2002-12-27 - 12:12 a.m.

Olive Boat

'Tis the day after Christmas and it is so quiet and calm here now.  I got everything done that I wanted to do.  I waited longer than I normally do to shop for presents.  But I did manage it this year and good things always turn up.  I had asked off from work for this entire week but my boss didn't think it would be a good idea for too many people to be away from the office. I had Monday and Tuesday off, and our company was closed on Christmas Day.

So last Saturday I started shopping.  I wanted to get those really nice towels for my mother and my friend Dorothy.  I bought some for myself some months ago and they are so nice. These towels are extremely soft and they really dry me off after a shower.  I know my mother would never get anything this nice for herself, and the same for Dorothy.  But they both like really nice stuff like that.

On Friday night I went over to Dorothy's house after work so her daughter and I could surprise her with a belated birthday dinner.  Her son, Trevor, would be there too, having driven over for the evening from College Town.  When I got there she was really out of it. Her father had been taken to the hospital and she was heading that way. Her father has been sick for a long time and every day for the past 10 years they have wondered if he was going to make it.  So she headed off to the hospital to sit with her mother and sister while the doctors helped her father.  He turned out all right and was due to be released after a few days.

Blythe and Trevor were suddenly left with nothing to do so we went out to dinner anyway.  Trevor's ex girlfriend Ikuko came along.  She is a beautiful Japanese girl, probably mid 20's and very shy.  Trevor tends to dominate any conversation so I battled with him the whole night to bring the conversation back to subjects that we could all talk about.  I would ask Ikuko a question and she would immediately try to turn the conversation away from herself.  I did not let her.  It was sort of fun. She was good at redirecting the conversation away from herself, but I am the master and bringing it back around again.  It was like a merry-go-round.

We had a good time. They are good kids and both of them can go on and on about any subject at all.  It was pretty lively and se sat and talked for several hours.

So, on Saturday I went out looking for stuff.  On Sunday I went out again, staying away from shopping malls.  On Sunday night I went over to Dorothy's to give her and Blythe their presents. Blythe is spending Christmas in New Hampshire with her father so I had to catch her before the left town.  It was late when I got over to their place and we were all tired. But we sat up and talked for a while anyway.  Dorothy gave me a Roy Rogers & Trigger vintage reproduction wind up tin toy.  It is pretty cool. She loves these mechanical toys and she gave me several last year, too.  I made sure to make a big deal about it because she was so down in the dumps about her dad and having no money.  She really does have very good taste and she likes to buy quality stuff.  Blythe gave me a little present.  It is called Joe Bender and it is hard to explain what it is so I will stop there.

On Monday I had lunch with Joleen.  I have not seen her in several weeks.  It seems like a very long time.  I invited her and she bought me lunch. That was a pretty good deal.  I picked her up at work and she was immediately agitated by the rubbernecking women she works with.  They literally watched her leave the building and get in my truck and drive away, wondering and guessing who I was and what we were up to. You think that is a joke, but it is real.  Kind of strange, really. It would never dawn on me to snoop like that on a coworker. But "the ladies" have a system and they grind everything up in it.

I had a nice lunch with Joleen.  I gave her a copy of Bill Maher's new book, You Ride With Osama Bin Laden When You Ride Alone.  I saw it a few months ago in the bookstore and thought she might like it.  But there was nothing really special about it, so I acquired an autographed copy.  She has a very large collection of books and a nice selection of them are autographed.

I also wanted Joleen to seem my new truck.  She said all the right things and was very complimentary of it.  I know that she appreciates vehicles that use less fuel and take up less space than my giant truck.  So her kind words were kinder still.

I had yet to get a license plate for my Dodge, so I went over to the Tag office to pick one up. I figured there would not be a lot of people there, but that is what everyone else figured, too. I stood in line for about 30 minutes.  Since I was so close to the expiration of my old tag I went ahead and paid the tax and now I am good until February 2004.

I went to a few more stores. I bought a computer desk for my sister.  I bought a safe for my brother.  My brother is the easiest one to buy for. Usually all I have to do is calm down for a minute and just think about him. Then I hear his voice in my head saying "I've always wanted a …" and then it comes to me.  Or I picture in my head some specific store and some specific area of a store.  I just go there and look around and, boom, there it is.

