Monday, December 26, 2005

hometown highlights

If anyone had told me in high school that at age 24 I'd love going home to my parents' house more than anywhere else in the world, I would've died from laughter and/or horror. But, alas, lying around in sweatpants with my sis and my dogs while my mom cooks organic trans-fatty-acid-free food and my dad hands out Leinenkugels is the perfect break from the New York nonsense that I can't get enough of 92% of the time. This year, before I left for home, the shrink told me to observe my family interactions so that I might better understand my [probably pretty average level of] fuckedupness. And observe I did...

*My family does not share the neighborhood's apparent infatuation with gigantic inflatable snow globe lawn ornaments.

*My family is very well bred. Over Christmas Eve dinner my uncle revealed that Great Aunt Barbara was third runner-up in the 1957 Miss Budweiser Pageant and that we are probably very distantly related to Martha Stewart.

*Though my mom does most of the cooking, my dad's not too shabby at it either, as he revealed with his brined turkey. Once you brine, you can't go back.

*My parents love Bob Marley. Sadly, not in a hippie fratboy kind of way.

*I am really fucking competitive when it comes to inconsequential challenges. Not only did I win Scrabble by more than 50 points, I kicked everyone's ass in the newest addition to the family board game collection, Ticket To Ride (Germany's 2004 Spiel des Jahres!) by building a continuous train track from Portland to Little Rock by way of Vancouver, Montreal, New York, and New Orleans.

*Though my dad and his brother have told us the same Catholic school nun stories at least a hundred times, they don't stop being funny. Especially when Sister Dennis Ann, the nun who smacked a girl in the head with her textbook for using it during a closed-book test, threw a kid's books and then his desk out the second story window and made him go pick them up, had a kid sit in the garbage can in the front of the classroom all day since his messy desk meant that he clearly liked being dirty, and made two kids punch each other in front of the classroom all afternoon since they clearly liked fighting so much, has a picture on the internet. [second from bottom]

Now if that doesn't give Mr. Shrink a good glimpse into my psyche, I don't know what will. On a not-really-at-all related note, ol' Marshfield is becoming more and more commercialized and unrecognizable. The last straw in this disheartening change is the arrival of a Starbucks. As we drove past the drive-thru monstrosity on the way home from the airport, I was convinced that Marshfield had lost it's hicktown charm for good. That is, until we passed by the brand new Dollar Bar (a bar in which beverages cost $1.00) on the other side of town.

8 comments:

Fat Asian Baby said...

omg! the gigantic inflatable snow globe lawn ornaments have taken over westchetser as well! go figure.

Gina said...

aaah, nice to know that rural and suburban areas across the country are giving bored and drugged high schoolers fun new ways to vandalize. *pop!*

Anonymous said...

don't think this kind of bad taste is limited to rural and suburban areas....I've seen these crammed into front yards right in the middle of DC, as well.

*sigh*

Anonymous said...

What a wasted mock vintage picture, they couldn't remove the $16.99 per case signs (or the mens nike crosstrainers) to at least try and appear authentic. :(

the_management said...

Please take me to the Dollar Bar.

Anonymous said...

the games were both sheer luck! you would not have won scrabble without the herpes.

also drinks at the dollar bar are $1.50.

Gina said...

no! the games were sheer determination and skill! "herpes" did well for me in scrabble, yes, as i tactfully placed it on a triple word score. but i won fair and square. and $1.50 is still not so bad. party at gina's parents' house july 4th weekend!!!!!

Anonymous said...

i would very much like to ride your train.

-ellen