a long one to catch up

Boy oh boy, it seems that vacations are particularly tough on the Green Apples. They seem to lull our brains to sleep with lack of work, mountains of food, geysers of booze, and plenty of contagious laziness. Sorry for the delay. Here’s a recap of our holiday merriment:

Wednesday, December 24th
I wasn’t too pumped about flying home on Christmas Eve. Then I watched the news. The night before, O’Hare had canceled 500 flights before completely shutting down the airport until 7 a.m. Our flight was scheduled to leave less than two hours later. Sure, we were still delayed a couple hours, but I guess they canceled another huge number of flights soon after we took off, so we squeezed through a tiny little travel window right before the lousy weather slammed it shut. It’s a good thing Crissy has so much compassion for the homeless...it gave us just enough good Karma to get us home for the Holidays.

We spent early Christmas Eve, as we always do, at my Uncle Artie’s. The highlight of the party every year is the adult grab bag competition, where the best (worst) $20 gift wins. I brought a crappily-wrapped, fake Rolex from Canal Street that I was sure would bring me grab-bag glory. Crissy brought some canary-yellow ceramic wear from TJ Maxx. Both were blown out of the water by an ugly, wooden Egyptian bust and a gift certificate to a department store brought by my Mom’s sister, Gloria. Lame.

Later that night, we returned home to my parents’ house for our own gift giving ceremony, which consists of a not-so-secret Santa (“I dunno, just get me an iPod”) and the far more popular and highly competitive grab bag competition. The rules are the following:

1. $15 dollar gift, PROOF OF PURCHASE REQUIRED
2. $20 dollar entry fee
3. Most ridiculous/stupidest $15 gift wins the pot, based on a secret ballot.

Seeing as how this was late in the night, and we were all in a wine-induced frenzy, the screaming went on for hours, finally ending a tie between Crissy’s obsessive compulsive action figure (with hypo-allergenic moist towelette), and Heather’s Say-a-Blessing Jewish Talking Keychain. I thought my Yodeling Pickle got robbed.

Thursday, December 25th
We woke up Christmas morning and headed down to Indiana for lunch at Crissy’s dad’s house, where we ate until we were crying tears of Nonna’s world famous mostaccioli, and we lay splay-legged on the couch in front of the Yule log roasting on the 60-inch flatscreen. Somehow we managed to shuffle out to the driveway a few hours later, ram our lard into the car, axles groaning under the weight as we shifted in our seats, and began the slow drive back to my parents.

Luckily, we arrived back at my parents just in time for dinner. After eating, we changed into bed sheets and watched Man on Wire (go rent this now), which was a little hard to hear, what with all the meat and whipped potatoes pouring out of our ears.

Friday, December 26th
We decided to get up a little early to do breakfast with my brother, who generously offered to make us chilaquiles at his house, before we all headed to the mall for a little gift exchanging/shopping. Our patience for the mall wore off soon after pulling into the parking lot, when I shook my fist at an 80-year old woman pulling into the handicapped spot too slowly.

From there we headed out to Crissy’s mom’s place, where we, uh…let’s see…what did we do? Oh yeah, ate food. Also, I wrestled the Guitar Hero away from Crissy’s nine-year old niece, Grace, and played until sweat beads formed on my upper lip. “Hang on, let me see if I can do medium. Won’t that be fun for you, Grace? Watching me do medium?” When Grace tore the wrapping off Rock Band as a Christmas gift, my eyes rolled back into my head.

That night we drove into the city to hang out with Christine and Alex for the night, who’s silver, rotating Christmas tree was so shiny and technotronic I thought Crissy might have a seizure. I don’t remember much else from that night thanks to the diabetic shock.

Saturday, December 27th
Unfortunately, Christine was leaving for Florida that afternoon, so we said our goodbyes, and drove to…Portillo’s? Wow. We ate hot dogs and cheesefries? I kinda wanna barf just typing that.

That night, Crissy and I checked out The Curious case of Forest Gump. I mean, the Gumpy case of Benjamin Button. Whatever. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t great. It was…gumpy. Is that an adjective? Can it be one now?

Sunday, December 28th
Sunday was pretty low key. Crissy took my dad’s car downtown (it’s official, she’s in the family) for dinner with the girls, and I hung out with my brother and a buddy in a cheesy Glenview sports bar called “Touchdowns!” or “Third Base!” or “He Shoots, He Scores!” or something like that. The wings were unexpectedly bad, but the company was great.

Whew. That pretty much wraps it up. I know we owe a New Year’s Eve post, too. Not to worry, loyal readers. It’s coming.

And we’ll be better about the posting in the future. We sort of definitely promise.