So first off, a very belated Merry Christmas, ridiculously belated Happy Hanukkah, and a maybe in progress, Happy Kwanzaa.
I spent my Christmas up in the mountains in Cherokee. I am now foursquare mayor of the hotel and our favorite restaurant. I find this sad but oddly gratifying. Took the normal route most of the way up but then in the grand scheme of things I missed our exit and had to go through Maggie Valley. If you have any fear of driving through the mountains on itty bitty roads that have lots and lots of twists with locals that know them so well they ride your ass like a proctologist in training, DO NOT drive to Cherokee via Maggie Valley. Turn around and go back to the exit you missed. Trust me, your passengers as well as your clenching gut and throbbing head will thank you for this bit of advice I am giving you. On that note, I think I pissed off about five carfuls of locals in a span of 10 miles. Go me.
Got to the hotel. We got the same room as we had the last time. This was not a coincidence. Mommy requested it, because I requested it. It's the room closest to the front door and the coffee bar. I can drop Mommy off at the door and she can walk right in without her walker while I go park. I like this room. Despite the toilet paper holder that falls off of the wall at every opportunity, I like this room. Don't know what time we headed to the casino but we started with Dinner at Selu Cafe. We will call this Fried Chicken day number one. We then went back into the casino.
Now I have this hang up where I hate to lose money. Sure the bright lights and the incessant ding ding clang of the slot machines lure me in at first but generally after twenty, no more than forty dollars, I'm done giving my money to a brightly colored box. To this end, I pull out a book and read quietly, like the bookworm I am. Mommy works the slots, I read. This is how it's been for years. Even before I was too young to actually gamble but for some reason no one thought to card me when going onto the floor. (I guess I've always looked old... great just depressed myself...lol) I managed to finish book 2 of the Wideacre series. I still do not recommend this series. If you can get through the first one without gagging and losing your lunch repeatedly, then you will most likely be able to get through the second one with a slight bit of gratification towards the end but the top of book three drags ass... Anyway, I had been sitting there for about twenty minutes when my tummy decided that it decidedly DID NOT like the chocolate cake we had for dessert and since I have Lutropublicaphobia (Fear of using public restrooms unless in extreme EXTREME circumstances) so I hightailed it back to the hotel. This was actually funny because between the Casino and the hotel lies Tomahawk Village. Yes, they went there. They totally went there. Anyway, the speed limit for that torturous stretch of one mile is 20 MPH and there is ALWAYS a tribal Police car sitting somewhere on it. To tell you that I gave a good goddamn if i was going 20 that night would be an outright lie. To tell you that I was so relieved there was no police officer to see me taking the village like I had a rocket attached to the car is an understatement.
Christmas morning, or rather near afternoon, we went back fro dinner at Selu Cafe. We will call this Fried Chicken day #2 There was no special food set out for Christmas because it's just another day for the Indian reservation. Thanksgiving was the big day... Ate and then went to the movie theatre between the hotel and the casino and saw Madea's Christmas. OMG that movie is freaking hilarious!! Madea always cracks me up but Tyler went and thre not only her and Larry the Cable guy in there together but at the end, he had the lady who "ain't got time for that" and the young man who told all of youtube to "Hide yo wife! Hide yo Kids!" in it. I about died laughing!! Decided not to give the slot machines any more of my money that night and I dropped Mommy off at the casino. Went back about eleven to get her.
The day after Christmas, now that was fun. First off, the glorious people that decide what is to be served at the continental breakfast chose bacon. Real actual bacon! I dropped a piece into my hot chocolate (Which I always empty an envelope on top of and don't stir in because I like it that way) and decided I wasn't wasting my bacon just because it was now covered in hot chocolate and ate it anyway. OMG! unicorns farted rainbows and Martha Stewart said, "It's a good thing!" What followed was probably the most bizarre display of me dipping my slices of bacon into my hot chocolate and chowing down. No, I'm not pregnant, stop looking at me like that. I will however be going over to Patty's to get my fondue set and further investigating this whole chocolate dipped bacon thing. Then we hit the road to Bryson City ten miles away so that we could get on the Great Smokey Mountain Railroad.
Now the train itself was pretty cool. It moved slow enough for me to get some really nice pictures of the river and surrounding mountains...(Smokey Mountain Railroad pics) but we were on the train with the Duck Dynasty-esque family of about a half a million from Louisiana and despite the fact that it was BELOW FREEZING that morning, they had every single freaking window raised on that train car. When Mommy went to sleep, for a minute there I was worried that it was the first stages of freezing to death. Then some train conductor God turned on the heat in ferocious blasts and it wasn't so horrible in the car. We got to Dillsboro and did our exploring. I got some more cool pictures and we wandered around for the hour and a half given to us. Got back on the train and came back to the depot. Whole trip took four hours. It was fun. Cold and loud but fun. I would actually do it again in the summer or in the winter if I had about three more layers of clothes on. Got back to Cherokee and needed something to eat so we hit up the KFC, So we'll now call this Fried Chicken day 3. Went back to the hotel and had lunch and then I basically sacked for a bit because I could not get warm to save my life. Even wrapped up in blankets I was still bone cold. I attribute this to me thinking I was cute wearing my blue outfit that morning and the hillbilly family from hell making the train colder than it needed to be. After turning the the heat in the room up to 80 and listening to mommy saw serious logs because the heat knocked her out, we went back to the Casino about nine.
