Surviving Christmas

After a whirlwind holiday trip through Ohio, I'm happy to report I'm back to Chicago in one piece. For the most part, I had a good holiday, except for the car problems and my apartment door being destroyed by the fire department.

First, let's get the bad stuff out of the way. On the way to OH on Xmas Eve, we were severely plagued with car problems. We took the boyfriend's mom's car. 15 minutes into our drive, the car started to vibrate. So, we took the car to a tire shop. Two tires later, we thought we were all set. Nope. We got to the Indy border and once again, vibration. Not wanting to risk it, we drove all the way back home, switched out cars, and were on our way. All of this set us back about four hours. After much delay, we arrived in Columbus about 9pm OH time. Our families had been anxiously awaiting us. Later in the trip, my roommate informed me the smoke alarm/carbon monoxide detector had been going off in the place. Of course no one was home during this time. We thought we had the problem fixed when it went of again. But this time the fire department had to come and because no one was home, proceeded to literally chop down the front door. The old door is currently setting in the basement. So, now we have a brand new door and carbon monoxide detector. We think the problem stems from the heater oven. In the past couple of weeks, it had been generating an awful lot of soot. I'm wondering what else will go wrong with the apartment. I hope I don't die of monoxide poisoning, but hey, it could happen. So yeah, simply having a wonderful Xmastime!

Now onto the better stuff. Once we made it to Columbus, everything was fine. Everytime I go back to OH, I forget how homogeneous it really is. Two of our families live on golf courses and have very similar homes. We spent Christmas Eve with my family consisting of eating good food, exchanging gifts (my bro got my sister-in-law a stripper pole to workout with. I'm thinking that must be the best gift ever), and watching Burn After Reading. We got up Xmas morning and ate more food. Over the course of the past few days, I've never eaten so much. I'm seriously going on a diet. A couple of hours after eating an early dinner, we had to go to yet another dinner. This time, we went to the boyfriend's uncle's place on a lake 30 minutes away from my brother's. There were a couple of kids there and one asked me what grade I was in. I don't know if this was a compliment or insult. I mean, do I look really young or act immature? Or both? After dinner, we drove to yet another house: the boyfriend's cousin's house. We watched their kid play some Wii. We got up the next day and drove to Dayton. During our trip, every night we slept at a different house. I became pretty disorientated. I also have trouble sleeping at strange houses, so I've been pretty sleep deprived. Also, every house we visited (except for one) had at least one cat, so I got to play with kitties. I still really want one. We visited with my mom in Dayton and then hung out with my friends and watched the horror trilogy Basketcase. So, these are sorta cult horror movies. The first one is campy and bad in a good way, but the sequels are completely tangential and not in a good way. Four hours later, we were Basketcased out. The next morning, we woke up and drove back to the boyfriend's uncle's lake house for dinner. We played Scrabble and then went to bed. Today, we woke up and drove my nephew and ourselves back to Dayton. The boyfriend's mom, my nephew, the boyfriend, and my mom and I had brunch together. This was our moms first time meeting each other. Afterwards, we got in the car and drove back to Chicago. At least the trip back was uneventful. I feel like I've spent the past five days sitting in a car. Luckily, we were able to fit everything in. Now everything has come full-circle as everyone has pretty much met each other.

I'm sorta looking forward to doing nothing until the first of the year. I don't want to travel anywhere or deal with apartment drama or deal with family/adults. I just need to get back into the swing of things. And take a deep breath.