A Christmas Adventure

Here's another old email about a trip to my in-laws, circa Christmas 2008.  Enjoy!

OMG, it wasn’t graphic at all. WEIRD. It was calm and normal. Of course, my eyes were all blood shot and my skin bothered me from the disgusting smoke, but it wasn’t uncomfortable and awkward. We got there, they kept trying to feed us food and drinks, but we just said no, we were not interested.

Then, we had to watch home movies of OtherSister and the Hubs as babies – about 1 hours worth of converted 8 mm movies – from 1971 -1975. WHAT FUN. There was no sound on 8mm tapes then – Hubs' parents just got the home movies converted to DVD, so we had to watch – we were also lucky enough to get our own copy to keep, forever. JOY. So we watched that. Then his mother said something along the lines of how OtherSister didn’t walk until she was 14-16 months old – as in, didn’t even really try to walk, where as the Hubs was walking at around 9 months. Also interesting.

So, after the joyous movie fun, we had to open gifts. We opened presents, and I gave FIL a blue puffy vest. As he was opening it, I realized that he was wearing a blue puffy vest. I apologized profusely, and was a bit embarrassed, etc. etc. So we go on opening gifts. Now, I made jackpot with these people. I received far more gifts than the Hubs, which was weird – I told him later that they must be trying to “buy” my affections, since I am clearly the wench that never lets him visit. Anyway. I was busy being so embarrassed about giving the gift FIL already had, I proceed to open no fewer than three, yes, three, white puffy vests from the in-laws. Seriously. Two of them were packaged in the same box. I embarrassment about giving someone something they already own was soon subsided. Drew got several plaid flannel shirts, circa 1991, and I got some other random items that will soon be returned (thank goodness I got the gift receipts, and the stores of choice this year were Land’s End – even if it is Sears, and Eddie Bauer – so all is not lost). Lastly, I received a lovely pair of white lacy undies: 

WEIRD. They were in a box with another Eddie Bauer sleep-tee, and there is no tag on them or anything. They are new too. I opened the box right when everyone else was opening something else, and I kind of picked them up and didn’t take them out or anything, I was far too embarrassed.  More like mortified.  As we were leaving, in the car, I showed the Hubs, and he about drove off the road. Can you blame him? Poor guy was completely and totally ashamed. And he also said it was a good thing that I didn’t display them. He also said, oh, they were probably for his sister. Now, I am no master of physics or anything – and I know those were some biiiiig panties (probably you and me both can get in them) – but the fact that SIL could get into those is a stretch of the imagination, and all of science’s rules.

We were there for exactly three hours, got out of there at midnight. We didn’t get there until 9 because we had a work dinner for the Hubs' work – which was another small disaster – they scheduled the dinner for 7, we got there right at 7, after leaving Richmond at 4:30. We get to the restaurant, like four people are there (from the Alexandria office, so we don’t know anyone) Sit, wait, sit wait, random chit chat with other people, and finally at 8:30 his bosses show up (like rock stars, since you have a crowd of starving people sitting around) Then they decide to serve the food, and we just left, because come on, that’s ridiculous. So anyway, we left the dinner at around 8:30 to get over in time to hang out at Crazytown. We left and stopped at an IHOP for a much deserved delicious pancake dinner. And then came home. I am the worst wife ever, because The Hubs was exhausted, and I was like, OH, I’ll stay awake and talk to you! Except, I fell asleep about fifteen minutes into the drive, whoops!

Anyway, that’s my story. My theory is that they behave once we threaten to take away our presence…I am filing that information away for later usage…