this year was fantastic. house full of people. FULL. let's see:
me
my moms
granny
brother
neice
uncle ronald
uncle ernest
aunt denise
cousin libra
libra's husband darryl
cousin shawn
shawn's wife rose
cousin angelo
angelo's wife whose name i cant remember
six of their seven girls
uncle alan
uncle alan's girlfriend whose name i cant remember
aunt reda
aunt pauline
white uncle chuck
cousin chris
cousin murrel
cousin edna
22 people.
it felt soooo so so good to be surrounded with them all man. i loved it. everyone was in good moods and high, pleasant spirits, all glad to see each other. my uncle ronald looked awfully sad all day, though, that kinda made me sad a lil bit; my mama said he was sad because he and his common law live-in wifey are splittin up. she's cheatin on him, the dirty brawd. i feel bad for him, but im not really too phased about them breakin up cause technically, they're distant cousins and it creeps me out.
long story, dont ask, moving on.
my brother has found a new way to annoy me. it's pretty twisted actually, and i cant believe that people let him get away with doing it all. damn. day.--
he's started being nice to me.
wtf?
that shit creeps me out. i mean just yesterday, when he, my neice, any myself went shoppin, things were normal. he'd insult me, i'd insult him, he'd insult me again and i'd hit him, etc. good livin, u know. but in the middle of the day yesterday, he hugged me and thanked me for something.
?
then he told some random sales guy what a good sister i've been to him and how he's lucky to have me.
??
then he said he was gonna go to the missing person's station where you go to have people in the mall/store paged and he said he was gonna pay somebody to announce to everyone that he loves his sister very, very much.
*record scratch*
aight. i see what's goin on here.
he thinks he's slick. kill me with kindness, that's what he's tryin to do. literally. and it's working.
and everybody thought i was crazy! we were in the kitchen earlier today gettin ready to fix our plates (MAN the FOOD!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOO) and he starts like, offering to do shit for me--get me somethin to drink, fix my plate.. then he gave me a bear hug and i just couldnt take it. i screamed for my mama.
'MAMAAAAAAAAA!!!'
'what??!'
'tell travis to leave me alone!!'
'what's he doin?'
'he's bein nice to me!!'
'travis, stop being nice to your sister!!'
but did he listen?
noooooooooooo.
so i decide to fight fire with fire. i smiled at him. said please and thank you, gave him random hugs. i think i mighta even kissed him.
then i started sweating and feeling dizzy and i had to quit.
anyway. a recap of the day:
i've still got this little cold or whatever. last night when i finished all the wrapping at around 12:30, 1 this morning, it felt like my sinuses were dancing around a bonfire inside my head. i felt like shit on a stick; i had the worst headache ive had in quite sometime. and i was sooooooo tired. too tired even to go get something for my headache. i figured i could sleep it off, or at the very least sleep hard enough to ignore it. it woke me up at around 7. i got up and took something. bout two hours later, my neices came upstairs and woke me up, all decked out in their new christmas duds. they were so cute.
that's when i noticed something. im changing. growin up and maturing i guess. this is the first christmas that someone had to wake ME up to open presents. im usually the first one up all the time, but it's getting way easier for me to sleep later and later on christmas morning. i guess that makes sense--as far as the gifts and anticipation of christmas, that's for the kids. my jollies come from seeing my family and eating together and all that jazz. i could feel it slipping away a few years ago. now im more for lettin go and lettin the babies have all of that sort of fun.
lettin go.
that's my newest project lately.
my life for the next few weeks or months or whatever will be an exercise in letting go.
long story. i'll write about it here one day.
so anyway. the girls came and woke me up, then the three of us went downstairs and tried to wake travis up and failed. by the time we gave up, the girls' stepdad had brought the baby over so she could open the presents she had at our place. she was a terror. christmas is always hard for kids at her age (she's two); once their presents are gone, they wanna open everyone else's, and when they can't, they lay on the floor and throw fits about it. and if they're in my house, they get yelled at or spanked for it and then they're just not happy at all. she didn't get a spanking though; once her sisters had finished with their gifts and no one else was opening presents, she was alright.
