Ho Ho Horrible!
Yesterday was miserable, just miserable. What happened? Fantasy effing football. This morning I'm in quite the mood as I've been thinking and ranking the most awful Christmases of all time. Top five. Excluded from the list are those holidays where some Cajun relative got piss ant drunk and told someone off or just acted tacky. That happened a lot, enough that it wasn't note worthy.
Figured I needed to do something better than construct a voodoo doll of the husband and torment it.
5 - The Year Dad Nearly Burned Down The House
I remember this year all too well because I was in my starving student phase. I'd left my first husband and his abuse behind and was living on ramen noodles in a crappy efficiency apartment (glorified room with a kitchen in a closet) working and going to university full time. The day had been awful before the fire. As per usual my kid step brother got over the top presents, that year was a tv and a new vcr, and I got a Bible and a set of kitchen knives. This happened every single year since my father had remarried so I knew to expect it. Big whoops, the usual.
What made the day parts comedy and tragedy was my step mother relentlessly nagging my father about so many minor things all day long that he actually reacted angrily, which was rare. While they snapped and snarled at each other my dad took every single crumpled piece of wrapping paper, every shredded up box and shoved them into the big box the tv came in. He shoved that box filled with paper into the blazing flames of the fireplace.
What happened next was wild! Flames shot out of the fireplace, like a huge fireball six foot into the room. It merrily set the carpet on fire, burned the mantle piece and turned our Christmas stockings into twisted blackened melted lumps hanging there. Ended up having to bring in a special cleaning crew to get all the soot off the bricks, recarpet the room and replace the mantle piece. Epic!
4 - Eggnog, Fruitcake and Puke!
I believe this one happened Christmas of 1972, a year that brought a bottle of Heaven Scent cologne and a five pound box of Elmer's Mastercraft chocolates as presents. I spent the day staring at the photos of the Osmonds festooning my bedroom walls and throwing up. I wasn't the only one prostrate and stomach plagued. This was the Christmas we all contracted some crazy virulent form of the flu with not only the usual chills, body aches and snotty snotty symptoms but the gross stomach action too. Entire family laid out. No food. I remember clutching a glass of ginger ale while staring at that huge box of chocolates thinking I never wanted to eat ever again.
3 - The Great Abandonment!
This wasn't really anyone's fault, it was more a function of the age of our kids. I don't remember the exact year, but it was the first year both of our kids were ending up going to sig-o families Christmases and getting together with mom and dad on Christmas Eve. I don't know what I thought, that they would always visit on Christmas, so that year was a strange pensive one that seemed to be missing so much. Didn't feel like Christmas. We ended up doing the Jewish thing, going to get Chinese food for Christmas day with our best friends Paul and Joanie, who were experiencing the same thing.
2 - The Ultimate in Karens
This took place at Christmas, the penultimate Christmas in the life of Jim's mother. We went to Texas to spend with the Maw in Law and our newest relative by marriage showed her ass in the worst way possible, right down to telling us we were coming over for Christmas dinner and then standing us up. I decided in that moment I was dealing with evil forces greater than I thought, someone way worse than any "Karen" type hence the nickname of "Mrs. Satan" was forged and it has stuck. We now avoid her at all costs.
1 - Yesterday...
...all my troubles seemed so far away... sorry a little McCartney for the holiday. Yesterday Jim went to church, came home, took over the new wide screen tv in the living room and worked a pastiche of obscenities so over the top, venial and stupid I was just waiting for a divine lightning bolt to come shooting down and fry his chunky ass to a crisp. He screamed, cried and cursed from 11 am to 11 pm. Why? Was the earth ending? Did I cook foods he didn't like? Did he get the wrong gift? Nope. All ten of his fantasy football teams were taking a shellacking that would knock him out of the playoffs. It was miserable and crazy making. He did it while I was cooking. He did it when I abandoned him to go swimming in the mango pollened soup that claims to be a swimming pool. He did it while I ate. Indigestion, shouting and turkey. Damn, I thought I left that behind when I left my family of origin.
Started out I was praying that he wouldn't be struck by lightning for taking the Lord's name in vain, and the day ended with my prayers for him to be suddenly struck mute, or worse. Told him at bedtime he'd somehow managed to make 2022 the most miserable Christmas Day of all time. That's a rare happening considering I'm old as fuck.
I'm still beyond pissed off. He asked me what was for breakfast this morning and I said for him it would be rat poisoning and barbed wire after his behavior yesterday, or he could make himself a bowl of cereal. I was not lifting a finger because I had simply had it.
Never liked fantasy football and every single year he gets wilder and crazier during the season. We're going to have to talk about this, and I may well tell him something has to give, the sport or me because this was ridiculous to the extreme. I hate yelling.
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