A Crazies Free Crazy Christmas

"'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the house all hell broke loose. Exception: a mouse."

It started as all great plans do with one rule. Avoid my family. Which is really something incredibly challenging especially over the holidays. This year however it all seemed to plop into place so perfectly that I really should have been suspicious.

My parents moved to Wyoming right after Thanksgiving, so their plan was to celebrate alone in the vast expanse of the middle of nowhere known as the ranch, while my grandma was going back to Kansas with my aunt to celebrate there which diverted all the crazies there and left the Florissant house vacant for me, my younger sister, and her boyfriend to take over in a glorious display of our adulthood. That of course meant a raging party with soda, candy, boardgames, and cleaning everything up afterwards (oh, yeah we're badasses). As well as a lot of time spent playing Donkey Kong on the Nintendo 64 and Pokemon on our Gameboy Advances.

My younger sister and her boyfriend arrived at Florissant house first because they agreed to take a cat from our older sister's friend who had to move and couldn't take the cat with her. The cat was dubbed Milo and was very much an adorable kitty. He however didn't seem to like my sister's boyfriend and attacked his leg twice, but since he wasn't fixed we just assumed that it was a territorial thing and he would mellow out upon being fixed.

A couple days later I was collected from Denver with my cat and mass amounts of dirty laundry. (Don't judge I at least wash the laundry myself.) That is when things got interesting. Upon arriving back at the house there was a lot of "The hell were people doing before they left?" My grandma and aunt left the house while less than an average Robinson disaster zone very much in a general state of random weirdness that you just have to not ask and walk away.

For starters, we had to hunt about the house for the mouse traps that had been set. There were supposed to be six in total and it was like some version of a scavenger hunt where if you won pain was a viable prize. No mice have been seen since we arrived and no one was snapped by a mouse trap. Mostly because I just didn't participate in this scavenger hunt.

As well as our mouse trap scavenger hunt, the microwave was pulled out from the wall and stuff was just placed randomly. To anyone that didn't grow up as a Robinson it would look like someone did a half assed job of looting the place then got bored and left. To someone who grew up as a Robinson, it would be recognized as what likes to be called cleaning.

Once the kitchen was returned to a livable state and the mouse traps found we settled into a pretty nice groove. That of course, by rules of both television and my life meant chaos was finishing up that last cocktail before stopping by for a visit.

It started with fish tacos. We all worked together and made a pretty exciting dinner and it was almost finished when I sent my sister's boyfriend downstairs to take the trash down to the garage. Angel seized this opportunity to book it into the basement to escape Milo who seized that as an invitation to chase after her into the one place in the house he is terrified of. I called downstairs after my sister's boyfriend to ask if he could bring up the box of taco shells. I was answered with a cat yowling and for a moment I almost thought that that was my sister's boyfriend reply. While this may seem odd to the people reading about it, it really wouldn't be out of character or all that surprising if it was.

But no it was the cat. That noise was probably the most terrifying animal noise I have ever heard in my life. Comparable only to that of the fox (no seriously an actual fox. I'm not a reference to the music video). It was just this terrified cat screeching yowling noise and while I could probably simulate it with my voice the closest thing you get in type it this: "YAAAUAUAUAAAAAAAAAAW! AAAAAAAAOOOUAAAAAAAA!" Now just screech that at the top of your lungs in the highest pitch possible and combine it with that of a screaming child and your close. Milo had cornered my sister's boyfriend and Angel in the basement and was just standing there with wide-eyed terror making that noise. So my sister did the logical thing and shooed me out of the basement, then picked up the cat to carry it upstairs. Milo waited until he had been carried about halfway up the basement steps before digging his teeth and claws violently into my sisters face, hand, and boob leaving her boyfriend to pry him off.

YAAAUAUAUAAAAAAAW! AAAAAAAAOOOUAAAAAAAA!

He then chased my sister's boyfriend up the stairs to the main floor and he sat there at the top of the stairs continuing his screech of doom until we chased him back into the basement and shut him down there. While we doctored my sister and among lots of blood, bandages, and disinfectant we actually found one of his claws broken off into my sister's boob.

