Home for the Holidays

Even though I was determined to stay as late as possible in my college apartment, I knew my rations were running low. I was out of money, food, and most importantly--booze.

Going home meant I would have access to luxuries I am usually never able to offer myself, things like scones and bread with seeds in it and alcohol that doesn't taste like acquired it from a Purell factory.

BUT.

Going home also meant leaving behind the beautiful sanctuary I had created away from my bat-shit crazy family and their twenty-four-seven drama.

Going home meant I would spend the first four hours after my arrival removing malware and viruses on all of the household computers.

But I had to. I would do it for the booze. (And my dog. My dog is an asshole but I still like her for some reason.)

So I made drive home, soaking up the sweet, sweet time I had alone and filling it with Taylor Swift’s 1989 on repeat.

I purposely did not tell my parents when exactly I would be coming home, because when I do they make it a point to call every thirty minutes to ensure that I am still, in fact, on the way home. Not only that, but they interrupt my precious music/podcast listening time and while trying to drive down the highway at eighty miles an hour I have to jumble around the car, one handed, as I try and unplug my phone from the auxiliary cord to answer it. Then, after I tell them information that they already know, I have to find my place again whilst trying not to kill myself in a horrific car accident.

After a four hour drive I pulled into my driveway. Rather than the usual escapade where both my parents come running out to tell me about all the problems they've been having with their electronic equipment, I was surprised to find nobody was home.

It was great.

I unloaded my stuff, made myself a nice, delicious cup of coffee, and smiled lovingly at my dog as she did what she does best, which is completely ignore my presence.

Hungry, I opened then fridge. And what I saw inside was this: 

“What the fuck…?” I uttered to myself.

I inspected one of the glasses and furrowed my brow upon realizing that it was full of jello.

In the eighteen years I lived with my parents I never once saw anybody eat jello. 

“WHY IS THERE SO MUCH JELLO IN THE FRIDGE” I ask my dog sternly. She did not look up. Confused, I turned around and realize what had been left on the counter:

(sorry for the potato quality)

Oh my god.

It slowly dawned on me that strewn around the kitchen were a fairly large amount of empty 32 oz. Gatorade bottles and multiple kinds of laxatives.   

What the fuck went down here before I got home?

Just as I was about to throw my hands up and scream “TOO MUCH. NOPE.” and drive back to my booze-less apartment, my mom joyously burst through the garage door with an armful of wrapping paper.

“YOU’RE HOME!” She screamed, as she dove in for a hug. “So glad you’re here, I need you to fix the printer.”

“What’s with all the jello?” I asked.

“OH!” She said, delighted. “Guess what I’m doing tomorrow?? I’m getting a COLONSOSCOPY!!!” (Even though she said it with her sing-songy voice I know she used caps lock and three exclamation points). “It says here I have to drink all this stuff at this time and not a minute later! Better hop to it!”

Apparently when you get a colonoscopy you are only allowed to eat jello and you have to drink a shitload (no pun intented) of laxative medicine mixed with Gatorade the night before. The medicine works quickly, and soon after drinking it shit comes flooding out of your body as wild and uncontrollable as the Mississippi during rainy season.

So. That solves that mystery.

She went on ranting and raving, mixing her laxative concoction together as pumped as if she were preparing a pregame cocktail before a frat party.

It never ceases to amaze me how fast she can go from (relatively) normal to neurotic. This time it happened when she realized she couldn’t find her phone. I was not surprised, as she is better at losing stuff than anyone I have ever met in my entire life.
   

“AHHHHH I CAN’T FIND MY PHONNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!” She repeated hastily, even though I was aware of the situation. Calmly, with a here-we-go-again sigh, I began to search the house.

See, a normal person might be mildly annoyed about this situation. They would stop for a second and think, perhaps mentally retrace their steps, make absolute sure they couldn’t find it, maybe take some time, call some places, or perhaps even use this thing called the INTERNET MACHINE which, if you ask it nicely, will FIND YOUR IPHONE because it can do that.  

But.

My mother just throws her hands up in the air and races around “looking” for it (and by “looking” I mean frantically flailing her body until she embodies the very essence of a clusterfuck).

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her chug a glass of her Gatorade/laxative mixture with wild eyes.

“MOM. Why did you just do that. That was NOT a smart thing to do.”

“BECAUSE THE DOCTOR SAID I HAVE TO I HAVE TO DRINK IT OH MY GOD I HAVE TO GO GET MY PHONE I LEFT IT AT THE FEDEX MAYBE OR AT WALGREENS I DON’T KNOW OH MY GOD I LOST MY PHONE I DID IT AGAIN I HAVE TO DRINK IT RIGHT NOW  I’M RUNNING OUT OF TIME.”

Great. So now my mom is an irrational, nervous, screaming shit-bomb waiting to happen. And just as I turn to go search her bedroom she flies out the garage door and into her car to go to FedEx to go get her phone. I scream after her to wait, but it’s too late.

In stunned silence, I watch her drive off, the following scene playing in my mind: At an inhuman pace fueled by an energy only my neurotic mother can harness, she dramatically busts through the doors of a Fedex-Kinkos, the double doors smacking people against walls as they swing open.  She cries out to the holiday crowd something so frenzied no one can understand it, and seconds later liters of liquefied shit explode out of her body comparable to a military-grade explosive device, while a crowed of wide-eyed, open-mouthed customers and employees drop their Christmas packages in shock.

