So, it seems that the world didn’t end, OR it did end and I’ve remained in the same level of hell identical to my life on earth. Which is entirely possible according to a Mormon missionary that came to my house once. Christmas was a little hectic as per usual. Though this year was cool, my best friend came to visit me from New York with her girlfriend who I’ll call Judy. I took them out to have drinks with some of my friends who were celebrating one of them becoming a Doctor (congrats G!). After six cups of vodka I started lecturing my husbands best friend on “growing up” and “getting it together,” when I tripped and fell into the gutter. Irony. Afterwards, we went dancing at a club here called Blob, which is literally a cesspool of degenerates, with a few floating students. Of course, as soon as the girls kissed the idiots went “id” and we spent the following hour protecting them from molestation from what seemed to be a group of men who have never had sex before. In the midst of all the groping I started hopping around with my teeth out and my hands above my head like a rabbit. For some reason I thought that I was offering protection because who would try to molest girls who are surrounded by a giant human bunny? Then things just got weird when one of my seven foot tall Swedish friends joined in on the bunny fun. Another swedish friend, an ivy-league educated lawyer (it’s important to know that smart people fall down a lot too), fell off of the stage when he attempted to sexy dance on the stripper pole in the corner of the dancefloor making a huge “THUD.” And this was basically our sign to exit the premises.
The next day, F, myself, the girls and Oliver, our shithead poodle, drove to Cassino for Christmas Eve. I warned the girls that F’s family is a little bananas, so of course when we arrived they were the EXACT OPPOSITE of how they’ve ever been, ever. The entire universe is out to make me look crazy. Or show that I am actually crazy. At this point I’m starting to wonder if I just imagine everything. On Christmas eve, F’s mom made a “typical” dinner of two-thousand courses of fish ranging from salmon to octopus. It took about four hours to finish, by then we were all wasted on wine. Then, my bestie got further wasted with Francesco’s dad on Grappa (an herbal liquor that everyone sips after a meal, it looks like vodka and smells like nail polish remover) that he had mixed with 100 proof pure alcohol (which you can buy in the grocery store here). They couldn’t actually communicate, so they’d just take a shot and then yell, “BOOM,” while the rest of us sipped Limoncello (a lemon liquor) and waited for one of them to pass out.
The following day on Christmas, around noon, Francesco’s family flooded the house while the girls and I hid in our rooms recovering from the hangover. Grandma, who was super stoked on my gift attacked me with very physical grandma kisses when I finally dragged myself from the bedroom. “I have a gift for you!” She gushed, then she grabbed my hand and dragged me to the living room where she pulled a cellophane wrapped and ribboned bottle of Pantene Pro-V from her purse. I hadn’t washed my hair in three days, so, Touché grandma. Even if she thinks I need to work harder on hygiene, I still want her to move into my house so I can watch Jeopardy with her all day. There was a theme this Christmas called, “Bitch, get in the fucking kitchen.” The entire family was in on it. Francesco’s sister got me some kind of couldron, his mother gave me an apron and some towels, and Francesco bought me a snuggie. They think they’re helping me get into kitchen slavery, but in reality they just gave me a “beginner witch” kit. So, thanks guys for fueling whatever I’m going to do that’s highly inappropriate. For those of you who haven’t read any of my other stuff, my husband’s mom and I haven’t gotten along so well in the past. In fact his mom mostly hated me for like the first two years, but we both seem to be trying in our own ways to buddy up-cause now she can’t get rid of me. She is the type of person who shows love with gifts, so she’s been buying me an endless supply of pink pajama sets. Although, come to think of it, the pajamas are so damn ugly it’s really possible that these are “anti-grandchildren” pajamas. She’s probably using these “gifts” to end my DNA.
I have no idea how to show love and I usually try to show I care about someone by helping them do things, like help them get into college, help them get a job, etc. So, one morning when I saw her struggling to blow dry her hair with one of those terrible round brushes I thought, “I know how to do a blow-out!” And I skipped over to her and asked if I could help. She said no and gave me this suspicious look while backing away a little bit. I took this as an intimacy issue so I forcefully insisted by wrestling the brush from her hand and snatching the blow dryer away. I started blow-drying her hair, using the round brush to nicely shape her old-lady bob, and I was happy that we were bonding. She started to relax a little and F walked by the room giving me a thumbs up. “See!” I said, “this it is a way a more fast!” In my horrible, broken, Italian. She smiled with her mouth but her eyes stayed intensely focused on me. It was right about then that I turned the industrial blow dryer a little too much at an angle and it ate her head. It made this menacing garbage disposal noise as it hacked at the two full inches of her hair lodged inside the motor. She was screaming for me to turn it off and flailing around with the dryer sucked all the way down to her scalp. This could only happen to me. “It’s okay, I think I can get it out.” I said. So I started to yank on it, which just pulled her head around, until I finally panicked. “Francesco the dryer ate your moms head! I fucking need you!” He came running in to see his mom pacing the length of the room while frantically yanking the dryer away from her head and me following her around trying to help. Twenty minutes later we decided the only thing we could do was to cut it out, so her bob now has a sort of alfalfa thing shooting from her head. I’ve retired from bonding. I think from now on I’ll just start buying her pajamas.
Pink Pajamas with new Christmas apron. Also, in real life I swear I don’t have giant, throbbing man hands. I don’t know what was going on here.
