The Lows

I have every intention of balancing this post against a later one entitled "The Highs." But it's not going to happen tonight.

My Christmas usually happens in two stages. The first stage is the actual Christmas Eve/Christmas Day according to the calendar. The second stage is when my sister and her family deign to grace us with their presence. It's probably worth noting that my sister has not invited us down to her place in the last eight years. They have a nice house in Novi, and we would be more than willing to take everyone out for dinner, bring our own (diet) pop and some veggie munchies, etc so we're not a big imposition on them. We have always spent Christmas Day with Bill's side of the family ever since we were together, since sis MUST always spend Christmas with her enormous family-in-law and their myriad holiday celebrations. We used to go to Indiana, but after my mother-in-law passed, the remaining family in that state doesn't seem to want to acknowledge the holiday. So Bill and I started hosting Christmas Dinner ourselves, inviting his stepdad, stepdad's girlfriend (my mother-OUT-law!), Bill's nephew and his wife, and anyone who co mes up from Indiana. We have been looking forward to serving our first Christmas dinner here since before we moved into our current home.

The nephew and his wife had a baby last April, and since they both work full time they really wanted to celebrate their daughter's first Christmas all by themselves, we graciously accepted their apologies. At that time, I started looking around for a place that might serve a Christmas buffet, but the only place I could find was the Doherty. I called the stepdad and invited him and his girlfriend to join us, our treat, because I really didn't feel up to cooking a big dinner for just four of us. At first he said he couldn't plan that far ahead. Then the day before Christmas Eve I called them again. This time he claimed he was "too busy" working on his tow truck. Now I happen to know he's been working on this truck for weeks and weeks. If he hasn't fixed it by now, what difference does it make if he takes a few hours off to have dinner with us??? So Wild Bill and I, childless orphans that we are, shared a lonely table for two at the Doherty.

Stage two this year happened to be the day after Christmas. Usually it's closer to New Year's Day, so this was a pleasant change. We have a bunch of exciting new changes here at our place we were dying to show them, and hoped they'd stay longer than their usual 3 hour max. Several years ago they told us that by the time they come North to see us after Christmas, they are ham/turkey/yammed right out, so our tradition is to eat something totally different, like lasagna, macaroni and cheese (the REAL kind done in an oven, not out of a box!!!). This year we decided to just run over to Pudgy's Diner for burgers. And crazy thing, even with the new driveway and garage, and driving around on the UTV and Bill getting out his outlaw lawn mower, Pudgy's was the highlight of their trip. Oh, and they arrived at 12:25 pm and left at 3:15pm, ten minutes shy of three hours.

Bill wanted to throw a New Year's Eve Day party this year. He invited his best friends, his nephew, some people he WANTED to be friends with, and some people he "had" to invite because they'd have been pissed if they knew we asked so-and-so and not them. We had a grand total of six people come, counting the two kids. Plus one puppy. They were the nephew (so we were able to give them belated Christmas gifts) and a guy Bill will be racing against a lot next year. No one arrived until almost dark, and everyone was gone by 8:00 pm. I did a head count of everyone who swore they were coming and came up with 20. Knowing that things always come up at the last moment, I reduced my count by 25% and ordered a snack tray for 13-19, grabbed some cookies off the shelf, a couple kinds of pop and some chips. Bill cut a bunch of firewood for a bonfire, plowed the trail through the woods and salted the driveway where people would be parking. And no one came. In fact, one of my closest friends, whom I knew probably couldn't come, sent me a private message on Facebook saying she couldn't come because she didn't have any gas money. But then further down my timeline, I saw she was at a bar in Saginaw. So........