Tuesday, December 27, 2005

 

Cashing in for Christmas

As it turned out, dropping off The Slug was pretty uneventful. I thought The Squeeze would have had some interesting anectdote with his brother to share upon his return. Oh well, just as well.

I got up Boxing Day morning (that's December 26th for those who don't know) and decided to do a quick bit of bargain shopping before heading to my parents' place for my family Christmas dinner, which we generally have around noon or 1:00. I hit the aquarium shop which was packed to pick up a few things that I wanted to get while they had their 25% off sale. Went to the nearby mall to check out some CDs and picked up some cologne I wanted, and made my way back home. Too many crazy people out there. I unloaded my purchases and loaded up The Squeeze, our gifts to the folks, and our baked goods.

There were about 24 people there, give or take. We were down a few because there's some kind of crap going on between my brother, his wife, his kids and his ex that is just too complicated and confusing to get into. The short version is his kids hate his new wife (she is a bitch), and she's sort of come between my brother and his kids, so they aren't speaking. It's weird.

Anyway, we ate like pigs, and in true family tradition...well, MY family tradition, we break out a couple of decks of cards and do a bit of gambling with the siblings and nieces and nephews. As the years have gone on, the stakes have risen. It used to be a nickle, dime, quarter type of thing. Now we get into nickles, dimes, quarters, loonies (one dollar coin), twonies (two dollar coin) and for the grand finale, fives. I won one of the loonie rounds which scored me about $24 bucks I think, and I won the fives. Of course, the higher the stakes go, the less people there are playing. Chicken shits. Since there were only 5 of us playing, I only scored $60. $15 from each of them. Ahhh, Christmas. That's what it's all about.

I was planning to tell the folks about what Weezie and I are cooking up, but I just didn't have the nerve. Talk about chicken shit! I think I'll wait another month or so...just get past that first trimester I think. At least I tell myself this now.

Well, I must get a move on. My friend from Vancouver is coming by in a bit for a visit, so I should probably drag my ass into the shower and get dressed and do a bit of tidying up here. We're going to go out and do some shopping! Yay!

Comments:
Our family tradition is a family-developed game of solitaire called Scrooge. It's pretty damn cutthroat (considering there's no money involved) and Mom's shows pretty conclusively that she's Grandpa's daughter by being an extremely poor loser...and not much better winner. I'm *this* close to refusing to play with her ever again.
 
LOL...funny how competition brings out the best in people, isn't it?

The funny part about playing the game that we do, is that my mother is totally unaware that we play for anything more than a dollar. Even that nearly pushed her over the edge.

Whenever my mother is seen walking toward the sunroom where we play, someone pipes up "grandma alert", and we all cover our cash with our arms and hide the bowl with the money in it.
"No, we're just playing for fun."
"That's nice."

I should really feel more guilt. Meh.
 
I never learned how to play card games. My family would rather snooze in front of the TV.
 
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