I walk back inside and within minutes find her phone on the counter.

Too bad I couldn't call her and tell her.

**epilogue: She came home and shit her pants.(I think she made it to the bathroom, I didn't stick around to watch)

~For more fun stories about my mother see Shit My Mom Says, Mothers, and I Welcome You to a Show~

My Weekend at Fat Camp

Well, it isn’t actually fat camp…it’s a “resort” in the middle of nowhere. Literally. The town is called Middleburg. It’s almost as if the person who named this place at the “what should we call this place” meeting just stood up and was like “FUCK IT. I’M CALLING IT MIDDLE…MIDDLE…TOWN…MIDDLE…BURG. MIDDLEBURG. THERE YOU GO. I’M GOING TO CHILIS.”

And before you call me a pretentious asshole for not enjoying my stay at a resort, just remember that YOU ARE ON MY SIDE HERE.

So let me go back a little bit and explain how I got here. My Aunt is getting remarried—she lives in Virginia (about 30 minutes away from Washington D.C.) and she decided to have her wedding out in horse country. Being the adventurous little scholar that I am, I came early and spent three days smack in the middle of the great city of D.C. I was close even enough to the white house that I was able to catch a glimpse of Obama hiding in his bathroom with a bottle of vodka watching Arrested Development on his iPad.

Just kidding! (I was pretty close, though.)

Anyways, every morning I got up and went to all the museums, American History, Natural History, International Spy, Holocaust, all the monuments, it was all good fun. 

Now, I wasn’t originally going to stay at this at this “resort” but it was an hour and half drive from D.C. so my parents convinced me to stay in their room at the resort for a few nights rather than drive back and forth for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding. It’s a resort, they said. It would be fun, they said.

So I drove out to this place, and as I pulled up to the front I felt immediately uncomfortable. The bellhops were all dressed in horseback riding outfits (the theme of this place is all about horses) and as you walk in you realize the guests are all dressed in dapper suits and dresses. What the fuck? I said under my breath as I walked in and a lady dressed in riding gear pointed me towards the horse themed library which contained only books about horses and pictures of horses and little statues of horses.

So everyone knew that one girl in high school that was the “horse girl”, obsessed with them. All they do is talk about horses, what their horses eat and the tricks they can do. Horse people are pretty close to the top of my list of people that are the FUCKING WORST. They just have this annoying air about them, like “LOOK AT ME RIDING THIS THING!!1!! IT CAN DO TRICKS AND EAT CARROTS IF I DIG MY HEALS INTO ITS RIBS HARD ENOUGH!!1!! DO YOU SEE IT?? SEE HOW MUCH MONEY I HAVE?? LOOK I CAN EVEN MOVE ITS HEAD WITH THIS ROPE I HAVE WRAPPED AROUND ITS FACE AND INSIDE ITS THROAT!!1!!” 

I passed a store in town called “wealth management services”. Do you have a shitload of money and a hard time physically handling it?? WE CAN HELP YOU WITH THAT FOR A SMALL PERCENTAGE it said on a sign outside the door. (Well, it didn’t really say that but it implied that). So this resort is basically a room full of rich horse people that are taking “vacation” from their horses and money to sit in a room full of other rich people to talk about their horses and money.

This is not my crowd, I explained to my cousin, who asked me why I was hiding in the bathroom with a bottle of vodka watching Arrested Development on my iPad. She pulled me out of the room and took me for a walk around the commune. This looks like fat camp in disguise...WAS THIS YOUR PLAN ALL ALONG?? I SWEAR I'LL TAKE IT EASY ON THE BREAKFAST TACOS JUST LET ME GO HOME! 

No! She said, there are no fat people here, silly girl! Only leather-skinned divorcees and good ol' fashioned weirds!  

Are you one hundred percent positive that this isn’t rehab for rich people, then? I asked, genuinely meaning it.

Let’s play a game. Four of the pictures below are pictures of rich people rehab centers. One is the resort I stayed at. Can you guess which one it is?  

Could you figure it out? It's the last one.

DOESN’T THIS LOOK LIKE A REHAB CENTER FOR RICH PEOPLE?? Look at all that grass! What am I supposed to do all day? Sit in the grass?

Remember, I’m sharing a room with my parents. Apparently they can’t bring in a rollaway bed because of the “fire code”, so I was forced to create a bed out of extra pillows and two chairs.

I'm a god damn adult sleeping on a makeshift bed in a horse themed “resort” surrounded by grass and the worst type of people.

THIS PLACE IS MY OWN PERSONAL HELL. (Not going to lie brunch was delicious) BUT OTHER THAN THAT IT IS AWFUL 

Back Home for Winter Break

I feel bad that I haven’t posted anything in a while, so I am copping out and using a relatable comic:

SEE IT'S RELATABLE DO YOU GET IT? 

Also, I emerged from the barricades this morning to restock on coffee/vodka and ran into my mother in the kitchen. The conversation took place as transcribed:

Mom: Ah! Look at you! Finally up! Took a shower and everything! What are you doing today?

Me: I didn’t take a shower.

Mom: Then…why is your hair all wet?

Me: It’s not wet.

Mom:

AND I'M OUT!