“Hi Chris,
Thanks for the blog! Glad to know I’m not the only one!
My parents live in the Twin Cities and I live in Chicago, so every year one of us guilts the other into making the 7-hour drive to see the other for Christmas. We don’t always alternate years so I don’t know for sure if it was 2004 or 2005 but I know it was one of those years as I remember clearly I was working at the State of Illinois Department of Redundancy Department Office and I couldn’t type for 2 weeks due to spraining my hand from ‘the punch’ and had to drive a forklift around for that time instead. (sorry for the boring history but I want to make sure I get my facts straight for you! 🙂 )
So what happened is I was most of the way their and was running late of course and was already just a little cranky when mom called my cell and told me to go directly to the restaurant they were dining at that evening instead of stopping to rest for five minutes at their place first. Naturally I had no idea where the restaurant was and mom started trying to give me directions while I was driving, expecting me to use my GPS to find it or something. I kind of lost my cool and asked her ‘why can’t we just eat at your place!?!’ and she said that if retirement meant that dad could lay around the house all day then she considered herself retired from cooking, at least during Christmas, and also the week before and after any other holiday for that matter, and what’s so hard about finding a restaurant for goodness sake?
tbc…