I don't have a lot of contact with my brother.  He has never really understood me and does not know what the hell I am all about.  I'm sure to him I am a very odd person.  He never went to college. In fact, he dropped out of high school and worked in textile mills, and later in timber.  He is pretty smart and figures things out and is technically proficient in whatever he puts his mind to. But he has a limited range of interests.  Those interests are, drinking, smoking, hunting, fishing, gambling, and barbecue.  Most of his interests are driven by some sort of addiction.  Anything out of that range is, to him, pure torture.

So I started thinking what would I get him.  It popped into my mind that he would like a safe.  You know, like a big metal box with a combination lock that he can put things into.  He is a Scorpio and I thought that would be right up his alley.  It is secretive and protected.  I was right. When I gave it to him he looked at me with his hazy, red eyes and said, "How the hell do you do it?  You always know exactly what to buy. I've been wanting one of these for a long time."  And he meant it. His wife said they had been talking about it, they have a lot of irreplaceable papers and deeds, plus there is the ammo and baseball cards.

Baseball cards?  I quizzed him on that.  I had no idea he had any baseball cards.

On Monday evening I called my mother and told her I still had not come up with any presents for my niece and nephew.  I told her about this one thing I saw at the gift shop for Jennifer but didn't know if she would like it.  It is part of the "cow collection" that Jennifer loved so much.  My mother said my niece would love it and she would like one too.  Ha ha. Just kidding.

Right.  I went back to the store and got one for each of them.  I always wind up giving my mother more than I give anyone else.   I can't help it.  I just keep seeing more and more stuff that I know she would like.  For a long, long time now I have always given her a Santa for Christmas.  Sometimes it is an ornament, sometimes it is art of some kind, once there was a serving plate with Santa on it.  And there was the Coca-Cola Santa they reproduced about 10 years ago.  Now she has a huge collection of them that she left at my father's house when she left him.  This year I gave her a very small Santa I found at Restoration Hardware.  It is about two inches tall.  It was pretty cool.  She liked it.

My aunt, her sister with whom she lives, was giving my mother an X-box video game system.  Although my mother is a 69 year old white haired lady she loves her videogames.  She has always liked new technology.  So I got my mother a videogame for her new X-box. And a dvd of Ice Age, a movie she had not seen, but I enjoyed it a lot and I know she will, too.  And I gave her a book.  One of found in the Christian gift store.

I got the cow collectable for my niece and a copy of Lilo and Stitch that she wanted. My niece will be 20 in February, but she wanted the film and so I got it for her.  I also got her a copy of Amelie.  When I gave it to her I asked if she had seen it before.  She said no and wanted to know what it was about.  I told her what Joleen told me about it before I saw it for the first time.  I told her that it is the kind of movie that after you see it you just feel good about everything.

Since I could not think of very good gifts for my niece and nephew I decided to mix up stuff they asked for and stuff they should be exposed to.  I know Jennifer will love Amelie. And maybe she will show it to some of her friends and they will all be a little better for it.

For my nephew I bought him a copy of Minority Report, that awful Tom Cruise movie.  It was created for mass consumption and there is action and shooting. So I am sure he will enjoy it at least once.  And I bought him a copy of Momento.  He has not seen it and was not familiar with it, but I am sure it will make some sort of impression on him.

I worry about my nephew, Jason. He has inherited a lot of my brother's addictive nature.  He has a lot going on inside of him, stuff I can only guess about, but he turned to drugs and alcohol at an early age. Children really do copy the behavior that is modeled for them.  He saw my brother do it, my brother saw my father do it, my father saw his father do it… and on and on.  There is a percentage of my family that falls right into the alcoholic pattern.

My poor nephew. What chance did he have?  He lives in another state and I don't have much contact with him. Not enough to influence him in a positive way.  I did have a good conversation with him though.  He has dropped out of high school and has been working in a restaurant.  He likes cooking and says he wants to go to culinary school and become a chef.