After doctoring my sister's head, hand, and boob, the goal was to get Milo out of the terror death trap of the basement. Me being the only one having yet to experience an attack volunteered (I generally don't think these things through until after the fact). I got down to the bottom of the stairs and remembered that the light was burnt out, so I called upstairs for a flashlight in a classic moment of frobelinkensteinerbean. (frobelinkensteinerbean (noun): the moment when you realize you either just did or are in the middle of doing something you yell at people in movies for) My sister's boyfriend kindly obliged and I entered the dark basement with a pocket flashlight and a dear skin coat as armor looking for a vicious  black cat. (Horror movies really do write themselves.)

As I enter the basement I saw no cat and a flat box that had toppled over. I picked up the box leaning it against the piano and sure enough the cat just casually strolled out from behind that piano like he was the happiest most adorable thing in the world. (You were expecting him to leap out of the box weren't you? So was I.) I came up to him nicely and he remained cute and nice until I scooped him up. Then he proceeded to go completely berserk. He spent the next few moments, as I held him tightly, attacking the hell out of what he wanted to be my arm. Doing something between a march and the awkward jog you do when a car stops for you to cross the road, I got the cat upstairs and shut into the guess room with only two tiny little nicks upon my wrist that didn't even bleed. Finally we ate dinner.

After much discussion amongst ourselves and with the previous owner, we decided that the best thing to do would actually be to take it to the Humane Society. That cat was terrified of the house we were in, my cat was terrified of him, and he had attacked both the people that were his owners quite viciously. It was actually discovered while patching up my sister that part of his claw had actually been broken off in one of my sister's boobs. It was incredibly brutal and my sister's face was swollen for a few days afterwards as a result.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

So the next day me and my sister's boyfriend took Milo to the Humane Society. It was really simple to get Milo into the carrying case and he was really sweet and mellow about it. We started to feel a bit bad about giving up on him so quickly, but both agreed that it wouldn't end well if we kept him, so we went about our plan. We took him to the Humane Society and the lady we were talking to was one of the most furiously condescending people I have ever had the displeasure of speaking with. We explained why we were giving up the cat and due to Milo's cute looks and innocent meows she actually talked to the cat with more respect than she did to us. She told us all about how cats take time to adjust to new places, how cats mellow out when they get fixed, and all those other cat facts that we actually already knew.

While she obviously didn't believe a single word we had said and thought we were dumb as a blond teenager in a horror movie, she suggested a couple other cat specific shelters we should try first. Which we agreed to since we still felt bad for the little cat and wanted him to find a good home. One shelter was closed and the other was in Denver so we decided screw it and were going to just take him to the animal shelter in Divide. That of course was also closed as well. So, we just gave up, brought the little bugger home, and placed him back in the guest room thinking it was a sign to give him another chance.

That night all our friends came over for our exciting party where we drank Mountain Dew, ate candy, played a home-made version of Twister, and everyone decided that going into the room with the cat we specifically told them to leave alone was a good idea. That of course meant that Milo was the most innocent cute looking kitty that could possibly be found, so everyone was quite certain we were crazy. By the next day we had become quite convinced we were giving up too easily as well and let Milo run about the house again. It actually didn't seem like a bad idea for most of the day. While he did a good job of bothering Angel, there were no major issues with the cat until the house started to flood.

While we were watching a movie, I got up to pee and upon entering the bathroom I plunged my foot into a copious amount of ice water. (This is starting to become a recurring theme I'm afraid. See Dry Feet, Water, Again?, and Pfft) There was water gushing out of the toilet. I tried to unclog it with no success before I dove for the water valve and just shut it off. After that there was a lot of towels used to clean up the mess and we thought that we were okay. Then my younger sister opened the door to the basement to toss the watery towels down the stairs to the laundry room when Angel used it as an escape from Milo and Milo followed.

My sister ran down after the cat to try and grab him before he started panicking, but got a bit distracted by the absurd amount of flooding in the basement. It was dripping from the pipes and heating vents just pouring from the ceiling. After several phone calls between us and our older sister and several messages left to both my mother and aunt, we got the water shut of and were quite certain that a pipe had frozen and burst since there were ice chunks everywhere.

My sister and her boyfriend were put in charge of getting the water stopped, while I worked on my cat herding skills. Since Milo and his death yowl decided that crammed under the doll house table was the best possible place to panic I couldn't actually get ahold of him even with my armor. After a few minutes of trying, I decided I'd use a squeegee, that for some reason was sitting on the floor in the basement, and use it to pull the cat out of his crevice. This yielded some interesting results when I discovered he was terrified of it. It was like that squeegee was the spawn of satan. The yowling increased and he straight up went berserk and booked it past me towards the stairs. At that point, Milo was twice is terrified as before, so I had my sister's boyfriend bring me oven mitts for extra armor after Milo ripped the flesh off my hand. This time with extra armor when I grabbed for him he ripped the mitt off my hand with one paw and ripped more skin off my hand with the other. At that point I just chased him upstairs where we shut him while we cleaned up the water.

