Lunch report - Tuesday Nov. 29, 2011

[guitar_ed]

Hi All,

It's time for everybody's favorite topic, holiday disasters. Let’s hear them, the bad, the ugly, the unmentionable. Hopefully with a bit of humor thrown in. Like mine.

Xmas 2009

The back story. My parents got divorced in 1967. My mother has emphysema. My father took retirement in the fall of 2009. We all live in the same general area. My father had his prostate removed due to cancer, in 2005. I am prone to hay fever, and I usually take benadryl at night so that I can sleep, as it knocks me out. My father and his wife are planning to host Xmas dinner for 15.

Sadly, all of this is relevant to the story, all of which is true.

Xmas is on Friday, Dec. 25.

The real story starts Thursday, Dec. 17, a week before Xmas. My father and step-brother went to a hockey, and my dad went to get an ice cream. Coming back to his seat, he slipped and broke his ankle. And my step-brother threw out his back getting my dad out to the car. I discover all this the next day, and my dad is having surgery on Monday, so I have to do the heavy lifting part of the Xmas dinner prep. OK, no big.

The weekend passes fine, surgery goes well on my dad. It’s drive through, he goes home Monday night. All is well.

Tuesday, my sister-in-law has the female surgery so that she won’t pee in her pants any more when she sneezes. This goes well.

Wednesday I finalize plans to come up on Thursday and do my part for dinner. Everything is looking good.

So, Wednesday night, I put my daughter to sleep. I take my benadryl. About 30 minutes later my mother calls, from a friends cell phone, not hers. She is having breathing problems, a friend is taking her to the ER, can I meet her there. So, I get get dressed and get ready to go when my wife reminds me I have already taken my meds, and falling asleep in the car on the way to the hospital is not a good idea.

So I figure out how to call back the phone my mother used to call me. The phone is off, and voicemail is not even turned on, so I can’t leave her a msg on that phone. Her phone is turned off, but I left a msg, which she never bothered to check. At 2AM, not knowing where I was, madre calls my brother looking for me. (See note on S-I-L above.) But she never calls my house to look for me.

Thursday morning my step-mom calls. My father took 1 restless leg syndrome pill, and 6 blood pressure pills, rather than the other way around, the night before. So he went to the ER. It turns out, the same ER my mother was in. (My dad was in ER observation. Though this too much of this type of med can kill you, they did not have to pump his stomach or anything.) XMas dinner plans are now on hold. No need for me to come up.

By the time I get my act together and get to the hospital where my parents are, my father has gone home, and my mother is in the cardiac ward, but out of the ER. She needs a few days of observation, but is otherwise OK.

After spending time with my mother, I get home in the early afternoon. My wife is out shopping at the market. My step-mother calls. Dinner plans for the next day have been changed. My brother and his wife are now hosting dinner. (See note on S-I-L above.) They have 24 hours to pull this off, for about 15 people. So I call my wife, tell her what’s happening, tell her to call my S-I-L, and they take care of things for Xmas dinner.

Now, come Xmas dinner everybody shows up at my brothers house, the house is ready, table is set, food taken care of, etc. It’s time for the gift handouts, mainly to the four kids. Gramps & Grammie, my parents, go last. And this is when it gets interesting.

My dad & step-mother bought all of the grandkids things that go in boxes, and put them in my dads side of the closet. My step-mother pulled down box one, looked in it, and said “this is for grand kid #1” thru #3. No need to look in box #4, which was for my daughter, as it was obviously for my daughter. She wrapped them all and brought them to Xmas dinner.

My 8yo daughter could not read the words on her box, gives it to my wife, who starts to read it out loud, realizes what it says, and tells our daughter than gramps & grammie made a mistake, and gave her the wrong box. My step-mother looked at the box and almost lost her dinner, she was so embarrassed.

Remember in the back story that my father had is prostate removed? Somebody had given him, as a prank, aSwedish <censored word> pump. This is what was in box #4, that was not checked before wrapping.

It took the rest of us a while to figure out what happened, but once we did the laughter started. I have yet to remind my dad & step-mother about that, but my wife, my brother, and his wife still laugh about it. My mother does not know about this, as there is no need for her to.
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So, any more good disaster stories out there? Ones that make you laugh, or cry? Make you shake your head and go “WHY would you do that?” Shows that went horribly wrong? Burnt food?

Take care,

edg

[darwinohm]

Ed, I have to hand it to you, no one could make that up!! Things have been pretty tranquil here. The cats did tip the Christmas Tree over and we survived that. Great story!-- Darwin

[Sean Clavin]

WOW! Don't know what else to say!!

Don't think I could top that one, my Christmas stories are pretty much boring.

[El Fug]

Great story! I really enjoyed that.

But what the hell is this part about:

Tuesday, my sister-in-law has the female surgery so that she won’t pee in her pants any more when she sneezes. This goes well.

Is this common?

[louis cyfer]

no holiday disaster stories other than when i was a kid.

[meowmix]

My S.I.L would put the Christmas tree up two days before Christmas and take it down after the presents are unwrapped. And no one cares. Funny stuff.

I can't of any disasters off the top of my head.

[zapcosongs]

I had an extra vodka tonight in your honor, Ed. And to permit me to respond insightfully. Here goes!

1) What did you have for lunch today?

2) I'm hunting for a crumb of G&L content here. Are you saying in your own special way that Leo had some appliance design ideas that are not commonly known? That he had trouble controlling his pee-pee?

3) I'm wondering if Dad was, uh, "pumped" to get such a thoughtful gift..... Was it a Tube Screamer?

4) Can you send me a PM with your sister-in-law's doctor's info, I'd much appreciate it. My wife has - on occasion - had this issue since giving birth. Sometimes, when she is on top of me and I make her, uh, happy, we'll share an unusual and warm-flowing experience. Gets cold quick, though... Dear Lord....

Any day can be a holiday, you know? - ed

[Michael-GnL-Michael]

The only Christmas disaster I can think of was the year I received a reel to reel tape recorder as a gift. I think I might have been 8 or 9 years old. I recorded a segment while we were unwrapping presents. My father started cracking jokes about the gifts he was supposedly unwrapping and got my grandmother and mother laughing. At one point my father started throwing boxes and wrapping paper in the fireplace causing the flames to grow and my mother panicked. Things were under control but listening to all of the commotion on the recording was fun afterwards. Eventually this tape recorder started to fall apart........being owned by a kid who tinkered around with it too much. You would have to manually hold a part in place that would rest on the tape when you wanted to erase something. One day while I was rewinding this treasured tape that little part flipped into position and the tape was blank when I hit Play.