I can't tell if he really means it or if he was just bullshitting me so I would pat him on the back and say, "good boy."  I had no intention of lecturing him.  I don't take Christmas, or Thanksgiving or birthdays and turn them into opportunities to corner the youngsters and tell them everything they are doing wrong.  Even if they are doing everything wrong.  Holidays are not the time for bitter recriminations.

It is not that I don't trust my nephew.  It is just that I am extremely familiar with the behavior and motivations of addicts.  He has a lot of shame and, would naturally, want to veer the subject away from shameful subjects.  I don't think he understands that I don't behave like other people do.  I know what works and I know what does not work.  So we had a long talk about different subjects.  We talked about food and cooking and jobs.  It was one of the first times in a long time that he was excited about, almost, animated about what he was talking about.  When he was leaving he thanked me.  I hugged him several times.  Not one of those pat on the back short hugs, either.  I grabbed him and hugged him hard.  He is over 6 feet tall and thin as a rail. He had to stoop to hug me.  But he was not embarrassed by my show of affection.  In my family we all hug everybody.  Even my father has learned how to do it without feeling awkward.

I talked to my niece about college.  She is not doing so well in classes.  I asked her lots of questions about it and I sympathize with her.  She is going through what I went through.  Only she is going through it earlier than I did.  I went for two years before I totally lost interest.  She wants to be an engineer but I don't think she is enjoying it too much. I would not be surprised if she does not change her major to education and become a teacher like her mother.

I hope she doesn't.  She would be a good teacher, but I know she wants more.  She wants to design rollercoasters.

One of the oddest gifts I gave this year was for my Aunt.  What do you give the woman who already has everything she needs?  The answer is an olive boat.  What is an olive boat?  Well, I'll tell you.  I was walking around one of those home stores with all the bedding and toasters and mirrors and whatnot, wondering what else I could get my good Aunt Linda who I love so much.  And I saw a rack of something, read the package, stopped, walked back and thought to my self, "That's it!"

The stainless steel olive boat is a long, narrow bowl, about 16 inches long and an inch or so wide.  You fill it with olives, set it on the table and people come by and help themselves to the olives.  I started laughing.  Who in the world ever heard of such a thing?  I could see my aunt's face when she opened it, looking at me with a sideways glance and saying, "ooohhkaaaaaay…."

I took it up to the register and the cute little salesgirl looked at it and started laughing.  I asked her if she was laughing because it was an olive boat. She said, no, no, no.  Not at all. Then I made several jokes about it, asked her if she had ever heard of it.  She had not.  There were no other customers in line so she kept me there talking about it.  I guess she had had a long day and needed some sort of distraction.  One of her coworkers heard us laughing and she came over to join us.  That sort of spoiled our flirty conversation and we finished up. She was a cute girl, but very young.  Maybe in high school.

On the day before Christmas I drove down to my mother and aunt's house.  There is a woman who lives with them now who wants to marry me.  My aunt helps people who are trying to get out of bad situations or relationships.  This woman has a two year old daughter and is separating herself from her drug dealing husband.  During Thanksgiving she saw me reading to her daughter and I guess she told my mother later that she wanted to marry me.  My mother said she talked to my brother on the phone and she probably wants to marry him now.

She is a nice woman.  She has been in jail for possession of narcotics.  Her husband was trying to get her to move to Texas and help him open a drug house.  That was about the time she realized she really needed to get away from him.

My aunt has taken in a lot of different people. She bought a large house just for that purpose. She does not take money for doing it. She just does it because she believes God has lead her to do it.  She is like a minister but is not ordained in any church.  And fortunately my aunt is one of those common sense, cut-the-crap type people who knows every angle people try to pull on her.  And she has had to kick several people out when they did not live up to the house rules.  She helps them in the way they need help.  Sometimes that means they live in the house and don't have to pay rent and sometimes it means they live in the house and are required to get a job.  It depends on where they are in their development.

My aunt's house was full of people. My family, my cousins, other visitors, all tromping in and out with their kids. What a racket.  We had a Christmas Eve gift exchange, which is my family's tradition, and everyone else went home to get their kids to sleep so they could perform Santa's work.

