The Chronicles of Marge

Notes from Christmas 2011

You know it’s Christmas when...

• Your husband makes a Jell-O mold in the shape of a fish and everyone is too scared to touch it. Luckily, that shit disappears down the sink when you run hot water over it.
• You are at a party wearing an ugly holiday shirt and the man you are talking to compliments your shirt and then his eyes never leave the shirt and you realize he’s trying to check out your boobs but struggling to find them because you were never blessed with boobs, but the guy keeps looking nonetheless because he’s too drunk to do anything else and he still thinks that Christmas Miracles happen. (They do not—at least not this year.)
• The Christmas Eve dinner at your in-law’s house looks like this: tabbouleh, bean salad, brie, fine European chocolates, German cookies, red wine, and beer.
• The Christmas day dinner with your mother’s family includes the following: baked pineapple casserole with cheddar cheese and Ritz crackers (I know); ham rolled with cream cheese (no, seriously, these still exist); a seven-layer salad that contains both mayonnaise and sour cream (don’t even); a congealed salad that contains nuts, pineapple, and shredded cheddar cheese (I wouldn’t); and a ham salad (just plain wtf? man).
• And nothing really says Merry Christmas like hitting your 5-year-old niece in the face with a Frisbee on the first day of Special Family Time Together With the In-laws. During the ensuing tears and repeated exclamations reminding me of what I had done to her, I finally said, “I know what I did to your face, so don’t tell me again because all you are doing is making me feel bad about myself.” You know, because it is all about me. And for those of you who think I am a heartless, childless bitch: my niece was just fine. In addition, I’ve held a total of three small children over the last week and I didn’t break any of them.

In Search of The Tacky

Tomorrow is the Ugly Holiday Jumper Day at work. After we did this 2 years ago, I returned my ugly jumper to the K-Mart because I felt the $15 I spent on the sweater could go to better use. So when this year rolled around, I was without an ugly jumper but felt confident that the K-Mart would not let me down. Boy, was I wrong. There I was at 7:30 tonight wondering why the hell the merchandise at K-Mart had made such a drastic change as of late because there were no ugly sweaters to be found. So I decided I needed to go into a store in which I had not stepped in 8 years: Wal-Mart. Surely Wal-Mart would have some tacky shit.

Apparently not.

I was getting nervous, and Jason I and were carting around perishable groceries in the car, so I dropped him off at home and headed to one of the worst places in the world during the week before Christmas: The Mall. Y'all, I hit every department store in that joint. And you know when JCPenny doesn't carry a single ugly holiday jumper that there is a problem—a problem called People Apparently Buy This Crazy Shit and Wear it WITHOUT IRONY. In near despair, I stopped in at the Target and ended up crying in the parking lot. When I got home, I busted in the door all anger and noise. Jason, God bless him, had a candle burning and was playing some George Winston in anticipation of my mood. Of course, I yelled at him anyway and then went to the closet and pulled out my sewing machine.

One hour and many nasty things said later, I had put together this piece of work:

It's definitely no jumper, but it is ugly and it may fall apart as tomorrow progresses. I hope I at least get an A for effort. Fredo, our bathroom flamingo, thinks I should.

In Case This Comes in Handy One Day

Jason told me this morning that he dreamt of zombies last night, and I was not surprised. You see, we recently plowed through the first season of The Walking Dead like the end of the world was upon us. And sometimes I wonder if it is. I know, nothing like The Chronicles to add a nice dose of Anti-Optimism to your holiday season. But whatever. I’m thinking that possessing a certain amount of preparedness on the subject of zombies or any other post-apocalyptic event might not be a bad idea. Actually, just consider this a Christmas present from me to you titled “What I’ve Learned From The Walking Dead and What May Come in Handy at the End of Times If You Manage to Survive.”

