Mostly for my siblings' benefit, because they've never had the holidays with the Wisconsin family but partly for the rest of you yokels who are curious about white trash xmases... and partly because I'm lazy and don't want to have to think about what I'm typing... here's my actual real-journal-that-no-one-read's entry for today.

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So I need to get back on the morning pages party train - it's hard to fit in sometimes, which shouldn't be an issue - it's 3 pages, goddamit. It's Christmas, and I hurt. It's not mental pain this Christmas, it's actual physical pain. My back, deep in my right hip... ouch. Falling down the stairs will do that to you. Had a good night last night. Took Ryan ("the boy toy" my mom calls him - that makes me cringe) with me down to Hartford to meet the relatives. Stopped at Gma and Gpa Robarge's first, hung out there for a while and fell down Aunt Susie's stairs. Time came to go see Grandpa Pfiefer and Gma R. is all you have to come back and open presents - and things had been going really well - so I asked Ryan about it and he was hey, you're running the show, we should just head out by 8:15. So we go to Gpa Pfeifer's, and Aunt Debbie and company aren't there, it's just us and Gpa. He calls Debbie, she and Tony come and make some comments about how much I look like my mom, right down to the giggling. I hate to think I'm a spitting image of my mom. We don't look all that alike. Or maybe I'm in denial.

As I'm writing in my new favorite writing position, sitting propped up at my bedside I'm (edited for content)... Seems I picked a good fabric that hides them well. So after Gpa P's house we went back to Robarges and everything had changed. All kinds of drunkenness had started. Jesse was blitzed, my cousin Ryan was blitzed, Uncle John was blitzed. It was kind of fun, even though the present opening took 3 full hours. John (in his ill-fitting felt santa suit) would hand out a present, (sometimes interjecting a joke abou how it was a dildo, with his girlfriend's 12yr old son saying something about "Gross!") wait until that present was unwrapped and shown to the group and taken out of its packaging before handing out the next one. According to Sean this is a yearly occurance. 8:15 came and went, everyone was so into the drinking and shit Ryan and I had an entire conversation about staying vs. going that they didn't hear... John's kid Ryan kept pushing Ryan to drink, come on, you're not drinking, you're a disgrace to the Ryan name, blah blah blah so finally to shut him up Ryan had a beer. And cousin Ryan was happy...

There wasn't a whole lot that was bad about the situation as an adult... there were things I could've done without, like the dildo jokes in front of the kids, the dirty jokes about a six year old girl while she's standing there, the heavy drinking in front of the kids, having the kids handle empties... My biggest beef with the festivities, I guess, is that there's no consideration for the kids that are present. Everyone just gets smashed. I can understand why my mom hated it as a kid, but I wish she wouldn't have taken my description of it this morning to mean that I hated it, too. It's my family, it's where I came from, and as an adult on the outside it's kinda funny to watch. You just have to have a good sense of humor about it. In the end it was a good night, and I can honestly say (and this is very important to me) that I don't hate hanging out with my family out here. In fact, it's kinda fun.

Some cool things about xmas eve:
-Brittanie seemed to take a liking to me (if she's my cousin's kid, am I her second cousin? How does that work?)
-My boy Ryan is a damn good sport about spending Xmas eve with a bunch of drunks.
-macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly.
-Gma R has the exact same cheezy plastic-pieces-melted-together Santa that my mom has. (or had, I think she passed it on to my sister.)
-my soda didn't spill much when I carried it with me as I fell down the stairs.

Not cool things about xmas eve:
-falling down the stairs
-stomach pains after Gma's food
-telling the recap to my mom this morning who is just hungry for new reasons to despise her family
-(biggest one) not spending it in Ca with my brothers and sisters
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That's it, that's our show. The 10:15 is nothing like the 9:15, I'll be here all week, don't forget to tip your waitress. If you're going to the Robin's Nest tonight I'll see you there. If you're not, you're lame or you have better plans. I'm guessing it's the former.