The next day after parental lectures, some phone tag, and finally a resolution, we got the plumber called and as it turns out the pipe didn't freeze and burst. Instead, the ancient toilet, that hasn't been replaced within my lifetime at least, was full of sand from the well. Since the toilet was filling with water so quickly it was both able to drudge up enough to flood through the vents into the basement and was flowing so rapidly the water wasn't defrosting giving us the ice chunks. The toilet just needs to be replaced and it was nothing that we did that caused it to flood. That is hilarious to me. Mostly because for the rest of my life I will be hearing about the time we flooded grandma's house.

On Christmas Eve we finally took Milo down to the Humane society. This of course involved getting him into the carrying case and he was quite certain that wasn't going to happen. It started with using the Swiffer sweeper to get him towards the carrying case in hopes he'd go in. This didn't work because he ran around the swifter and under the bed. After getting him out from under the bed we switched to the foam dog bed as our herding device. This worked really well since he couldn't get around it, but he leapt over the carrying case and brutally attacked the carrying case. After much ado, using a foam dog bed, two chair cushions, and a door as a barricade, we got him into the carrying case with five minutes to spare before we had to leave. In total it took us twenty-five minutes to heard him where we wanted him, but I do believe we have received our cat herding licenses at this point.

At the Humane Society, the lady we talked to actually talked to us like the adults we were and we omitted all the attacking parts from the report and it went smoothly without any of the condescension. Whoever said honesty is the best policy, has never actually had to deal with other people. We were in and out cat free within ten minutes where as previously it took us half an hour and we still left with the cat.

On Christmas we had a fun feast with my older sister, her boyfriend, his daughter, and couple family friends that went a billion and five times more smoothly in both preparation and the actually eating of it than any Christmas meal has ever gone with my family and the break has continued to run smoothly ever since.

"Twas the week after Christmas and all through the house stuffs not exploding and the cat ate a mouse."

It's A Mystery

I for one absolutely love a good mystery. I always have. From my childhood obsessions with Scooby Doo and crime scene investigation to the present day where those things are still totally awesome. Due to my life long love of mystery I have however made myself completely terrified of the genre at large. And no it's not because of murder, but because there are way too many absolutely terrible mysteries.

I am really good at predicting plot twists. Ask my younger sister who has thrown more than a few shoes at me when less than half way through the episode/movie I have predicted the ending. This usually goes "I know who did it." My younger sister replies, "Don't tell me!" Ten minutes later during commercial break or when we have to pause because of her squirrel bladder she ends up asking me to tell her and I do. Then at the end of the film she yells at me for telling her.

As much as this skill annoys the crap out of people around me, it drives me twice as crazy. You know the guy in Men In Black 3 that can see all possible futures. It's sort of like that, but on a less catastrophic scale. It's a giant pain in the ass and has led to me scorning many many things I love.

Being very nerdy by nature, I spent a lot of my time growing up reading pretty much everything I could get my hands on. While it seems like a good idea at the time it is a terrible idea and just don't do it! EVER! It was that willingness to try everything that has left me really paranoid and had made a hobby out of biting my ass.

For the past two months I have really wanted to read a good mystery, but I haven't been able to bring myself to start one. The last time I got a in the mystery machine (sorry couldn't resist) was in high school and I ruined the experience for myself. Somehow when picking out mystery novels to read I happened to pick absolutely terrible ones. I respect books too much to abuse them (seriously dog earing pages is the eighth deadly sin and you may be maimed if I ever catch you doing so), but even I came close to murdering one after reading Velocity by Dean Koontz where I predicted who the killer was on the first damn page. (The more Dean Koontz you read the more you want to run him over with a tractor repeatedly.) Another book I read through I predicted who the murderer was when he was introduced in Chapter 2, but remained optimistic thinking I just want him to be the killer because it would be a good plot twist. I am a liar and should not be trusted in such matters. No it was not a good plot twist!