I stayed over. The next day, Christmas Day, I got up late.  My mother made us a big breakfast and I hooked up her X-Box.  Later in the afternoon my sister and I went over to my father's house.  My father's furnace broke a few weeks ago and he has not been able to get anyone out fix it. The house was covered in a thick dust.  He sat there on the couch wearing several shirts and drinking beer.   He was fairly sober when we got there. I'm sure it takes quite a lot of alcohol to get him drunk these days.

We exchanged gifts.  I bought him the old man pants he likes so much from K-Mart.  He gave my sister and me a card with money in it.  I am almost 40 years old and I still get Christmas money. My mother gave me cash. Even my brother gave me cash. But he always does.  My father and my brother value money a lot.  So it was a nice gift. They just don't have the capacity to think ahead and go out and buy a thing to give.  This is nothing new for them.  They have always been this way.  They both have a tendency toward narcissism.

My mother gave me a few shirts and the Spider-Man dvd I told my sister I did not have.  She was at a disadvantage this year because she had to work so much during the holidays.  She works for a jewelry company and has been putting in long hours for the past month or more.  She is an enterprising woman and has always worked hard.

My aunt gave me a dvd of the film The Rutles.  I have wanted this movie for a long time. I have the soundtrack on vinyl and on cd.  She and my mother picked it out for me.  When they bought it the girl at the checkout started laughing and told them how much she loved that movie and how happy it had made her that someone was buying it to give as a gift.

My sister and I have always seen our cousin Beverly on Christmas Eve.  But she has slowly gone insane over the past few years since her mother died.  We have not heard much from her lately.  We went over to her house on Christmas Day and knocked on the door but she would not answer it.  We left her presents by the front door.  I would not be surprised if her father did not find them and throw it all in the trash before my cousin sees it.  One of the reasons she is insane is because her father is the sort of man who would do something like that.

When I got home late last night I was so tired. It was so quiet compared to the din at my aunt's house.

I got up and went to work today and there was NOTHING to do.  Why the hell did we all go in? Oh, yeah. Because our boss said we had to.  Where is he now?  He quit.  He does not have to come back ever again.

Kevin, Ben and I could hardly stand it. There was nothing to do all day.  Of course there was stuff we could have done to get ahead, but we did not bother with any of that.  I told Kevin and Ben to go ahead and leave early.  I stayed till 5:30.  I had about an hour when I was busy all day long.  What a waste.  I could have spent today sleeping.

We did get to talk to the president about our new boss.  I'll have to meet the new boss before I will know for sure.  I hope he is as organized as my last boss.  If he is not then my entire department is screwed.

When I got home tonight I put together the computer desk I got for my sister. I used the cordless drill that she gave me.  I love my cordless drill.  It is one of the greatest inventions every.  It's a screwdriver, it's a drill, and it's cordless!  She even got me a pack of drill bits.  Now I am walking around the house looking for things to screw, if you know what I mean.

This weekend my friend Joel will be in town.  I got a message on my machine from Helen saying she is back. Ed will be in College Town on Sunday and I am hoping to meet up with him for New Year's Eve.  I asked Kay tonight if she wanted to go with me to College Town and hang out with Ed, she being one of the original four from my college days. But she acted like an old lady and said it would be too late and too dangerous and she didn't know and there was the college bowl game the next day.

It would be fine with me if she did not go.  I don't know where we may wind up that night, but she is kind of a drag and is not always flexible.  My buddies Mike and Ed may want to go to a party, or a bar or just hang out at Mike's place.  Anything is good for them.  But Kay is more of a "sit still" kind of woman.  She prefers it when we are all sitting still and listening to her talk.  I went with her to Mike's Christmas party last year and every time I struck up a conversation with an interesting person up came Kay to change the subject to something she wanted to talk about.

The place was full of artists and townies and photographers, people I had not seen in a while, and she wanted to tell anecdotes about Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  I just gave up after a while. Who needs to make out with a hot drunk girl anyway.  If I had ditched Kay I would never have lived it down.

So that was Christmas. The long version.  The short version would have gone something like this.

I just had Christmas and it was ok.

Jimmy
 

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