gluttony and sloth
(a weekend thereof)
In memory of Thanksgivings past, my family actually managed to pull off a traditional dinner this year. Ya know, roast turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, brussel sprouts, apple pie, whipped cream, etc versus our strange breed of turkey experimentation the past few years. Of course, my mom bitched about it the whole time despite the fact that the kids put in most of the work on food prep. And as usual, she didn't sit down until she was sure everything was just right so we had to wait... and pick at our food... and wait... while she nit picked every little thing and kvetched about the "mess" in the kitchen. ARGH.

The more I come home, the more I realize I hate being there. It's like I'm the adoped alien daugher of an earth family. Whenever I'm around them I tense up and can't speak, I'm immobile and stupid... thus furthering their perception that I'm a blithering idiot incapable of making my own decisions. When it comes down to it, I just can't stand the stress they inspire. It's inescapeable. It permeates every pore of the house and smothers my creative and thinking brain. It makes me SCREEEEEAAAAMMMMM.

I like my mom. I like my dad. I like my sisters. Ok, there, I like my family.... just not together. Apart they're fine but together... they're too much.

Eventually we sat down to a night of gluttonous glee, already Justin's second dinner that day. Dinner was followed immediately, of course, with home made dessert-- pie and ice cream with a whopping side conversation about the meaning of flatulence. Allie, my selectively naive younger sister (by younger, I mean seventeen) actually didn't know what flatulence MEANT. She thought it sounded pretty, 'like the name of a flower." Gah, stupid girl!

In the spirit of the holidays we went up to the mountains to get our christmas tree the day after thanksgiving (also my sister Eleanor's 8th birthday). For only $10, the park service issues a permit that allows visitors to harvest one tree less than 12 feet from the mountain in certain locations. When we checked in, 250 people had already registered to get trees. It was one in the afternoon.

Dad led us up to Snoqualmie pass and off the Denny Creek exit. He was driving the minivan and Justin and I were in his mazda. For over twenty minutes we headed up one of the shittiest park-service roads I've ever driven on and into the back country. Justin and I stopped the car twice to check for flats, furious that my headstrong dad would drag us in the compact car up offroad country without thinking of the damage to Justin's shocks. We were only one of two compact cars on that mountain. There were a few other people fool enough to drive minivans up the road but ninety percent of vehicles were old bangers and SUVs.

Well, what could we do at that point? We headed up, up, up, past parking and turnoffs, past an abanoned trailer and appliances that were used for target practice. Did we stop? Noooo.... not with my dad. We headed up to the top of the mountain until it became clear we could go no farther.

Finally, we pulled off and milled around the hillside in the peaceful mountain quiet.

I lie.

In actuality, there were about twelve other cars parked at the top and as soon as we got out of the car, the quiet was shattered by some ADHD poster children who would not stop yelling "LIBBY!!!" and "LIBERTY!!!" (we guess the name of their dogs) at the top of their lungs. Their stupid parents insisted on breaking the King County burn ban and lighting a bonfire despite that it was seventy degrees out.

Ah, yes, there is a burn ban in Seattle despite the nightly cold. Because of the high pressure (hence clear days) in the Northwest lately, the air has been trapped and stagnant, low to the city. There has been no rain to clean it out. Sunsets have been spectacular and the creeping, clinging mist is erotic but the ensuing air polution has rendered the asthmatic non-functional. So until the rains come again (and I could care less) there are no fires in Seattle. It looks like the Oregon rains have returned to welcome us home to Eugene. Yay. Feel my joy.

So here we were up in the mountains with these kids screaming their lungs out and their parents completely unresponsive. I think they might have been wearing earplugs. My nerves were so frayed that I started yelling back "SHUT UUUUUPPP!" whenever one of them yelled "LIBBAYYYY!" Eventually, they stopped. About that time, some redneck assholes decided it would be fun to shoot up the trailer down below. I think they had a shotgun and a handgun... something that was way the fuck too loud and could pop off like thirty rounds in a minute.

BAN! BANG!! BANG!! BANGBANGBANG BANG!!!!