It was my binge reading younger years where I was on a first name basis with every librarian because I was constantly checking out books that has made me terrified of starting new mysteries. Everytime I go to the library, I spend about twenty minutes carrying arround a stack of novels most of which are mysteries. By the time I decide to check out I have put all, but one mystery back. (In the proper place because my mother trained me well.) I check out with a handful of books in other genres, but only one mystery which is destined to sit around my apartment unopened for six weeks at which point I can no longer renew it and have to return the book. This has been going on for months and it has become an entirely new level of ridiculous.

To use a horse metaphor my dad would no doubt be proud of, I just need to get back in the saddle. I did back in high school after reading Velocity. But the next one I picked up was the other one I previously mentioned. I can't remember it's name. I just know it took place in Silverton, Colorado and had some lame plot twist with a high school student that was using a World War II microwave radiation weapon to cook people. It may have been cool if the killer wasn't a predictable cutout cookie (the bland stale ones that have been forgotten until months later when someone opens the cookie jar randomly) and the author didn't try to distract from that fact with annoying teen romance. Even after that disaster I was willing to climb back up there and once again I was sent flying. (I can't remember what that mystery was probably because I chose to strike it from my memory for all eternity.) It was at that point I decided to just leave the blasted horse alone and try riding something nicer like a llama.

So here I am a couple years later and terrified of opening a mystery novel. I love reading and I love reading mysteries, but I hate the feeling of having wasted my life on a bad book. Very few books have made me hate them so much that I actually want to hurt them. Two to be exact. Heart of Darkness because dear god that was boring and Velocity by Dean Koontz because seriously screw Dean Koontz. I really don't want to add to that, but mysteries when well written are so good.

I decided I'd only read ones my mother recommended and yet I still stand there looking at the book for an absurdly long time before I put it back on the shelf. I am determined to get over this fear. I don't care how long it takes. I will get over my Post Traumatic Terrible Mystery Disorder (PTTMD) and I am going to be able to read mysteries again! I don't care if it kills me and causes some detective to investigate my death.

A Summer At Netflix

I like many other relatively lazy Americans I love Netflix because let's face it Netflix is awesome. I originally got an account when my older sister booted me off of hers. I was half way through every season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer ever and being terribly addicted forced myself to buy my own account. It's eight bucks a month so really who can complain?

And the answer to that question is a lot of people. Over the summer I worked tech support for Netflix. I never truly understood the dense mother fucker jokes or how unbelievably entitled people are until I had to explain to the same someone several times in a row that unplugging the blu-ray while you are waiting for it to load won't help and had someone tell me that buffer was a plot for us to steal their money. (It's twenty-eight cents a day, by making it buffer through one episode of Breaking Bad we don't get that much money.)

I started off my summer by applying to every available job in the area (so many in fact I couldnt actually remember where I applied) and got called back for one interview. Working as support for the online Abercrombie & Fich store. When I went in to interview they decided I would be better off working for Netflix and ended up going through a second interview and was hired as a member of the Netflix staff.

On my first day of training the training instructor, who ironically enough, had the same exact name as my mother, botched my name and called me Sam. After a couple years portraying a male soldier named Sam in my father's Civil War reenacting venture crew, I still have a compulsion to answer to it and thus did without thinking. This led to three months of endless confusion for both me and my coworkers. I did correct the training instructor, but the damage was done and my entire training class will forever know me as Sam. Thus kicked off my summer at Netflix.

My schedule was chaotic. It changed often because I had no life and when someone was asking who could be moved about the answer was always me. All summer long I worked nights and at first was aligned enough with the Denver bus schedule that it worked well.

I'd catch the bus and get to work at 6:00pm work until 3:00am then watch shows on the TV larger than my living room in the break room until 4:00am when I'd catch the bus home. That was on weekdays. Weekends the bus didn't come until five so I'd walk to IHOP with the plan of waiting from the bus, but get sick of waiting around and just walk home anyways. That is how I became the only person in recorded history to get in shape because of Netflix.

I lived five mile away. When my schedule changed so that I got off of work at 2:00am instead of 3:00am I got bored way to easily to wait around. I started off riding my bike that didn't last very long because some drunken ass hole when I was coming home at three in the morning ran into my bike's front tire rendering it useless. (He didn't even slow down.) I started bussing to work then walking the five miles home. That continued for most of the summer.

There was about one week each month after I paid rent and was waiting for my next paycheck that I wouldn't have enough cash for even the bus. During those weeks, this was my schedule:

2:00pm - wake up and put clothes on

2:30pm - eat shitty ramen for breakfast and pack shitty ramen to be eaten later.

3:30pm - walk five miles to work.

