Bootcamp X-mas

Do you know anyone who seems to have forgotten the true joy of holidays in his or her strive for The Perfect Christmas Celebration? No matter what religion, they just seem to obsess over something so much that the joy of season is lost somewhere among the designer wrapping paper, super-traditional cookbooks, and collectible tree ornaments. It may be a close friend who is one step away from camping out in the Toys-R-us parking lot in order to get her elementary school-aged kids all the items on their highly sophisticated and demanding lists... Or an older sister on a brink of a nervous breakdown, who races to outbid everyone else on eBay and get that perfect christmas gift, dropping a small fortune on it and completely disregarding the fact that she just possibly kissed goodbye her child's college tuition... Or it could be a neighbor who you fear may short circuit the entire neighborhood just to draft enough electricity to power all his Christmas lights? A distant cousin whom you haven't seen in almost a decade but who never fails to mail you a tediously detailed update on all her pet ducks' lives every December, despite the fact that no one in your family ever reads her letters and have stated so on multiple occasions, as she is certain that it is "the proper thing to do" around the holidays?

We probably all know someone like that. We see these people shoving each other at Wal-mart, snapping at cashiers, buying incredible amounts of candy canes and enough egg nog to irrigate a small country. They speed dig through the seasonal isles and clearance racks, get rude to one another over the last box of ginger snaps, snatch up pounds of batteries, angrily honk horns at other shoppers in the parking lot, mail off a truckload of packages at the post office, and turn their homes into what looks like a warehouse of christmas towels and dollar store angel figurines. In all the holiday rush-rush, they seemed to have lost the basic idea of the holidays - which is to enjoy one's self, get in touch with family and friends, and celebrate the season. Celebrate, as in "have a good time, rejoice, absorb the happiness that comes from fond memories and getting together with loved ones". For some people, however, this becomes the ultimate race for the perfect holiday, also known as the "Bootcamp Christmas" phenomenon.

Christmas Eve, 1800 hours
My fiance and I get informed that the family Christmas breakfast will be held at my fiance's aunt's house at
8 am sharp. His aunt lives at least 30 minutes away from where we are staying in Ohio after having driven for 13(!) hours the night before to be there.

1900 hours
We are bullied into watching my fiance's parents exchange their Christmas gifts. After a little while, all the
candle dishes, Christmas mugs, and books become a blur. His step-dad goes on a long braggy lecture about how his biological daughter always gives the best gifts and buys the most thoughtful gift bags and how SHE definitely knows how to have a perfect Christmas.

2030 hours
My fiance and I privately exchange gifts wrapped in very unthoughtful leftovers of last year's christmas wrapping paper in our room to avoid judgment. He presents me with a brand new GPS and a spa certificate redeemable for a bunch of things - there's a massage on there, a waxing, a facial, and a manicure - all paid for. I love to feel pampered and we do travel a whole lot which occasionally means getting lost or getting frustrated because there is a shorter way to get somewhere but we don't know it and prefer not to risk a possible 4 hour detour in the dark. There is also a memory card for the GPS and a high definition camcorder small enough to fit into my purse but with a video quality of a really good television - 1080 LCD. I shriek with delight. I give my fiance a lot lesssince I've been doing more studying lately than working - being on the verge of grad school is no joke. He is given a wireless laptop mouse to aid him in his game of Fallout 3 when we are away from home, staying the night at my mom's or on a 6.5 hour drive to visit with his brother 2 states over. I also give him a vintage hat, a dress shirt, a cool new tie, a cologne, and a tool box for all his computer and electrical crap that he constantly messes with but regularly misplaces due to no particular storage assigned to said crap. He is pleased. We cuddle and munch on our favorite snack of fried baby pumpkin seeds.

Christmas Day, 0600 hours
I get up and wake my fiance up as he mumbles something about bootcamp christmas before stumbling off to brush his teeth with his eyes still closed. We attempt to get into festive mood given the time of the day and how tired we are from a recent lengthy drive on a very icy road. We both seem to have acquired sore throats and slightly stuffy noses. We ignore the discomfort and attempt to groggily get ready. The shower pipe is frozen, so taking a shower involves standing under a pencil-thin stream of tepid water for an hour wondering how the hell will I get all this soap off? Post-shower, I reject my red, sort-of Christmasy sweater because it seems to add at least 4 years to my age and instead go for a still dressy but a lot less obnoxious combo of a navy blue satin blouse, a delicate white cardigan and a black belt. My fiance dons the cute dress shirt I gave him yesterday and the first tie he finds which seems to match oddly enough.

