(This is not the official video, this is the only one I could embed, and it's pretty shitty. Check out the official video here, Tim and Eric did it and it rules: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSYjbxUoOQM&feature=related)
Holy Shit.
It’s been too long. If you care about these things, I’m sorry. Regardless, I have a post for you. It goes over a few weeks worth of shit. I’ll try and leave out the crap parts.
Okay.
Week before Thanksgiving went to see Papa in Colorado. Ate good food and did a lot of hiking.
On one hike, saw a stick that was just asking to be a walking stick, so I grabbed it and over the next day fashioned it into a smooth, cloth-handled Moses cane. Check out the before:
And the after (the wrapping for the handle part was made of shoelaces and fashioned after Samurai sword handles):
Three quick side notes:
One: People in Colorado love their Subaru Outbacks. I’ve never seen a greater concentration of these earth-toned four-wheel drive vehicles outside of a car lot. At the parking lot of one of our hikes is where I had my eureka moment, and my dad was like, “Yeah, they’re fucking EVERYWHERE,” and sure enough, I was able to easily take a picture of two parked next to each other. As I took the picture, no shit, another one drove by, but I couldn’t frame the shot quick enough to take it all in. Here’s the original picture:
Two: I love fast food chains that have not yet spread to Texas, because I love to always bitch about how much better everything is in California, and fast food is a major talking point. In-n-Out is a perfect example. In-n-Out should never, ever go to Texas because a) Texas doesn’t deserve burgers that good, and b) everyone in Texas tries to tell me that Whataburger “is just like In-n-Out” and they couldn’t be more wrong because In-n-Out never fails to be awesome and Whataburger never fails to give you explosive diarrhea. Anyway, another of my Cali favorites is Del Taco. For Mexican fast food, Texas has Taco Bell (terrible, except for the Double-decker taco supreme), Taco Cabana (decent, with delicious tortillas that taste like buscuits and should be ordered by the dozen and eaten plain), the very wrongly named Taco Bueno (see Whataburger for gastrointestinal details on Taco Bueno), but no Del Taco. I love Del Taco for the chicken soft tacos, macho combo burritos, and especially for the Del Scorcho sauce, which is allegedly as hot as taco sauce gets. Del Scorcho was the true test of manhood when I was 13. Well, there was a Del Taco in Colorado and I couldn’t pass up a chance at some west-coast fast food. Apparently, Del Scorcho is no longer the hottest shit there is, and some asshole upstart named Del Inferno has bumped Del Scorcho into “medium” territory. Bullshit. Here’s photographic proof:
Three: Anyone need an antike phone? This was posted in the common area of my dad’s condo complex, and I love this kind of crap:
By day four, the fresh air and beautiful scenery wasn’t enough to distract me from the realization that I can’t be around my father for more than three days at a time. We are the closest of friends, and I obviously love him to death, but we were always better as co-workers than as roommates.
Went back to Dallas, had a great Thanksgiving with the Roomies and some dear friends.
For the holidays, we all had to tart up our cubes with wrapping paper. The boss brought in three terrible designs, with cartoon penguins and reindeer or some such shit, so I brought some of mine from home with a nice argyle design. It was classy and still in the spirit of things. See for yourself:
Next trip: San Diego for Christmas. It was Kendra’s annual Drunken Christmas Caroling party! Good times! For the uninitiated, this is where a large group of adults drinks themselves stupid, sit on a trailer towed by a truck, and aided by microphones and large speakers, Rock the Holy Fuck out of some Christmas Carols while being driven around a neighborhood. The turnout was so good this year that they had two trailers behind the truck. The second trailer, which I was in, seemed less like a trailer and more like a hay wagon, and just looked dangerous. Normally this would concern me, but I had a bottle of whisky on me so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Many many thanks to Kendra and her awesome family for giving me a holiday tradition I can really believe in.
Ended that night partying with my old crew from Outback, and it was awesome. Saw some people I hadn’t seen in ages, and am looking forward to seeing again on the 24th.
Also had some time to go shopping with my Sister, her husband, their son Micah, and my brother’s daughter, Gabby. We got clothes and books and some dinner, and it was great to see all of them.
I got to spend a lot of time with some old friends that I missed more than I knew, and I got to spend not enough time with lots of other friends. I’m glad everyone understands that I have so little time when visiting SD, and accepts the fact that I may only have an hour to hang out. Someday, someday, you’ll have more of me than you’d ever want. Someday soon…
Then back to Dallas.
The weekend before Christmas, I decided to take a three-hour drive to my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, to visit my Grandparents. When I visit, I stay with Aunt Anna, since I can barely stand to be around the grandparents for long periods of time, which I know sounds really really terrible but if you are honest with yourself you, too, will admit that most times hanging out with grandparents is a fucking chore. Aunt Anna is someone I’ve known since I can remember, and it wasn’t until much later in life that I realized that Aunt Anna wasn’t my aunt at all but was in fact my father’s first wife. She’ll always be Aunt Anna to me, anyway. Plus she’s a badass. She smokes, cusses like a sailor, and loves to play cards, so when I visit we stay up late talking about crap my dad got up to when he was my age (there’s a novel worth of great stuff in those stories). Well, on this holiday trip, after crashing at Aunt Anna’s on the first night, I headed out to see Grandpa Bob, who is now living alone because Grandma (“Mimi”) is in the nursing home….
