Monday morning I headed to my parents’ with a carload of gifts and Felix. It was raining and in my haste to load my car (we’re talking 10 trips up and down my tiny twisting staircase and across the parking lot, which was one giant ankle-deep puddle), I had shoved my bottle of water underneath some other stuff and out of reach from the driver’s seat. So I stopped off at a gas station in Lakeland to park under the pavilion and retrieve the water. I nearly killed myself when my brain farted and I forgot to put the car in park before hopping out.
Hee.
Luckily I only had half my body out when the car kept rolling. My head was all, “What the hell is wrong with my car?” but luckily the other half of my body knew what to do — hit the brake, you moron — and I put the car in park and tried to ignore the nearby children inside SUVs, laughing at me.
As far as I could tell, I didn’t give anyone anything they already had (something I had trouble with year before last) and everyone seemed to like what I’d gotten or what I’d made. I spent Christmas day drinking French wine and getting increasingly sloshy, so that by the time I had to open birthday gifts, I was shiny and incoherent and slurring thank-yous to my no doubt chuckling relatives.
That evening began the board-game frenzy. My youngest cousin is totally into board- game marathons, and we obliged, but by 10 the wine and the turkey had gotten to my eyelids. I went to bed and played with my new camera (it takes awesome video, so here I come, YouTube!) and slept for 10 hours.
The day after Christmas, I laid around and watched movies with my mom. We ate chips and crackers and giant balls of cheese rolled in almonds. (I’m back to being a conscientious eater starting today, I hope.) I drove out to Phil’s mom’s house and visited them for a while. We went to the Selmer Wal-Mart and marveled at how we were able to walk inside, get exactly what we needed, check out, and get back in the car in less than ten minutes. Small towns aren’t all bad.
Yesterday my parents put me on IT duty. I cleaned up their computer’s desktop and uninstalled a couple of programs they weren’t using. I accidentally ruined a 2 gig flash card that I had taken a whole bunch of photos on using my dad’s awesome new camera. I’m still not sure what I did, but all the photos were lost (and some of them were good photos I was proud of). So that sucked. Those things aren’t cheap. My youngest nephew took me fishing that afternoon. He caught a pretty decent-looking fish. I took some pictures of him with it, and then we both struggled to get the hook out so we could throw it back. We ended up walking back up to the house to show off the catch, thinking the poor thing had died during the long walk home. My brother got the hook out with pliers, and my dad freaked out and, wanting the fish to live, threw it in a bucket of water and drove it back down to the pond on the four-wheeler. He said as soon as he released it, it shot off into the murky water.
Last night I met Phil in Henderson, and we followed one another back to Memphis. My apartment is a wreck; it’s full of my new stuff, including my new desk that I assembled last night by myself and — so far — has not collapsed. I got so much cool stuff this year I can’t even believe it. There’s not enough time to look at it all before I go to work!
A great problem to have, in my estimation.