0730 hours
I have barely showered and gotten dressed, no make up on yet - and I am being rushed to leave the house because the "car has already warmed up and we mustn't be late." Because God forbid we arrive 10 minutes late - they'll return our presents to the store and wrap us up 2 lumps of coal in the second most thoughtful gift wrap ever. I mean, I would have gotten ready by now if I had to deal with a normal, working shower. Instead, it took me forever to wash all the soap off and now I'm being given weird looks. My fiance's step dad prompts my fiance to tell me that I could do my make up AFTER we get to my fiance's aunt's house. However lovely the idea of meeting some of my fiance's family for the first time ever in the buff sounds, I grudgingly collect my make up into my purse and decide to apply it in the car on the ride there. Looking rough at my fiance's family's christmas party was definitely not on my holiday to-do list. I shudder at the thought of getting a long hug from each grandma, aunt, and cousin while looking wistfully towards the bathroom, escaping the embraces and cutting off introductions just to occupy the main bathroom downstairs for several minutes to emerge a bit later looking noticeably different and possibly whored up (bad lighting anxiety = bad combination) I clutch my mascara tighter and jump in the car secretly wondering if perhaps I should have worn camo.

0804 hours
We report to our base. I have managed to moisturize and apply foundation, blush, eye shadow & mascara on a very shaky ride here. I could have done a better job with my eyeshadow and my lashes are clumped in some places, but I no longer look like a cave woman, so I can deal with that. It's slightly uneven but who cares, I doubt anyone will be staring hard enough to notice. I suddenly realize that my lips look rather parched and that I left my lip balm at my fiance's parent's home, but figure that if I start chowing on the food soon enough, people will think that all my lip gloss got rubbed off during the meal and perhaps the look of my mouth will even improve with turkey grease and cranberry sauce stain....
Oh - here we go, children running out to greet us yelling excitedly about opening presents soon, golden retrievers running up to sniff the new guests, smell of something delicious being cooked in the kitchen. Our coats are hastily taken and we are escorted into the dining room where everyone has already gathered around a huge table. We are informed that we are to have chow/breakfast, read a couple of Bible verses about the birth of Jesus out loud at the table and start opening presents at 8:30. Visions of uncles screaming: "You're opening your presents like a sissy! Tear that thoughtful paper! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! Drop down and give me 20!" begin to dance through my head. I enthusiastically bite down on a yeast roll and stab a strip of crispy bacon with my fork.

0809 hours
Coffee is served black.
I see a creamer nearby but there is not a trace of any sweetener anywhere on the table. Everyone else is happily seeping the hot black liquid sans sugar. Lucky for me, I have a few packs of Splenda stashed away in my purse. Big plates of buttery toast and maple pastries make it around the table several times. I cringe at the thought of what this is doing to my diet but obediently take one of each. I sneakily place my second bacon strip onto my fiance's plate. The only person who saw this was my fiance's 8 year old niece. I motion for her to keep this our little secret and she giggles. Seeing how I am much older, she assumes that I must be a petty officer and so she obeys the order not to squeak.

0820 hours
We read the freaking Bible passage. It is a poor quality Xerox copy of a page of what I can imagine is some kind of Christian magazine that to me always seems like an utter waste of paper. But apparently, Jesus wants his people to kill trees to reassure themselves that they believe. We dryly and quietly each read our assigned paragraph, even the stuttery 8 year old. I internally roll my eyes at least twice. What is this? No one knows what they're reading about. This isn't one of those well known or sort of pretty passages - oh, no - this is an obscure segment that supposedly remotely talks about the wise men. What bull. The kid has no idea what in the hell she just read. The adults aren't sure either, and they keep losing their place, skipping over lines and reading someone else's. It's like a punk poetry night in a nursing home. Nothing makes sense but people keep apathetically staring at the paper acting like they understand. I'm perplexed as to the purpose of this.

0830 hours
It is finally time to open gifts. Everyone leaves the table and surrounds the large Christmas tree in the living room. We are instructed to place wrapping paper and any other trash into large plastic bins near the two couches. My fiance's aunt on his mom's side is in charge of picking up each present, reading the tag to see who it is for and from whom, and handing it to the giftee. Unfortunately for us, the presents we brought aren't exactly marked because I was going to give them to the giftees myself and I know which gift goes to which person. I make a remark about our gifts being unlabeled but it goes unnoticed. A few minutes later, a familiar looking "mysterious" bag is fished out of the large pool of presents under the tree and the identity of the receiver is questioned. I state that we didn't mark our gifts and explain why and am given a weird look. Unlabeled gifts? How inconceivable! But since I'd take a weird look over push ups any day, I take it and sit back down on the couch. The children who have already torn through the wrapping on their first few presents are now using their new kiddie digital cameras to quickly snap a series of very unflattering photos of me that the family will no doubt later view in a lovely slide show of all their kids' photo masterpieces that will also be e-mailed to extended family in other states and viewed several times at various dinner parties. A thought flashes through my head that these photos are the kind that surface a few years later on the web, after the photos' subject has become somewhat known as a model/actress, and deliver just the kind of publicity that one does not want regardless of the old cliche stating that bad publicity is supposedly better than no publicity. Scary, gossipy, discussion board posts filled with hateful comments on local modeling websites and "before" pictures on my competitors' Myspace pages pop up in my imagination but I suppress the urge to snatch the brats' dinky cameras and secretly toss them into the well in the backyard. Instead, I take off my geeky glasses, straighten my back and grin for the neo paparazzi silently praying that my face is not sweating profusely due to my proximity to the blazing fire place and that the damn cameras' batteries will soon die.

