Barbara, don't tell me that you went all the way to Chicago to troll for sailors.
Pardon my negative holiday attitude, but I absolutely hate the holidays, and for a number of reasons.
One is that the holidays have always interfered with business. Can't make sales calls. Call me Scrooge, but I don't care.
Another is that I pretty much dislike 50% of my relatives. I have one sister-in-law who went out and bought 64 nightgowns in one day, with the rationale that she would only have to wash them a few times a year. She also went out on one ocassion and bought 700 pounds of dry dog food, which have been molding in her basement. A few years ago, she had her head buzz-cut and her hair dyed blaze orange (she's 64). She covers it up by wearing I don't know how many wigs.
Yeah, I really want to talk to her. Actually, I hardly ever talk to her, anyway. Prior to my father's quintuple bypass surgery years back, she called him nightly to harangue about the benefits of natural herbs and spices, and to blame my mother for cooking "bad food". She only stopped calling when I told her that, if anything happened to my father because of the stress she was putting on him, I'd put a bullet in the back of her head.
Another sister-in-law can't stop talking. As God is my Witness, I haven't talked to my brother (her husband) in decades. Every time I ask him a question, she takes over and answers it. She's loud, obnoxious, and detested by every sane member of my family, including her children. On top of that, she loves to talk about her job at a local hospital. Nothing like hearing loud, obnoxious stories about death and disease while trying to digest a meal.
Yup, there's a reason to get together.
On the in-law side, I have a coke-head brother-in-law who's either cleaning up his act, or attacking another family member with a butcher knife. The SOB ruined one of my best Cajun meals on New Year's Eve 2001 when he went after his brother with a knife and I had to go over to the house and intervene. I had plans for my wife and I for that night, if you know what I mean. Someday I'm going to get him for that.
On top of that, his girlfriend is on so many psychotropic drugs that talking to her is like talking to a potted plant. At least the plant looks good, assuming it's well-watered and gets the proper amount of sunlight. She looks like she hasn't seen sunlight since the year 1187.
Another brother-in-law knows more about trains--real or model trains--than most anyone else would ever want to know, especially me. He also likes to use his 2,000,000 mega-watt stereo system to blast the sound from the train wreck scene from "The Fugitive" while everyone is eating. I kid you not: he has cracked walls while doing this.
Then there's the other brother-in-law who's now near 50. He knows one thing and knows it well: the space launches from the 1960's. Last Thanksgiving he cornered me for nearly an hour to talk about all of the various fuels used to launch the Apollo craft, and the benefits of each fuel. If he worked for NASA, I might have been more attuned. Given that he works as a janitor at McDonald's, my interest waned quickly.
Last June I had surgery on my inner ear. The surgeon told me that I would need to have it done again in six to eight months. I said, "make it six."
He questioned my reasons, but finally accepted two: one was that, if we went into 2006, he would be paid very slowly. (Old Henny Youngman joke: "Doctor Welzer is here. A wonderful doctor. Gave a guy six months to live. Guy couldn't pay his bill, so Doctor Welzer gave him another six months.")
The other reason was that, per his instructions, I was not to do anything to raise my blood pressure following surgery.
And my family certainly does raise my blood pressure.