5:00pm - get to work and chill in the break room for half an hour to prepare for my shift.

5:30pm - start work.

10:30pm - eat shitty ramen for lunch.

2:00am - get off work and walk five miles home.

3:30am - arrive home, eat shitty ramen for dinner, and watch an episode of something on Netflix.

4:30am - pass out.

2:00pm - It starts again.

For an entire week once every month, I was walking ten miles a day five days a week for three months. The other days I was riding the bus to work and walking five miles home because I was too impatient to wait for the bus. All that put together, I walked roughly 375 miles over the summer just going to and from work. No wonder the traction on my sneakers was practically worn flat.

When one of my coworkers offered to give me rides home the last couple weeks I worked there it was a God send. And when I one of my best friends in the whole world bought me a new bike it was the happiest moment. It took me hours to put it together, but my golly it's nice and oh, so wonderful. I didn't get to actually use it much for going to work because I had a ride home and as such got lazy riding the bus to work and getting a wide home from coworkers.

The commute however was lovely compared to working tech support. Working phone tech support is hell. Not only do you have to actually hear people yell in your ear about how they can't unplug the Blu-Ray Player because there is a TV, an Xbox, and a cat on top of it and it's all pushed up against the wall so they can't get to it, but you also have to try and explain to them in a calm and confident manner why that will fix the problem. This is really difficult when they just keep yelling the same thing again and again like magically it will reveal all the issues to me so I can push a magic button and make their Netflix start working.

As I was told multiple times by my boss I was quick and talented at fixing the problem, but I was too curt in my responses and didn't sound confident. I tend to give really short responses that answer the question without a lot of fluff added, so people think I'm just being rude. As a stutterer by nature, I don't generally sound like I'm all that confident in what I'm saying either. If you were to look at me while I was explaining you could probably tell that I knew what I was talking about (at least I like to think so), but from my voice alone there isn't much hope in my explaination, apparently. It's not the first time that I've been scolded for stuttering either. In sixth grade my English teacher who, let's face it, hated me decided that my stuttering through a presentation was a sign I didn't prepare enough and should be docked a crap load of points. I will never understand this mentality. It literally makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Once you've worked tech support, I promise you the joke of "Have you tried turning it on and off again?" is no longer funny. I kid you not, almost nobody has tried that by the time they call in to complain and the excuses I tell you are beautiful. I have heard, "I can't reset the router by unplugging it because I'm using truck stop Wi-Fi and it's Netflix just trying to steal my money." (That one was a popular theory.) To the much more polite and less conspiratory "Crap! I have a God awful amount of stuff piled on it. Can we do something else?"

People really don't have to want to work to get their Netflix working. I swear to God I almost slapped a friend of mine about a month ago when she decided to complain about Netflix tech support. She couldn't log into her account so she called and they sent her a password reset which she never got. When that happens something went wrong obviously and usually it means that you are trying to use the wrong email address or less likely if it's something on our end you news to call us back so we know it happened and can look into it. Technology isn't magic people. (Just don't bitch about Netflix tech support to me if you don't want a lecture, mmkay?)

After about a month, there was glorious moment when I, Sam, was given the chance to take a typing test to be switched to chat tech support. I leapt at the chance and literally danced when I finished my last day of voice. (Granted that was more because we had an impromptu flash mob at work than anything else, but there was dancing.)

Chat is pretty much the same as voice except you don't have to actually hear the stupid people, you can watch movies while you work, and you get a shit ton more people chatting in to request that we get a specific title. I got so excited when I saw that Dexter was on Netflix I literally did a little dance. Not because I liked the show (haven't actually seen it), but because it meant people wouldn't be bitching at tech support because Netflix doesn't have it. (The fact that I had stopped working at Netflix months ago was irrelevant.) There are two moments of my life where I lost all hope for humanity while working tech support. 1) was when some jackass spent an hour just repeatedly asking me to suck his dick (at one point he asked me to suck the skin off his dick. Seriously, dude? That can't be comfortable.) And 2) was when I had someone chat in two days (yes two days) after Orange is the New Black premiered on Netflix to complain that we didn't have the second season yet. I get the show is amazing and addicting and all that, but we have to actually make the second season first. The instant cassettes from Space Balls don't actually exist.