1100 hours
All presents have been distributed and opened and all garbage promptly removed. I have been semi molested by a golden retriever and made to uncoil the numerous pesky little wires attaching the 8 year old girl's doll house and all its furniture to the cardboard box that it came in while listening to a 30 second segment of a song from Hanna Montana playing from a Hanna Montana Barbie doll over and over hundreds of times. My plot to remove batteries and flush them down the toilet fell through. Several more up-close shots of my nostrils have been taken. I have set straight the false rumor that my fiance and I supposedly resided in a trailer. I have also dismissed the accusations of a strategically planned "couple matching outfits." I wasn't sure how was it that they thought that my navy satin and white wool crochet even remotely resembled a beige dress shirt with black stripes and the baby blue tie that my fiance wore. I mean, we both had on black belts... But that is hardly a matching outfit. In my defense, I had to confess to everyone about my last minute rejection of the bright red sort of Christmasy sweater but I suppose I pulled that off graciously enough.

1130 hours
My fiance's mom drops her open lipstick and it falls right between the tail and the butt of the golden retriever that's lying there. She awkwardly fishes it out and I make a joke about not remembering the lipstick being brown before. Everyone looks and makes disgusted noises. My future mommy in law reluctantly tosses the lipstick.

1200 hours
Lunch was rumored to soon be served. I offered to upload the little brats' hideous photos onto my laptop for secret quality control and manipulation. The software failed several times and the number of times my laptop had to be restarted drove me to my wits ends. My darling fiance was lost in a deep software related discussion with his cousin and I didn't want to be rude or appear bitchy by yelling at him. I muddled through as the software failed a few more times before finally acting like a normal piece of photo editing program only because it must have known that someone was looking over my shoulder. The plot ended in success - I gained the possession of the photos and to my great relief, most of them were way too blurry for anyone to be able to determine that they were of me or prove that the navy blue blob in the corner with half her face cut out of the photo was indeed, me. I suppose that was the result
of the damned little monkeys acting like they're having a seizure while snapping a picture and the crappy piece of work daringly called a camera that came with the ever failing software. I was requested by the little girl to help her with her play doh project. I resisted making phallic looking objects out of it and helped her make a snowman instead. I began nose diving and realized that I was very, very tired.

1230 hours
We go to chow. I am informed that Dr. Pepper is for grandpa and assure everyone that I don't consume soda and wouldn't dare to impose on anyone's sugar rush. I happily sip my ice water and enjoy the juicy turkey and mashed potatoes. I think that if we can't leave after this power lunch, then I will have no choice but to find a comfy loveseat somewhere in a remote corner of the house and assume fetal position as I drift away into the world of dreams.

1240 hours
The youngest of the kids begins to loudly act out and have a temper tantrum. The unit officer/father quickly evacuates him from the scene and relocates him to an off-shore base upstairs. A few explosions are heard but they are quickly covered up by the people at the table who raise their voice volumes and take the subject off children or misbehaving. The kid's grandfather's eyebrows begin to look like they're shaking hands with one another. So, he isn't a fan of noise. Then why in the hell wake an ADHD 6 year old boy at the crack of dawn and make him stay up for several hours with no nap and nothing to really do? One can feel the tension at the table but no one will say anything. The cherry pie becomes a hot topic as everyone steers deeper and deeper into denial. Golden retrievers under the table look really depressed, so I sneak them a few pieces of pot roast that came out dry as a desert. My throat turns to sand as I attempt to ingest it and finally I give in. I whisper to my fiance to pass the gravy boat and drown the rest of the meat in the mushroomy brown liquid. Maple pastries make a cameo appearance again, since evidently they weren't gobbled up at breakfast almost 5 hours ago.

0300 hours
We finally make a quick escape only to realize that my fiance's car oil has been leaking this whole time which is made very evident by the huge stain in the snow underneath the hood. Instead of leaving, we pull the car into the garage, my fiance tightens the clamp that was loose, which was the reason for the leak and adds oil to the engine. Meanwhile, the 6 year old boy wants to play darts in the room near the garage and the darts fly everywhere. Luckily they have plastic tips and not metal, because he's got quite an arm. His 8 year old sister ventures outside, successfully loses a Hello Kitty earring and starts wailing. I was about to just compliment her on her fire truck imitation as I hear my fiance's sarcastic remark coming from under the car about how he guesses that it's "Goodbye Kitty" now.

0320 hours
Is it true? We will finally make it out of here? Nope. All the guests have left but now my fiance's uncle and aunt who house this is invite us back in from the garage for a game of Life. As my fiance finishes up topping off all car fluids, his aunt decides to grill me about where we live and such. She still seems to be under the impression that we reside in a trailer somewhere in the boonies. I'm appalled at the persistence of the vicsious rumor and have no idea where it came from. We live in a house. It's not like a mansion or anything, but it is a decent size house that looks nothing like a trailer and it definitely does not have wheels. I debunk the rumor (once again) and proceed inside the house.

0430 hours
We had such a blast playing Life that ironically, that was the best time we've experienced all day. We all talked, joked around and played a board game like a normal family, with no race to make anything perfect or "the way it should be."