In three days it will be Christmas. As I’ve explained before, we tend to spread out the Christmas season over the course of a month. We have had our Holiday Party here in Casa Moonstruck on our hilltop for neighbors and friends. We have done our trek to Midtown Manhattan in New York City for the gathering with all the kids and our extended New York family and friends. We’ve done the Holiday Gala on Gramercy Park with Kim’s cabaret friends in all their extravagant finery. As much as that all sounds like a lot, the real holiday is yet to begin. It starts tomorrow with the arrival of Kim’s sister, Sharon, and her husband Woo. They will arrive at midday and I will take Woo over to Stretch-U to experience what a good stretch session is like. Woo spent his life as a Naval aviator, flying helicopters for many years. I always have a lot of time and respect for Woo and others like him that put themselves in harm’s way for the rest of us Americans. All I can do is help him stretch his old guy joints and muscles a bit. By the time we get back all stretched out and limber, it will almost be time to head out to an early dinner at Mi Guadalajara. I suspect that Kim and Sharon will spend the afternoon catching up, as sisters do. Meanwhile nephew Josh and his wife, Haj, and their kids JJ and Leila will have toddled down from Pasadena and checked in at their nearby hotel with their two pet kittens (Dominos and Little Caesar’s in honor of their predecessor, Pizza). That’s right, have kittens, will travel. Based on my and son Tom’s allergy to cats, not to mention Buddy’s extreme dislike of the feline (Felidae) family. The taxonomic hierarchy for cats goes: Family: Felidae (all felines/cats), Subfamily: Felinae (small cats), Genus: Felis (domestic cats and close relatives), Species: Felis catus (domestic cat)…just in case you wondered where the name “cat” comes from.
In addition to the six Ferrell’s, we will be joined at Mi Guadalajara by Kim’s brother, Jeff and his wife, Lisa. Jeff and Lisa live in the same town we do. Actually, they have lived here for far longer than we have, they have been here for 35 or so years (we only bought in 13 years ago and have really only lived here for 5 years). In fact, Mi Guadalajara is their favorite restaurant and as you may have guessed, it serves Mexican food, which makes it both pretty much typical for this area and very popular with the locals, especially the Hispanic ones. The place is so popular that they don’t take reservations, even for groups of 10 as we’re destined to be tomorrow night. Apparently, Kim has talked to them and they “know” we are coming and “expect” to be able to seat us, but they won’t give us an actual reservation. That’s probably a precedent thing. But then they did say, “don’t come at 6pm….try 5:30”. I am interested to see how long we will have to wait for a table with our non-reservation reservation. I’m fine with the food at Mi Guadalajara (I have to admit that to me, most Mexican food is…just Mexican food, which I like just fine, but other than not finding a Cucaracha in the fajitas, I’m not sure I can tell the difference), but the sense that you have to want it so bad that you’re willing to wait for it in line, leaves me a bit cold. But, that’s what we do because its what Jeff & Lisa have always done. Waiting is not the worst punishment in the world.
When we leave Mi Guadalajara, we will disperse to the four winds for the night, only to reconvene on Tuesday, Christmas Eve Day back at our hilltop at Casa Moonstruck. Josh, Haj, JJ and Leila will leave the kittens in the hotel room (to what effect I do not know) at some point and wander over to our place, as will Jeff & Lisa (fatigue permitting) and we will also be joined by nephew Will & his wife Ashley after her shift at Trader Joe’s ends. Their cats, Pickles & Peaches (don’t ask me, people seem to get even weirder with their cat names than they do with their dog names) will stay at home. That will take us from 10 up to 12 people for Christmas Eve and Kim’s planned dinner of the traditional festive fettuccini (with bits of red pepper and green peas…see…festive), salad and garlic bread dinner. For reasons which will become obvious in the next paragraph, we do not have any Christmasy things planned for the Eve itself. Instead, we will let all the nephews go back to their hotel (Will & Ashley prefer FOMO-avoidance rather than drive the 33 miles back to Pacific Beach), Jeff & Lisa will go back to their Teddy & Jake (dog and cat), and Sharon & Woo and Kim & I will bed down for the night on the hilltop to keep vigil for Santa Claus (I do hope he doesn’t land hard on my expensive and hard-to-fix membrane flat roof)
Christmas morning will start with me heading off to the the San Diego Airport to pick up my son Tom and his wife Jenna (they left their dog Hank at home for a Rover to attend to him), who are coming in from their relatively new home in Denver to spend four days with us. They will displace Sharon & Woo, who will shift sometime during the day over to the hotel with their two sons, daughters-in-law, grandchildren and grand-kittens, but not before everyone comes over to join us in the afternoon for not 14, but 24 guests for Christmas dinner. The added 10 will be my sister Kathy & hubby Bennett, and their brood, son Alex & Natalie along with sons Charlie & Jack and daughter Stephanie & Ben and their kids Milla & Rhys. They all have dogs and cats (Carl & Rosie) that will be staying home as well (like Hank, Teddy, Jake, Peaches, Pickles, Dominos and Little Caesars) and only Buddy will be here to go crazy on their collective behalf, trying to figure out why there are 24 people in his house. Meanwhile he will never realize that the other 10 dogs and cats (I forgot to mention Josh & Haj’s other cat John John…another name that undoubtedly has a “logical” story behind it) all wish they could be in the mix and underfoot and in on the hilltop action like Buddy will be.
This year, Kim has decided that stockings and the stuff that goes into them should be reserved only for the children (six by my count…as much as others in the group that are reaching into the thirties and forties still feel like kids to some of us and still act like kids when we aren’t looking). So, instead, she has decided to do Christmas baskets for everyone. What a brilliant idea. Make it seem like we are somewhat curtailing our Yuletide excess by banning adult stockings with their overstuffed, but still limited, capacity, and replacing them with large, expensive ethnic baskets (naturally, available to be taken home, I imagine) that hold considerably more stuff than the stockings ever did. Kim has been gathering and now distributing all manner of her favorite things into each and every basket in the factory, which is what we used to call the office or study. Naturally, this will allow us to have the usual Christmas shit-show where no protocol for opening presents or unbundling stockings and now baskets need be observed.
We will then have a more traditional Christmas dinner (the favored Island Pork, Island Chicken, Corn Casserole, Mac & Cheeseballs, and various side dishes) before everyone has had enough of the holidays and decides its time to “get the kids to bed”, which is universal code for, “I just can’t take this anymore”. My job for the entire day is to smile and be kind to everyone, regardless of what gets said or done that might reasonably annoy me. That will undoubtedly include watching football, which is as far down my list of enjoyable activities as it could be. It’s the least I can do and it will likely be a surprise to all if I manage to pull it off. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.