it’s a politically incorrect christmas….that basically sums up christmas 2003. i have returned from hell. oops. i mean michigan. here goes nothing.

Left for detroit wednesday morning at 10. arrived at the grandparents house in the afternoon, and carol and eric were already there. same old same old. ed and laurice came later and we all had dinner. that’s when the fun begins.

i don’t ever really know how conversations begin at the dinner table, because i usually don’t pay attention. but i almost started crying all through dinner, because it was just beyond sit-com funny. and i don’t usually cry when i laugh. i had to try very hard to compose myself. i don’t know the order of the following events, but that’s ok.
1. according to grandpa (from here on known as gpa) michaelangelo was gay.
2. i don’t know how the topic of people to trust/not trust came about. but…the conversation sorta went like this
gpa: you know who you should never trust?
us: *brace for commentary on arabs and muslims*
gpa: those goddamn russians.
us: *that’s a new one. but communism is so 15 years ago*
gpa: *commences rant on why russians are evil*
the evil russians conversation ended with the revelation that my great grandfather, who lived in poland, was ok with germans. he could distinguish between hitler, who was a nazi you know (really?!?! i had no idea), and the german people who weren’t nazis. but those goddamn russians killed two of his nefews. took them out into the woods and shot them. so i guess my gpa can’t forgive the entire russian ethnicity for shooting his nefews in wartime.

now during this conversation, with my gpa ranting away about how all russians are theives and murderers, food continuously sprays from his mouth, decending upon my mom to the left of him and eric on the right. which was cause for much of my tear inducing laughter. it spurred on the comment that they were “a human shield with a different intent”

so dinner is done, but not without the running joke about how russians are evil, and not to be trusted – which went really well when eric unwrapped a bottle of vodka imported from russia.

it’s gifting time. we all pile into the living room. we find a religious calendar on the table.
ed: dad look what the arabs at the liquor store gave you when eric went to pay your bills
gpa: what’s on it? some rag head? oh it’s jesus
me: *dies laughing*

someone unwraps candles. someone mentions how gpa never let gma burn any candles in the house. because gpa hates them
gpa: you see the movies where people light 100s of candles to go to bed. I’d be too scared of fire to screw.
gma: what a wonderful way to die
TOOOOOOOOOO MUCH INFORMAAAAAAAAATION
along the same line, before that comment, was this
gpa: sara, some day when you have the time, i’ll tell you about mine and gma’s love life
me: that’s ok, i don’t really need to know that.

as long as we’re talking about sex, how about my gpa’s joke
gpa: 2 gays went to rob a bank. the one waited outside for the other gay, but he didn’t come out of the bank. So the 2nd gay went inside and everyone was standing around his partner. he asked what happened. A man said “some big dick strangled him to death”. The accomplis said, “what a wonderful way to die”

we’re still unwrapping gifts now. gpa unwraps a package of socks.
gpa: this isn’t no hanes or fruit of the loom. this is kmart’s best brand, texas steed. though i hate texas.

of course through the night, along with the running anti-russian jokes, we tried to figure out other countries we hadn’t yet attacked, bringing up korea (gpa: those goddamn korean kids don’t appreciate what the US did for that goddamn country), france, central america, etc….and of course, the rag heads.

this is the best part of my christmas. in bold so you actually read this part, while you ignore the rest of this post. i unwrapped a package of black socks from my grandma. something fell out of them. i looked down. IT WAS A FINGERNAIL. someone’s fake fingernail was in my socks ROFLMAO!!!! seriously. best christmas gift ever

so ends xmas at the mom’s family. bedtime and all that. it had started to snow that night, and i was rudely woken up in the morning by someone shoveling outside. the continuous scrape scrape of a shovel on the cement. so i got up expecting 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground. THE PAVEMENT DIDNT EVEN HAVE SNOW ON IT. WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY SHOVELING?!?!?!?!?

xmas at the dad’s family on thursday was and always is, rather uneventful. i don’t get any presents, and my 2 cousins and the 2 2nd cousins, get tons and tons and tons. whatever.

a few last gems. we go back to the grandparents house after xmas #2, and my gma is talking about our cousin gary. “Gary has a lovely, if you can call it lovely, trailer.” ROFL she also let us know that gpa tells her that if he had life to live over again, he’d do alot of things different in their marriage. gma replies that she would never marry him if she had to do it over again, and would probably become a teacher. LOL. she continued talking about how she hated being married, esp to my gpa, and blahblahblah. she told us if she knew about all the things he did as a teen, she’d never have married him. and from this we got a new story. about a fox. apparently when my gpa was still a juvenile deliquent, him and his buddies were driving around and saw a fox tied up to a tree. so my grandpa stole the fox and put it in the car and drove it back to his house. of course they didn’t know what to do with the fox at that point, and no one wanted it, so my grandpa tied the fox up to a tree in his backyard. his mother saw it and said to get rid of it, so i guess he just untied it and let it go. and the fox somehow made it up to the altar in some neighborhood church. the fox incident actually made the news paper – an article my grandma had read, about how a man was missing a fox, and how he found the fox because it walked right into the church and up to the altar. she had no idea it was my gpa who had stolen the fox.

michigan is sad. they’re not long for the world anymore. my gma looks like a corpse. she was laying on the couch sleeping with her hands folded on her stomach, and mouth hanging open, and she looked like a skeleton in a coffin. not happy. but as my mom put it, even tho my gpa won’t live much longer, it’s still so hard to be nice to him.

the shirt i wore on thursday dyed my skin purple. the purple won’t come off. we waited for 3 hours to cross the lewiston queenston bridge back into the US. it was our only wait out of all 4 border crossings.

who bought me a red chinese umbrella? because i now have one. it came in the mail. and i don’t know who it’s from. all i know is i didn’t buy it. lol. it’s rad. maybe tony got it for me, tho i don’t think he knew i wanted one. got carolyn’s xmas gift – the ziggy stardust movie – rad. em sent me the goodies she comandeered while interning at interscope records – 2 u2 photos, a trent photo, and jordan knight photo. hehe. i haven’t gotten any email or phone calls from leighanne, so i’m assuming she hasn’t met trent reznor on the streets of new orleans yet. still have to get together with adr and danielle for xmas, and mail eric’s gift to him since he’s never home. i don’t think i have his address tho. i’m not sure if i mailed him an xmas card or not lol. whatever. then i have tony and brian’s gifts here for whever i see them.