so travis finally gets up and the girls get to it. they all got pretty much what they wanted, which wasn't a lot; they got only five things a piece from my mama this year; travis got his daughter some extra stuff cause he's her daddy and that's what daddies do (i guess). andrea got art supplies and a bratz game for her gamecube and some other stuff; tiara got mostly clothes. then travis and my mommy and i opened our stuff.
we pretty much racked up. lol
my mother always outdoes herself. im sure she doesn't like, mortgage the house to buy us the things she buys us; she's a smart shopper and never pays full price for anything unless it's a super fabulous deal. but even with that in mind, i still feel really bad when she spends lots of money on things for us. it's kind of hard to explain why. or maybe it's not. i just don't want her breaking her back to buy us big fancy things that we don't need or ask for and can very much do without. but, she does these things because she loves us and she feels like we're worth it and we deserve it. that's what my brother told me today when i was talking to him about it, and he's right. i need to learn to be more receptive. i dont want it to look like im not greatful for her gifts, cause lord knows i am. i just know how tight money is for me, and now that im on my own paying my own way and whatnot, i know how hard it is to make sure you've got money for everything. she's got bills she could have paid with that money, you know? she could have bought something really spectacular for herself, cause she deserves it probably more than we deserve any of the stuff she got us. well that's not true--i dont think we're UNdeserving, cause we ARE good kids; but im sure she needs a pick-me-up more than we do. so when she buys us fabulous things, it's hard for me not to think about it like that, but i'm trying to be better about that. last year she was gonna get me a laptop for christmas, but i raised such a stink about her spending so much money on me, she took it back. lol
i didnt know what she had for me this year, but i knew they she'd bought travis a new computer, and i was mindful of all the help she's been giving me since i moved up to philly, so i wanted to get her something pretty neat for christmas, but i just didn't have the money. i'd bought her Hondo on DVD because she's been bugging everyone to get it for her for five years (this was the first year it's been released on DVD), and i talked to travis about goin half with me on a watch for her (she lost or broke her last one and said she really needed it). so, we got the watch, but while we were out yesterday i saw this personal massager that we saw in another store. she really liked it, and she's got some back and arm problems, so i thought it'd be great to get her. i finally convinced travis to go in on it with me. she loved it. im glad we got her a little somethin extra.
i was especially glad we got it after i saw what she got me.
NIGGA!
video ipod!
!!!!!
but wouldn't you know it. i get an ipod just three days after my effing hard drive crashes and i stand in danger of losing all my music.
*sigh*
the good news about that is that i just happened to have put a lot of the stuff i would have wanted to save on CDs so that i could put it on travis' new computer. so, i have backups for the stuff i may potentially lose. that's excellent--somebody was lookin out for me somewhere.
so after that, my neice, mother and i cleaned up the house, and once the house was clean, she and i commenced phone carolling. we sounded terrible. thankfully most of the ppl we called didnt answer their phones, lol. my granny was at church from like 5 in the mornin til 2 this afternoon. around the time she went to church, my mother began cooking. man o man what a fucking feast. turkey, dressing, green beans, honey glazed ham, four (4) different kinds of potatoes (mashed, au gratain, sweet, and boiled w/ the grean beans), skillet fried corn, bbq pork loin, gravy, hot yeast rolls, broccoli casserole, orange salad, two other desert salads that my granny made, pecan pie, cherry pie, jam cake, pineapple cheesecake
AND ALL OF IT IS GONE.
swear.
all of it except the desserts and the broccoli casserole. and the broccoli casserole is only here because i hid it from everybody. travis took a shitload of it home with him and im real mad about that; and towards the end of the night, he brought his friend terrance over to get a plate. terrance was a childhood friend of his who fell upon some hard times and made some bad decisions growing up. he's been clean for awhile now, though, and at present i think he's living in a shelter. so i wasn't too mad about giving him the last of our food. it made me feel pretty good.
travis' hungry ass coulda eased up a little though. hungry ass.
for the rest of the day, family was in and out, eating and drinking, laughing and hugging and dancing and giving gifts and it was so wonderful. i was sad to see the night end.