Now on chat, I had a new boss that called me Sarah and there was another guy on the team named Sam. My boss gave me some incredibly strange looks when I'd turn around because she called for Sam. The chat floor manager also really liked to yell "Sarah" when the two Sarah that worked there were on the floor just for the sake of seeing us both turn around. It was a really confusing time in my life. (Ranked up there with questioning one's sexuality and trying to figure out where the hell you are supposed to go in a game of Forsaken.) While I was quite convinced before that common names were evil, I became quite solidified in this belief from working at Netflix. Seriously, why are names so difficult?

While I hated working tech support because "dumb as a box of rocks" doesn't accurately describe people that call in, I loved working for Netflix. It was an incredibly relaxed environment. Much like how in high school I had friends that wore capes to school, at Netflix I had coworkers that did so. There was often a high risk of getting shot unexpectedly in the head by a foam dart or paper ball. There was always free popcorn (this along with ramen was a staple of my diet). We had a type off to celebrate the Forth of July. The winner was a guy that typed so fast the official statement was made, "It's like if Jesus could type." Corporate would come and listen to our feedback as to how things could be improved. And above all else everyone there is really great to work with. They understand the concept of playing why you work and still being a professional to the customer even if you are just repeatedly bashing your head into the keyboard in hope that it will make them seem smarter.

Most people who call and chat in are generally nice and just not sure how technology works, but there are enough of the incredibly dumb and rude ones to make you rampage and when you get a customer that understands technology just isn't sure what's going on you literally dance. (There is enough dancing at Netflix to be an episode of Glee. It's just not organized, synchronized, or pretty to watch in anyway.)

So as someone who has worked tech support I beg of all humans who call or chat in, be nice to the person your talking to, there isn't a magic fix all button, and I swear to God you will not die because Netflix got rid of that one show or movie.

Santa vs. Jesus

As most people who grew up celebrating Christmas, I once believed in Santa. Also as someone who grew up celebrating Christmas, I was taught all about Jesus. For a lot of people questioning the existence of either is usually a moment you remember quite well.

As quite the atheist I have realized something terribly funny to me. It was much more disappointing and more surprising to me when I realized Santa wasn't real than when I came to the same conclusion about all the stuff in the Bible. (Now, to be fair, I was much younger with the Santa thing than the God thing.)

Like a lot of people, I grew up getting dragged to church on Sundays, celebrating Easter and Christmas, and even participating in all the fun church events. When I was really little we actually succeeded at making it to church more than once every two or three months. For awhile my mom even taught Sunday school. By all means I should have had a successful brain washing. Problem was the Bible, much like the ungodly amounts of fairy tales I read as kid, never had any proof that they were true. Santa on the other hand had a lot of evidence in his favor even if it was entirely circumstancial.

I never even thought about religion until I hit middle school. I was neither questioning it or accepting it as true. Church was just the place we went to hear stories and play with other kids so long as our fancy clothes weren't injured in anyway (which usually wasn't a success in my case). Looking back, I remember liking Sunday school because we got to color, make things, and read stories. When I discovered that adult services offered little plastic cups with grape juice and bread, I wanted to go to adult services because snacks. I went to vacation Bible school, in fourth grade, because it was jungle themed and meant hanging out with my friends. I joined the youth choir in sixth grade because it meant I got to hang out with one of my best friends. And in seventh grade I joined the church band because I wanted to play the drums. Never once in my entire childhood of growing up in a religious family did I ever do anything church related for my love of God or Jesus. I did it solely for the purpose that whatever I was doing seemed fun or interesting. Which is still to this day exactly how I decide what to do.

I don't think I ever really believed the Bible. It was just a giant book full of fun stories that sat on the shelf next to my giant book of fairy tales. My favorite fairy tale was Little Red Riding Hood and my favorite Bible story was the one about Ester. (The one about Sarah, which I was forced to read multiple times because it's what I'm named after was boring and I never liked it.) I never questioned that fairy tales weren't real because I never thought about it. The same goes for the Bible. I didn't care. It was just fun. Church was a once a week club dedicated to reading and discussing fairy tales.

My mom tells me that when I was little I didn't ask a lot of questions like my sisters did. That's probably because I have always liked to figure things out on my own. I had questions, but instead of asking adults, who I was never entirely convinced knew what they were talking about, I just did research. (Boy was I naturally inclined to be a nerd.) Research in my case meant actually investigating rather than asking people questions. I actually used to solve "mysteries" on my own in my backyard as a kid and for awhile wanted to be a crime scene investigator or forensic scientist. (This was probably where my obsession with the way blood moves and looks began. Which is quite useful knowledge in film school and actually came in handy tonight while painting a T-shirt to look like it was covered in drying blood.)