(Okay, quick aside. I know I’m a pretty happy-go-lucky guy, and I’ve caught some flak in the past for some of my early-Dallas depressing blog posts. Well, this part coming up, which involves my family, is depressing. It’s gotta be, it involves my family. As Jeff Lebowski (the millionaire) put it, “Strong men also cry.” This bit of the story touches on such themes as the inevitability of death and the fear of losing one’s mind, and also features a surprise guest appearance and a bit of an upbeat ending! But, it’s mostly sad as fuck. So skip ahead if you need to. Look for the picture of me with a dog as a sign that the story has ended. Now, where were we…)
I headed out to see Grandpa Bob, who is now living alone because Mimi is in the nursing home. Grandpa isn’t my real Grandpa, but he is the only Grandpa I know since the other one died when I was a baby. After spending a bit of time at his place, we head over to the nursing home. Last time I visited, Mimi knew I was a relative of hers, but couldn’t quite place me. Now, three months and a stroke later, she simply stares into space and shakes from time to time. It is terrible. She did not acknowledge me at all. I stayed with her about an hour and a half, during her lunchtime. Around us sat a bizarre collection of elderly people all at various stages of losing their minds, doing things that would not be out of place in a Kindergarden classroom. When Mimi started eating lime green jell-o with her hands I almost lost it. This is not the Mimi I’ve known all my life. This is a husk of a person, and being there made me feel horrible and wanting to leave made me feel even more horrible. After a while, Bob got me out of there, and in the car he told me that Mimi doesn’t have much longer to live. So this was probably the last time I’d see her alive. I chewed on that for a while. I’m not used to being around death, aside from a good friend when I was 19. Any relatives I’ve known that have died were all in Germany. So this will be the first big death in the family, which sounds morbid, but is true. Mimi passing away is going to be rough, but part of me thinks that where she is now might be rougher. For all I know, she’s in a happy place, but for those of us will full mental capacity, it is really painful to watch her fade away. For me, dementia is one of my biggest fears. All I’ve really got is my mind, and if that goes, I’m fucked.
As all of this swirls around in a stew of misery in my head, Grandpa Bob asks me if I’d heard from my Mom at all. To make a very long and very painful story into a haiku,
Post-divorce, Mom went
bad crazy. Nik brought this up.
They haven’t talked since.
So no, I hadn’t heard from my mom at all. Last I heard she was living in a small town in Texas, had remarried and found God,
and was involved in an annoying letter-writing campaign directed at my little sister.
Well, apparently my mom is still crazy, and decided to get involved in another campaign of annoyance, this one directed at my grandparents, that consisted of multiple threatening phone calls placed at all hours of the day. Social workers got involved, who got deputy sheriffs involved, the end result of which was my mother being held at the jail in Shreveport! So this was the largest gathering of my Mom’s side of my family in years, only one member wasn’t free to meet us at the buffet, and another one wasn’t aware of what a buffet actually is.
Obviously at this point I am in a bit of shock, and the day seems to be headed straight to hell.
After dropping grandpa off, headed back to Aunt Anna’s, where we prepared a traditional German feast of pork, sauerkraut, and potatoes that really hit the spot. Anna had some good things to say about my fucked-up family which put some things into perspective, and as the night wore on, I figured that would be that and Christmas was going to be sucky once again. But then! As I sat reading, late at night, the phone rang. It was Jessica and Amy in San Diego, who were drinking wine and singing the new Ben Folds/Regina Spektor song that I had played for them on my recent visit. It was a wonder call from some of my oldest and dearest friends from my days at the Outback and boy was it nice. Thus cheered, I got back to reading. But the Christmas miracles were not over yet! The phone rang again. Upon answering, I was greeted by the sound of someone singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey. It was another group of my old Outback friends. Indeed, this was “The Europe Girls,” three of the four girls that went around Europe with me years ago. After serenading me with perhaps the greatest song ever written, they took turns cheering me up and after the call ended, I was back to being happy Nik. Self-reflection time was over. There was nothing I could do about my fucked-up family. So it was time to get into the Christmas spirit and accept the fact that miracles DO happen, and that having dear friends that think to call and sing to me is the greatest gift of all.
And now, a picture of me with a dog!
Back in Dallas, Christmas day was awesome. Hung out with my Dallas “family,” who seem to like me more than my family for whatever reason. I totally got hooked up, gift-wise. Mike got me a dinosaur print onesy (onesie?). He had one of his own:
Got the kids some individual gifts and Mario Kart for the Wii. The lucky kids also got Rock Band 2, so we rocked out for a few more hours in the afternoon.
Back home, Roomie Daniel got Rock Band 2 too. But we were not to play Rock Band on Christmas night. No, Christmas night is
not for rocking. Christmas night is for…titties. Yes! Daniel’s birthday is on Christmas, and since he had been shafted for years (“Happy birthday, now watch everyone else open up presents too.”) he was determined to do something not Christmasy on his birthday. The strip club falls squarely into this category. Dallas strip clubs are BYOB, and the group of us (Roomies, friends, plus a lot of Daniel’s friends from is hometown) stayed from 10pm to 4am; making it the most time I did ANYTHING on Christmas, including sleep. I got a pot going for Daniel and raised lots of money for him to get lap dances with. I also took the time to explain to every stripper within earshot that it was Daniel’s birthday (“HEY! IT’S HIS BIRTHDAY! JUST LIKE JESUS!”), which got him some birthday lovin’. He said it was his best birthday ever.
I’m not a big family person, but this holiday season was chock-full of family – real and adoptive – and 2008 was the closest I’ve ever gotten to being fully immersed in the holidays. Lots of love for those who, for whatever reason, wanted to be around me, or wanted me to be around, for Christmastime.
Until next time...