this is what i needed. i needed my family around me to remind me of home again, to tell me they're still proud of me even after i tell them that ive withdrawn from school, giving me ideas for things to write about, encouraging me. it was awesome. tiara followed me around like a lil shadow all day and i didn't even get irritated. i really enjoyed spending time with her today; somehow i feel like we've grown closer, and im excited about that. i want her to stay close to me as she grows older, somebody to confide in and work through life with and all that stuff. i didnt really have that growing up for lots of reasons, mostly because i was too scared to open up to anyone. but she's been here with me every day since i flew in; she comes over early in the morning, around 7/7:30, and waits for me to wake up and come stumblin down stairs, and then we just play around and talk and stuff. it's awesome. i was so excited and ecstatic that she spent christmas day with us this year. i dont know if ive written much about her mother trying to impose her perfect little family on her children to the extend that her children's REAL family, her blood relatives, are often forced to take a back seat to the family she's married in to; last thanksgiving, her mother essentially lied and manipulated those girls into going to her husband's family with her instead of going to their father's families, like they wanted to. this year tiara told me that she's gonna spend christmas day with us, no matter what her mother says. she stood up for herself and, as she promised, she was here all day. i was proud of her for that. looks like i aint the only one changing.
she said she was gonna come down here tomorrow morning, too, but a little bit after she went home, she called and told me she was going to lexington to spend the week with her stepdad's family instead. i wasnt even mad. see? its not that i dont want her spending time with them. i just want us to have our rightful time with her too. that's it. i hope she has fun.
my daddy was supposed to come see me today. he didn't. oh well.
i'll probably see him tomorrow.
slowly but surely, people started filing out. my brother was the last to leave, and i was sad to see him go--he has to work tomorrow, so he had to get back home tonight. oh, my next door neighbor, who i grew up with, brought his baby over to see us. i cannot believe he has a baby. that's absolutely insane. oh, but she's soooooooooooo so pretty. doesn't look a bit like him. i took a picture of her; maybe i'll post it here one day (i probably wont tho).
i got some great gifts. i got that sexy ass ipod, two sweaters, two pairs of tennis shoes a la travis (i needed them SO BAD. it sucks bein too broke to buy shoes), a joggin suit, a sweatsuit, some way too tight jeans that i need to take back (i might keep them anyway tho... holla!) a pretty gold scarf and some body butter from aunt pauline, a pair of fuzzy socks, two pairs of penguin socks, a gift card to target, and some of those old navy pajama bottoms from aunt reda (i love these!! oddly enough, i think i like them because of those wack ass commercials. go fig). i love everything i got.
but i love the people who gave them to me even more.
i wanna see everyone else again before i leave. me and reda are supposed to go to a drag show on wednesday. im excited! lol
ive been thinkin a lot about religion and christmas lately. im not a religious person and i dont hold christmas as a religious holiday. for me, christmas is about family and friends and fun and bonding and thankfulness. but i recognize that lots of people, including lots in my family, use this day to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. ive been thinking about the fact that christmas really has nothing to do with the birth of Christ. it's on the wrong day, a lot of the trappings involved (trees, wreaths, etc) are taken from pagan tradition, etc. but i mean, there are lots of people who dont know that, for whatever reason. i know it was never brought up in church when i was going. i really dont know why that is. but i dont hold it against anyone for not knowing that. i dont snort and turn my nose up at them for it or think their faith weak or anything like that. they're not going 'yeah, i know this is inaccurate but im gonna do it anyway cause i like presents and lights.' i mean, some of them may be saying that, sure. but i'd wager that the number of people thinking that way is way smaller than the people who just go along doing what they've grown up doing as they celebrated the birth of their personal savior. and let's think about that real quick. doesnt celebrating/observing the birth of such a personality make sense? isnt that okay? so okay, it's on the wrong day. but ive seen some of the believers worship and celebrate; ive seen the devotion and the gratitutde and all that, and its been genuine. i dont think that's a bad thing, no matter what day it's bein done on.
when we were decorating the tree, i came across an ornament made of a mirrored disc imprinted with a picture of a baby in a manger above the words "JESUS: GOD'S GREATEST GIFT." i wasn't going to put it on the tree because this day isnt a religious one to me. but then i thought about my granny and my aunts and uncles who truly believe that, as u may have seen on buttons and those tshirts they sell in hair stores, "Jesus is the Reason for the Season."
i took it back out of the box hung it on the edge of a limb directly in the center of the tree for them to see.
merry christmas, yall. happy holidays too.
if u're reading this, i probably love you.
2 comments
