Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus!

December 26, 2008 at 3:29 pm | Posted in Life in the US, Self | 3 Comments

There’s nothing like celebrating the birth of Baby Jesus by going home and pretending you’re 16 again. 

This time I brought Homeboy to my oldest friend’s parents’ house for Christmas Eve.  I drank a lot of wine with her various family members and traipsed down memory lane talking about people from high school I haven’t seen or thought about for over ten years.  This time, we were helped along by Facebook.

The evening culminated as it always does, with her parents yelling at her and her siblings to shut up so they can go to sleep.  Then off to the driveway for the ritual smoking of the Christmas joint.

All the old questions from my adolescence resurfaced in my pot-addled brain: will my mom be awake still?  will she know I’m high? did she leave food for us to reheat and eat?

The answers were: no, no, and yes. Score!

Before chowing down on what we found in my mom’s doggie bags, we partook in yet another comforting ritual from my adolescence: the smoking of the bowl in mom’s driveway.  But this time Homeboy joined in.

Thank you, Baby Jesus, for letting me relive my youthful rituals.  And to all 3 of my regular readers, some of whom may be surprised by my posting about illegal activity: yes, I do have other, more wholesome memories from my teenage years.  But none quite so bittersweet as sneaking into mom’s house ripping high and digging into baked macaroni and cheese with lobster.

The Best Tuesday Ever

December 7, 2008 at 1:26 pm | Posted in The Bucket, Working | Leave a comment

Last Tuesday, two of my Christmas wishes came true.

First, one of my favorite clients finally got word that he got into Job Corps in Maine after months of waiting.  He decided that he wanted to leave Rhode Island, but Job Corps asks that you make weekly phone calls to the in-state admissions counselor to show your continued interest.  We stayed on top of that, but it was taking so long that I started leaving voice mails for her.  Finally two weeks ago she called him to say that he didn’t get into the one in Massachusetts, but things looked good for Maine, and could he please tell that lady (that’d be me) to stop calling her.

And on Tuesday they called him from Maine to say that he was accepted.  And he’s going to Job Corps on an Air Force Base right on the border of Canada.  I tried to explain Maine to him, but I’m not sure he quite understands just how isolated it is.  He now spends a lot of time on Mapquest checking out the location.  He will literally be at the end of the road.

And then The Thing of Which We Must Not Speak came to pass.  The reason that we must not speak of this is because Rhode Island is so darn small that everyone and their mother knew that this Thing came to pass as of Wednesday morning.  Because my blogger’s cloak of anonymity is fairly half-assed, I can’t go on record to share my outright joy and glee that This Thing finally came to pass after a very long year.  But behind closed doors, we danced and jumped and screamed.   Work should now be more productive, transparent, and sane. 

Though watching Vanessa get eliminated as Paris Hilton’s New BFF was NOT one of my Xmas wishes, I got to see it happen with a bottle of champagne, my best friend, and her boyfriend.  The bubbles went to my head, and I spent an hour alternately hissing that everyone STFU so we could see the finale of Paris Hilton’s New BFF and screaming “Best Tuesday Everrrrrr” over and over. 

This is probably why I spent the day after The Best Tuesday Ever with a blinding headache, fielding phone calls from surprised Community Center stakeholders and funders, and breaking out into a little jig every once in a while.

Now we’ve got to spend quite a bit of time cleaning up the mess created before That Thing of Which We Must Not Speak happened.

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