When my older sister, being a professional bubble burster at a young age, told me Santa wasn't real I refused to take her word for it and started my investigation. It was sort of difficult because I had to actually wait for Christmas. My older sister's evidence was that Santa's handwriting matched Mom's. I had a plan to investigate this as well as the cookies for santa and the carrots for his raindeer. I was planning to stay up all night and slip downstairs to hide under the dining room table once my parents went to bed. This didn't end up happening though because my parents had become lazy Santas and on Christmas Eve we did our annual opening of one present each. I, while digging for a present my mom could open, found a Santa present addressed to my mom.

Mystery solved my parents were Santa. It was really upsetting. Yes, because I had been told a lie, but mostly because it meant my older sister was right and I couldn't prove her wrong and also she figured it out first. That was what upset me the most. Those are still things that irritate me quite a bit. I like being ahead of people and figuring things out first. And I really hate having to prove people right when it comes to something I was slow on the uptake of. In fact, when I first figured out I was gay, I the most upset about the fact it meant that everyone was right all along I was the last to figure it out, and now I had to own up to it.

In seventh grade, my Atheist Epiphany was, brought on by my being the auxiliary percussionist in the middle school church rock band. Two things you should know are: 1) middle school church rock bands suck and 2) the auxiliary percussionist is the person that plays all the other instruments that aren't drums and plays the drums when the actual drummer is sick. In short, I was the tambourine player.

That year I learned some very important things. The main one being cowbell sucks! I may be the only percussionist to ever say it, but there never has been or ever will anything cool or exciting about the fucking Cowbell. It is an obnoxious loud hollow chunk of metal that should be left for the purpose of hearing a cow approaching. Thanks to the actual drummer, a kid a year older than me, who actually happens to be the older brother of my younger sister's boyfriend, I heard that obnoxious hunk of metal played in my ear constantly while waiting for tambourine cues because he liked to use it as a cymbal. The Cowbell sucks! Fact!

The other thing I learned was that there is very little meaning in Christian music and that anytime anyone ever says the phrase "awesome God" I will for the rest of my life have terribly annoying song with just a few lines on repeat for about three minutes stuck in my head.

I'm not saying Christian music sucks. I'm saying simplistic Christian rock that middle schoolers can play sucks. It was that terrible music on a tambourine that gave me time to think. Any idiot can play a tambourine on cue and anyone that's not an idiot can do so whike thinking about lots of other things. Since I heard the phrase, "our God is an awesome God" on repeat and paraphrased by other phrases for three hours every Wednesday night for a school year I started thinking about God and decided that I wasn't so interested in worshiping him. My conclusion was I didn't care if he existed, I was going to do what I was going to do anyways and that if I was ever going to worship him there had to be a more creative way than repeating the same basic concept over and over again to music.

My realizations that Santa didn't exist was far more devastating than thinking about God ever has been for me. Sure the God thing has drawn more arguments and lectures, but it had the same effect as church rock band did on me. Basically, I've heard what has to be said so many times and in the few ways possible so many times that my head just zones out. The same goes for the lectures I get on not liking the Cowbell which can't actually be diversified past, "what's wrong with you?! How can you not like Cowbell?"

A Robinson Family Thanksmas

This year my older sister in what I can only assume was a momentarily decreased mental state decided to host Thanksgiving at her place. Since everyone is whizzing off in several directions for Christmas this year we combined the holidays into an event I call Thanksmas. As chaotic as Thanksgiving has always been with my family, Christmas has always been twice as much so. Combining the two was like dropping a series of chaos bombs on my sister's apartment.

It started like Thanksgiving normally does. Me, my younger sister, and her boyfriend being three people of the poor college student variety, are the three people given permission to actually stay at my sister and her boyfriend's place. We arrived midafternoon and after some bumming around the bookstore where my sister works Thai food was eaten before heading back to her place to prepare for Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, we play Dungeons and Dragons and there is a very likely chance it will become a standard holiday tradition with all future generations.

Sometime in the evening my aunt arrives and drops off all sorts of stuff for cooking food and a break from D&D preparations were made while last minute grocery shopping occured, but the chaos party didn't really start until my parents arrived with my other aunt and grandma.

