Family Christmas Outing

Last night the Flowers and the Fartersons had their first joint Christmas outing of the season. My dad was absolutely giddy at the prospect. This is what he said, verbatim: "Ooh! I'm so happy to be going on our first Christmas outing of the season!" No, for real.

We all went to the Olive Garden for dinner, which is a fabulous place to eat, and we had tons of wine and staggered out the door and got pulled over and issued a DUI and went home and had some eggnog, heavy on the nog.

Kidding! Everything is true up to the word eat.

While we were at the restaurant, I would make little asides to Joon during conversation. And toward the end of dinner, I was saying things that other people would say, like, 30 seconds after I had just gotten done saying it.

Example: My dad was paying, and MJ's father said, "Look at that huge wallet!" And I said to Joon, "It's like that Seinfeld episode, where George can't shut his wallet and he starts to have back pain." In the meantime, everyone else was still commenting on the massiveness of Daddy's wallet, and then HE said, "It's just like a Seinfeld episode!"

"It's like I'm living in the future!" I said to Joon.

And because she is perfect, Joon replied, "Great SCOTT!"

But it was so funny because then JOON started living in the future too, and all during the rest of the night, we would make our own comments and giggle when somebody else said the same thing after a few seconds.

We saw The Family Stone after dinner, and it was all right, I guess. It was sort of a downer, for a Christmas movie. I do not think Joon's husband MJ would compare it favorably to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which is his favorite movie and which he has seen probably 15 times this year alone.

After the movie we headed over to Barnes & Noble, or as my family calls it, The Library. There we chowed down on some fattening desserts and talked about buying presents and celebrating Christmas.

Joon had had an encounter with our Annoying Relative, which she related to us. And as we were dissecting their discussion, we concluded that our Annoying Relative is, in fact, ANNOYING.

Here are some of the things she said during her encounter with Joon:

Joon! How's your baby? (when she knows full well that Joon had a miscarriage; my dad told her)

Joon, you straightened your hair and colored it and it's all layered and uchhh! (Joon had just gotten her hair cut and colored THAT VERY DAY. Also, you know Slash, right? From Guns 'n' Roses? That is what the Annoying Relative's hair looks like, only she has a big white skunk stripe down the middle of it. So really, the Annoying Relative should not be passing Hair Judgment).

So, are you buying presents for my family because we haven't heard JACK from your family. (Because they are also Annoying. And they are trying to kill my grandfather under the guise of "helping" him, and they are bleeding him dry financially and my dad called them on it and they got mad. So now everybody in the Flower family (i.e., the normal ones) tries to avoid all contact with the Gimme family. They will suck the Christmas spirit out of a person like a vampire sucks blood. Seriously).

Oh! And when Joon was leaving, she (Joon) said, "It was nice seeing you," which was of course a lie, but Joon is southern. And the Annoying Relative, who is also southern but apparently didn't learn anything about manners or etiquette, muttered, "Yeah, it SEEMS like it."

So here's something about Joon: she cannot get cliches right. Here is a sampling of her missteps:

Six is half a dozen (instead of Six of one, half dozen of another)
By Job! (instead of By Jove)
Sitting there like a stump on a log
Making an anthill out of a molehill

Last night, in our discussion of the Annoying Relative, we were trying to come up with responses to her stupid comments.

And as we were talking about the whole encounter, Joon shrugged and said, "Well, hindsight it 20/20."

I gasped. "You got it right!" I squealed. "It's a Christmas Miracle!"

All in all, it was a pretty tame night out, which is unusual for us. Probably that means that today, when we go out again, there will be a huge blizzard while we're driving to the mall and we'll have to wait it out at The Library.

Just like last Christmas.