Christmas Traditions

Christmas has the stereotypical traditions of opening presents Christmas morning. Spending time with the family, decorating and all that jolly TV Christmas bullshit. With my family our traditions were more along the lines of a bad Christmas comedy, but instead of a myriad of issues for the entirety of the break, there were usually 1 or 2 per winter. Or things weren't really issues, but different from the American Norm. for Christmas.

Christmas 2006: We decided to stay in Reston because our mother didn't want to make the long distance ride from VA to NY and back so we stayed down there and the family came to the house instead. This was also our last Christmas with mom.

Christmas 2005: We decide to open our presents late on Christmas Eve then drive up to New York mad early on the 25th to celebrate Christmas a second time with the NY relatives.

Christmas 2001: This is the Christmas before my Grandfather died. It was either over Christmas or Thanksgiving break he fell ill, so we kind of packed up late so we could drive up here to see him for the holiday. The traffic was hell, it took up something like 14 hours to get here. We stopped once because I had to use the bathroom and the winter iced over so much we couldn't just chip it off, we had to wait for the window to melt enough before we left the rest stop.

On other Christmas trips me and Dor would be packed into the back of the Buick with presents for the three of us, and for the family all around us. We'd get up here stiff legged from having no space to move for the entirety of the 4 hour drive.

This has all been just a really elaborate segue for Christmas 2007: The Trip.

So, we're moving along fine enough, but once we hit the Jersey Turnpike there was construction going on on one of the overpasses so we have to take a detour. This shit happened at about 5 this morning, I was pissed because the sucky road woke me up. Any who, we get off of 95 somewhere round the whereabouts of some road on Kings Street or something, I can't quite remember that one, I kind of went back to sleep on the first thirty minutes that we weren't where we wanted to be. When I woke up we were in the middle of possibly Trenton, NJ as we kept seeing signs for or about Trenton. When I realized we were in Jersey out of boredom I looked around for the Absolute Fencing Gear store. It was 5.30 and I hadn't quite fallen back to sleep yet. I'm not quite sure which road we were on, but we eventually pass a sign that says 'Princeton'. This amused me because of what Glenn said about not wanted to drive to Jersey. I laughed at Glenn in my head for a moment as we continued on not I-95. We eventually got to US1, I don't know what US1 is, but we were on that bitch for a long time. We eventually crossed a bridge that lead us to Newark and from there we got into the Bronx safely. I ended up going back to sleep until we stopped somewhere up here and the cold coming into the car woke me up.

So, Christmas 2007 hasn't even quite started and we've ha one interesting trip.

Maybe this type of story is what Glenn was talking about when he said I have the best stories about my brothers. I think his stories are more interesting than mine, but I also know all my stories back to front, and front to back. Well, let's see where break takes us this time. Last time I saw the Empire State Building, this time I got a mini-half-assed tour of Jersey. We'll just see.

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I actually just remembered the best/worst part of our Christmas Tradition. My Mom and Aunt Cheryl staying up all night trying to finish wrapping our gifts. We would always have to wait until they woke up after they stayed up until like...3, 4, 5 am. It was always funny, but annoying, but it happens damn near every year. For as long as I can remember they've been doing this shit, and my Aunt just said how she was going to have everything wrapped early today, and failed so she's going to be up half the night wrapping gifts for people.

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Adios for now
:salute and bow:
Jasmine P.