HomeDecember 7, 1997
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Oh man, I have a wicked headache. It feels like I have a rubber pork chop inside my skull. My brain hurts. Wait a minute. Has anyone actually seen my brain recently? Eeek! Where's my brain? Why is Channel 6 on the clock radio? What happened to Robert J? Maybe I'd better go back to sleep. What happened to getting up early to go birding before driving from Providence to Newton for the "brotheration"? Maybe a bagel and coffee would help. Time goes into a black hole. One minute I'm having coffee and a bagel at the Dunkies on Hope Street with Nancy and Allen walks in and joins us with his bagel and coffee and I still have time to get to the family gathering. Next minute, the family gathering has already started and I'm way late. I drop Nancy at her place and head north. I call from the car phone to let them know I'll be late. Lizzy answers the phone and says she'll relay the message to Grandma. I predict an ETA of 1:15 PM. I arrive at 1:14 PM. Kevin is drilling a hole for the new lock on the back door. Thomas is stretched out in front of the fire wishing he was asleep. This time of year cooking is a tough late night business. Billy is sitting in the recliner. Donald is in New Jersey. Andrea - Ann? - is setting up some of the thousand nativities in La Madre's collection. The three kings have to be east of the manger since they arrive out of the east on Epiphany. I am instructed to help, so I set up the Mexican set with the halos that look like alien antennae on the radiator in the front hall.
The top of the living room doorway is east of the radiator. Andrea/Ann hands me the kings and I stick them on the door ledge. Finally coffee, cake, presents, greetings... Thomas goes home. Kevin goes back to installing the new locks. Billy and AJ (that's my new name - abbreviation for Aunt Janet) go into the living room to work on the Hi Bob photo. Where's my camera? I search everywhere - coat pocket, bag the presents were in, car, birding backpack - can't take the Hi Bob photo with my scope or my binoculars. What am I going to do? How could I have lost the camera after it has survived being dropped in a pit toilet in Japan and being fallen upon in 2 feet of snow? It's gotta be somewhere. Must've left it at Nancy's. We decide to use La Madre's camera. Billy fans the fire so we can have a nice homey fireplace scene in the picture. I tape the Hi Bob letters to the mantle with double face tape. Andrea/Ann puts vegetable dip on one of the B's. Finally, all is in readiness for a cozy photo by our own snug fireside. But Andrea/Ann won't stop jumping around and making "interesting" faces. I take a few shots anyway. La Madre probably won't finish this roll until Christmas so no Hi Bob pics will get mailed this week. La Madre asks if she should get glass fireplace doors to replace the metal mesh ones. She wants to know if burning wood in the fireplace depletes the ozone layer and contributes to global warming. Billy and I do not see eye to eye on global warming. I am too tired to argue. Billy holds forth. I do chime in that he's right that man-made causes are not the only contributing factors... I'm much too tired to talk about global warming intelligently, besides that I've got this rubber pork chop instead of a brain... Later I am telling Nancy about setting up the nativities:
Which of us are the aliens? |
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