When you grow up and everyone gets married and some have kids and some get divorced, holidays get complicated. Rick and I don’t have kids, so we go with the flow.  My sister, like me, is married. She has kids.  Her husband, Greg, has a sister Cheryl.  Cheryl is married and her husband probably has brothers and sisters, who may or may not be married and/or have kids. I lose count. It’s all a very complicated puzzle with many moving parts.  

We thought we had it all worked out. This is a Sloas year for Thanksgiving in Memphis. That is, until Cheryl decided to adopt a baby. Because of the baptism, Melisse had to switch Thanksgiving and Christmas. She ran it by Mom and Dad, who ran it by me.  Like I said, we’re flexible. I think this was in August.  Cheryl gave us all plenty of time to make adjustments.  The only thing is, no one thought to tell David. I guess Mom and Dad figured Melisse told him and vice versa. Oops.  As it turns out, he had some big plans to go to Las Vegas or something; I forget the details. To say the least, he was pissed.  Melisse and I received a one page all caps email telling us what low life we were.  I don’t exactly know why I was included, but hey, it was always David and “the girls”. We are part of the same collective noun. 

As fate would have it, this was our last Christmas with Mom before she died the following year. She already had had her leg amputated and was getting around in a wheel chair. David decided to boycott Christmas because of the switch and his Vegas trip, and that was OK with me. He can sometimes be a little disruptive, especially when he’s mad. I was somewhat suprised that Melisse and I both had presents from him under the tree. They were wrapped in identical packaging, you know, the collective noun thing. I opened mine first.  There were two bottles of wine, one named “Bitch” and the other one “Ball Buster” and a card that read, “Merry F%@king Christmas.”