosts are tired (or just old and cranky, it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes) and right before we go to bed Greta, who ate like, two bites of pizza, decides she wants to eat some Cheetos. Ding! Bad idea number two. But, hey, I’m bloated, totally stopped-up and exhausted, so, what the hell, you wanna eat Cheetos in bed? Eat up, kid.

A few Cheetos in, she finally falls asleep, I do too and six or so hours later I have the mother of all bowel movements. I swear to God, I thought I was gonna crack the toilet wide open with that epic, hard-ass turd. Whoo-hoo! But, lemme tell ya, it was heaven sent, baby. And I went back to bed feeling absolutely glorious.

Until about two hours later, when I awoke just in time for Greta to barf on my face. Yep. She got my ear too, but, trust me, the face is the worst. Of course, she was covered in Cheetos-tinted barf as well, so, I stripped her down, stripped the bed and woke up my Mom for assistance. God bless her, she woke up, stared incredulously at the two of us for a minute and then got down to business.

People weren’t due to arrive for the party till 1:00PM, but, we both knew that Grandma would be up in a couple of hours and that the last thing she’d wanna see is a barfy crime scene in her guest bedroom, so, Mom and I worked fast to get that shit cleaned up. And we did. Note to self: If I ever kill someone and need to cover it up…call Mom!

So, the room looked great, but, Greta and I still felt like shit. There was talk of us leaving, but, Greta’s beloved giraffe (who also took a dousing in the face when Mt. Greta erupted that morning) was still in the dryer and Greta had finally fallen into a deep, much-needed slumber, so,we figured we’d stay and see how she felt when she woke up.

Luckily for all of us, Greta felt much better after her long mid-morning nap, so, we stayed. I was still dragging my ass — I have a feeling “dragging my ass” is the new normal this holiday season — but, we ended up having a really awesome time hanging with my Grandparents and the extended family, so, I’m really glad we stayed around.

In fact, I know it sounds kinda corny, but, I think we were healed by the magic of Christmas. Once everybody started to arrive for the party, and they cranked up the Christmas music, and the food and drinks started flowing, I genuinely started to feel better. Greta too. It sounds crazy, but, maybe two cc’s of Christmas cheer was all we needed to get right back on track. Or maybe it was just the food and baked goods (which were out-fucking-standing!).

Either way, the good news is that father and child are on the mend and we still have a whole week till Christmas. So, bring on the Christmas week adventures!