Harrah's in their infinite wisdom gave us each a $20 food credit for restaurants in the hotel and let's just say that I was kinda hungry but I DID NOT want anymore fried Chicken (Small aside, fried Chicken is generally the only thing I trust when eating places because I don't do sauces and whatnot that everyone likes to cook their food in plus, I'm allergic to Garlic so it's generally a safe bet that it's there's fried chicken, I can eat.) Mommy chose slots over at the corner of the casino and when I looked up at the most delicious of smells I found myself staring at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse where they say that if you go in be prepared to spend a hundred bucks. I have never been because I don't care if you dip the damn cow in gold and diamonds before putting it on my plate, no steak is worth that to me. HOWEVER, with a $20 food credit to take the brunt of the $38 dollar steak, I could see paying $18 +plus tax for it.
Mastication was slow because I wanted to savor it. I didn't think to get a picture until it was all gone and there was nothing special about the plate so I didn't bother. Left there and mommy said she wanted to stay, that she wasn't done but she didn't want me to go. Now in all fairness, I was kidding when I said this, but I told her if she wanted me to stay past midnight when she could go to the ATM again, it would be a babysitting fee of $40. Color me all kinds of surprised when she says "Okay!" Insert happy dance because I walked into the casino with $100 and I walked out with $86 Go me!!! Went to get her money and proceeded to sit at a slot machine drinking root beer until two AM.
Had to leave today because I have to take the kids to church practice tonight and dammit if at some point I jumped on the wrong highway and didn't notice until I saw a nice big sign saying "Welcome to South Carolina" coming at me. I didn't panic. Mommy panicked and called OnStar but in the middle of the conversation I told her nevermind because I saw a sign saying highway 85 was 14 miles away. I was good. Once I got to 85 I was golden. Caught me a couple of rabbits and made it home in no time.
So I had fun. Did have two down spots this holiday. On christmas morning, I found out from my cousin that another cousin's grandmother had passed away. The fact that the woman passed away was not the shocker though. It was the fact that my cousin never said a word. She and I have been close all of our life and she didn't bother to tell me that her grandmother had passed. But on that very same note, while I am hurt, I'm still not as surprised as it sounds. All of our life if she had a family member that wasn't connected to me by blood, it was her family member not mine. Never mind that I come from a family where if you marry the guy from three towns over his whole family becomes your famliy's family (I.E. if my new mother in law had a cousin that passed away my mother would spread the word to my side of the family that we had a cousin pass away you get it. Your family is immediately my family's family.) Add as many banjos and hillbilly jokes as you want, that's the way it's always been with us, but not with her. When her father, who was the blood link between us passed away both she and her mother pulled away from our family like their membership was up or something. It hurts. I would have liked to have been there for my cousin in her time of need but I wasn't given the chance. It's whatever.
The morning after Christmas, my Aunt called to say that her very best friend in the world who was like another aunt to me passed away. She'd been sick for a long time but still it was not expected right then. I feel bad for my aunt and for my "aunt"'s family. They are supremely nice people.
I can't help but wonder. Death usually rounds up people in threes. This is two of my family members making the trip to glory with him. Will he be taking a third from us? I hope not. With every fibre of my being I hope not.
Secondly, above you may have heard me describe the large family on the train as the Duck Dynasty-esque family from hell. Let me be clear. I have no problem with country families nor do I have a problem with the Duck Dynasty family. The problem I have is that while the men on that show have long beards and long hair and might be on the large side of the scale they are most certainly clean guys. There are men out here that see that these guys live in the country and have this persona of being hillbilly and they think it's cool to emulate them and come out looking like they do and smelling like they THINK these guys smell. No! Those guys do not smell of beer and funk. Being on television and with wives that look as good as those women do, I can assure you they more likely do not smell like they just crawled out of the beer and vomit smelling sewer that runs under the dirtiest trailer park in America. If you want to come out of the house in Camos and have long hair and beards and be a bit on the husky male side, fine with me but dude, wash the clothes. Wash the beards and the hair. Lift the folds of skin and wash there too. Just because the look is redneck dirty doesn't mean they are dirty and neither should you be. I can't stand anyone that smells of funk and alcohol. I used to couldn't stand the irony smell that some men get after working hard all day but it has actually kinda grown on me like a perverse cologne. I can't smell it for long but certain guys that have that worked hard sweat smell do not repulse me.
Sigh. The 30th of this month will mark two years celibate for me. I think that might be the only thing that sucks about life right now. Everything else is good. Being celibate sucks. Being celibate always sucks really. At least to me. I could never be a nun or a priest. I would never get to do good in my life for saying hail mary's for the impure thoughts.
And on the hilarious thought of me being a nun, I will close out this blog. Stay Frosty y'all!!!