So much for a quiet afternoon. I tried yelling at them down in the valley below. But, of course, they couldn't hear. They were so close. I could see them on the mountain floor, the shine of the gun as it recoiled from the blast. I pined for a sniper rifle with a good scope, if just to take off their hands, one by one. It went on and on for forty five minutes. Sometimes there was the silence of five minutes or more between reloads. Sometimes there was a continuous barrage of blasts for minutes on end. Eventually they stopped too, but not before most of us were about to go postal. They were still there on the way down the mountain. I was tempted to throw something at them or flick them off. Or, at the very least, berate them with some stinging sarcasm (though I doubt they'd have understood). But when we passed, they just waved at me as if I, in any godforsaken way, might find them attractive. I sneered with repulsion and we drove on through the five-foot potholes, breathing the exhaust of the VW minibus in front of us.

In any case, the tree thing didn't turn out as much a disaster as it could have. We climbed up the hillside and found a tremendous Noble Fir that my family would otherwise have not been able to afford and chopped the bad boy down. Ehh, it was over twelve feet and ehh, we kind of cut it wrong... but we loved it. We ran into several bastard yuppies on the way back who were too spoiled to take any tree that wasn't a "noble" despite that they had already cut one down. There were at least three perfectly good trees abandoned by the roadside. Justin and I would have taken one but we have neither stand nor ornaments and we'll be gone most of this holiday season. (In spite of this, we're putting up lights anyway... the one thing my scroogeish holiday spirit permits!)

The tree is tremendous. It reaches the top of my family's vaulted living room ceiling. It's the biggest fucking tree we've ever had. It makes me feel four again standing at the bottom of it and looking alllllll the way up. I honestly don't think we have enough decorations. But hell, we can buy more! We never would have been able to afford this tree any other way. I kind of feel bad cutting it down....

After the tree-killing, Justin and I went to visit his family for my second dinner and his third. Glut, Glut, Glut. Another traditional soiree, this time with fifteen people easy. And pumpkin pie, a luxury my picky family deprives me of. Sigh.

On the way home, Justin and I browsed about a bit in the post-holiday frenzy but I still managed to buy nothing on International Buy Nothin Day. I'm so proud. Unfortunately, our window shopping led us into the local pet shop where we were unlucky enough to discover that one of the cockatiels was laying dead at the bottom of his cage while his distraught brother tried to wake him. He had been dead for less than half an hour.

My sisters own two parakeets (budgies) named Neo and Sir Rulean. Despite the male names, one is a female (I can't remember which). I used to have a male budgie named Athena, whom I kind of dropped on my sisters, but she died recently after being rejected by the other two birds. All things considered, the poor birds are terribly neglected. They lived too long to entertain my sisters' interest. For a while they were coddled, as all pets are, but now they're shoved into the back corner of the laundry room where they recieve the occasional tidbit and rare socialization. Though I don't want the additional responsibility, I think that I may adopt the birds, if not just to put them in a more social environment. I hope Rupert won't traumetize them too much.

These same sisters were watching two kittens for friends of theirs this weekend-- a brother and sister named Mittens and Angel. The kittens weren't much more than three months old and got into EVERYTHING the way kittens do. These two were especially malicious because they were particularly dextrous. They both had six or seven toed paws and could leap higher than I thought was kittenly possible. The male kitten, Mittens, by far the biggest hooligan, had a really creepy trait. He must have been weaned from his mother too soon because whenever he was sedate and relaxed he would seek out his sister and SUCK on the pads of her front paws like he would his mother's nipple. It was hilarious and disturbing to watch and the cat would not let go for the world, even if you smacked him. His sister just tolerated him and slept.

Justin and I decided the male should be named Commodus, after the incestuous emperor in Gladiator. Seems suiting.

These kittens were everywhere. In everything. I had them thrown on me to wake me up if I slept past eleven a.m. And sleep I did. I slept so much and was still this tired. My dreams raped my brain and spat it out again. I slept so much I dreamed I should be working out. Ugh. And I think I'm getting sick.

Nearly negating the family tradition of being sick on the holidays, Alyson didn't come down with a high fever until YESTERDAY at which point she bemoaned her fate for hours as if she was the deathliest sick thing in the world.

I'm glad to be home. It's actually more peaceful here (even with the impending homework) than it was there. Now please excuse me while I take a valium and prepare for two weeks of stress HELL.