Now, arrive is an understatement. They more or less exploded onto the scene in an array of Christmas presents, old people needing to pee, and various allergen free pies. It took at least twenty minutes to unload everything they had to drop off and come the next day there was somehow still more stuff. My parents while completely insane have mastered how to turn small cars into areas of infinite holding. (I do believe I may have inherited this trait from them allowing me to keep two days worth of things needed to survive in my pockets.) Amongst all of these things was a rolling pin my dad gave me and resulted in me hearing the phrase "don't forget your rolling pin," enough time to make me use it as a murder weapons.

Now before I go on let me explain something about Thanksgiving dinner in my family. We all have various allergies and other food related issues. My mom is allergic to gluten and dairy. My younger sister is allergic to green peppers (the lucky brat has nothing to worry about in Thanksgiving foods). My younger sister's boyfriend is allergic to peanuts and shellfish (again one of the lucky Thanksgiving bastards). I'm allergic to tomatoes and potatoes. And the collector of the most allergy trading cards is my older sister. She is allergic to gluten, dairy, soy and potatoes. Also, on top of that my siblings are vegetarians. As you can imagine group meals like Thanksgiving are a bitch to make.

We have a lot of labels on Thanksgiving to make sure no one is inadvertently murdered by food(passive aggressively murdered is another story). The pie table alone is insanity. There's always an apple pie for my dad. Then next to that we have the fancy one that my mom likes to make, but can't eat. Then we have the pumpkin pies. There's always two gluten free dairy free soy free pumpkin pies and the two regular ones for the rest of us.

It doesn't stop at pie either. Most years (this one being an exception) we have the gluten free dairy free vegetarian stuffing and the normal meat eater stuffing. Then we have mashed potatoes for the lucky bastards that can eat them and there are usually like three kinds just to add to the torture. We of course then have the standard classics of green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and Turkey. That's where we get to the meat replacement dish for the vegetarians. My family doesnt do tofurkey. We do something weird obscure and completely unthanksgiving related. It varies from year to year. This years was a mushroom rissoto.

Making all that and keeping it straight drives all the designated chefs insane and come time to eat all the guests not properly versed in Robinson culture (such as my sisters' boyfriends) are promptly driven insane as well. The people allergic to things get up first and collect their plates full of the things they can eat, then everybody else gets up and gets to decide if gluten free vegetarian stuffing actually counts as a food and if they want to try it.

Seating placement is crucial for such gatherings. My older sister rented the club house event room place for her apartment complex so that we had breathing room and acrobatics weren't necessary when getting seconds. Even with the extra space it took my younger sister and I about twenty minutes of rearranging place cards before we finally figured out how we could seat people to avoid arguments. If you sit this person next to that person they'll start with the racism, and if dad sits across from this aunt they'll fight about something. And oh yeah, this person's not talking to this person because something that happened months ago so they can't be next to each other. In order to avoid conflict yes my family needs assigned seats like an elementary classroom. Now once we're eating, we're happy because, well, food. So argument chance decreases naturally and we're seated properly so no one can easily start an argument. It is hard to tell if things are this difficult in other families, but mine is like herding angry declawed cats into a pond.

After dinner was the tricky part. Because Americans are fucking crazy, Black Friday now starts at six pm on Thanksgiving. My dad in desperate desire for a new TV decided to go shopping. My older sister, aunt, and mom went with leaving my younger sister, her boyfriend, my older sister's boyfriend, and me to move everything back to the actual house. We left the three remaining old people in the club house while we hung out for awhile and did a little bit of excavation on our sanity.

After enough of our sanity was recovered, we decided that we should probably lock up the club house and collect the old people, so we did. This is collectively regarded as a terrible move and should have never been done. For the next hour or so the living room was split. On one side there was good old fashioned wholesome family racism. On the other side there were the rest of us trying to ignore it by playing zombie risk, and a violent videogame. It almost escalated past a passive aggressive statement and jaw clenching, but luckily everyone's return was never more welcome or perfectly timed.

Then we did presents because remember it's Thanksmas. (And yes we all forgot at the time as well.) It was your basic Christmas morning scenario. Awesome gifts mixed in with the subpar and the "the hell?" ones. It was a fun Christmas morning held at eight o'clock at night on Thanksgiving. And afterwards they all left. This like everything else was an ordeal and I was reminded no less than five times to remember my rolling pin, but eventually they were gone and no one had been murdered.

While we love our presents and family dearly, their leaving meant alcohol, foot room, and Dungeons & Dragons for everyone, so we we're quite happy. It's amazing how effective that combination can be.