My sister emailed me this morning and told me that my parents got the Christmas gifts that I sent them in the mail the other day and were really confused who sent them and thought they were from Rachel.

So I called this afternoon to leave a message on my parent's answering machine to inform them that I, the good son, had sent them those shitty gifts and not my lovely sister. The answering machine was just about to *beep* when my father answered the phone and was like "Oh I'm so excited that you called YAY!" and I was like "Why the fuck are you at home in the middle of the day? Don't you understand that I have special times in which I call the house specifically because you're not at home? Shit...you've ruined everything."

But I talked to him anyway because, I am the good son...that and my "Dad is a fuck-head" book has taught me to have emotional insulation and to go to my happy place when I am threatened so I win a lot when I talk to him. Yay me.

My father informed me that my grandmother was whining to him that she wants me at her house on Christmas Eve for the annual Aldrich get together that's so damn tedious it'll make your rectum bleed.

Ya know, as far as dysfunctional families go...we're really dull.

I told my father that I was not going to go to Connecticut for Christmas because (a)Connecticut blows some major ass and (b)I said I had to stay here in New Jersey and sit with Justin on Christmas and pet his head and tell him he's pretty over and over again while we stare at Pete's dwarven christmas tree that's listing slightly to the left.

Then my father tried to steer the conversation into a dangerous direction, but I did a diversionary tactic by bringing up "Return of the King" which distracted him for a good ten minutes in which time I was able to untangle myself from all the preexisting conversation threads and hang up unscathed.

yay me!

Also, just incase anyone is wondering...when you buy processed chicken fingers and they say that they are "Buffalo style" this means that the chicken is no more spicey than the usual chicken...but that it has been dyed an ungodly shade of day-glo orange.

I'm eating it anyway.