1. Leave the sheriff’s hat behind. No one cares about any authority you might have had back when the world was populated by 7 billion humans. Also, you will look like a fool.
2. Don’t move toward past civilizations, and for the love of God, don’t go there more than once. Move away from civilization as you once knew it.
3. In the words of the Starks of Winterfell: winter is coming. So maybe think about preparing for what future you hope to have. Find a place with a good water source. Hunker down. Plant a garden. And by all means, start working on that wood pile for winter. You’ll be thankful you did when it’s 30 degrees outside; you’ll also have some really good-looking biceps and abdominal muscles.
4. Finally, listen to the redneck. He’s the only one who knows how to hunt and has any sense on matters of survival; he is also kind of hot if you look at him in a certain light, but heck, I’ve always had a thing for a man who looks like he’s been chopping wood versus one who looks like he deploys hair gel on a regular basis. 

And although I did not marry a redneck, and you may think I’m shit out of luck on point 4, I’ve got the next best thing: a Chatham County boy who grew up in a log cabin that didn’t have any indoor plumbing and who knows how to fell a tree. Also, my father taught be how to haul wood with the best of them, so I think Jason and I will be just fine when the zombies come.

The Via Alpina: Part 5

Thirteen miles in the rain was both sensational and horrible at the same time. Actually, I exaggerate. It was probably only 9 miles in the rain, but we might as well pretend it was the whole way because once you are wet, you are wet.

We started our morning under a cloudy sky. At the top of the first pass, which was less than an hour into our hike, a cool but light rain began falling. This was just in time for us to make it down a bed of scree, but, lucky for us, the path was built with a series of metal footholds, large rock steps, and a metal cable for most of the way down. It sounds tricky, but it was one of the safest and calmest parts of the trail.

Then we hit a stretch that snaked along the grassy slope of the mountain. It was raining but it was quick going, except for some amateur sheep herding on our part, and we were confident that the estimated time of 5 hours and 45 minutes from Prinz-Luitpold Haus to Tannheim, Austria, was accurate.

It was not. Somebody lied.

Nine hours later we rolled into the village looking like two strung out crazy people hell bent on finding a hot shower and a hot meal. And then a bed, a bed in which you decide never to leave because after 13 miles in the rain, you decide you will never go Out There again.

So back to the trail...the easy grassy part ended like it was going out of style, and we encountered a section where the trail just kind of hung to the side of the mountain, and thus we hung onto the trail via several secured areas with cables and handholds. Also known as Tough Slippery Shit in the rain. And then the rain started coming DOWN, at which point Jason decided that he needed to put on his thermal underwear shirt and I was all, Dude, it’s called underwear for a reason. So there he was shirtless in the pouring rain, and I’m trying to help him pull his shirt down because clothes often curl up when they come in contact with wet skin, but then I was firmly reprimanded because my freezing cold hand accidentally touched his back and it pained him to the core. Obviously, I’m never helping with that again.

We continued on but we became very cold, so we started walking quickly. And then I really needed to pee, but there was no flat land and there were no trees. So World, I did something every hiker knows goes against code: I pulled my pants down and peed right there in the middle of the trail. And for a split second I thought about getting out the toilet paper and wiping but then I said screw that because there is nothing worse than wiping yourself with already wet toilet paper. And I won’t speak about that subject any more.

We then got to a section about 30 yards long that was secured by a cable because one side of the trail dropped off steeply. And at that moment in my life, I realized a fear greater than my fear of heights: it was the fear of dying in the freezing cold rain on the side of a mountain. So I went forward without giving a shit about falling to my death, and when I got to the end, Jason said, “You took that like a boss.” And I was all, “On a sunny day, I would have peed in my pants, but today, not a chance.”

Shortly thereafter, we entered a whiteout zone as we descended to the Schrecksee, which roughly translates to “frightening lake” in German.

The lake was only the halfway point of our day, and to add to the frightening nature of this fact, we were then introduced to the true elements of hell: mud—as in slippery, soul-sucking mud. Sometimes we had to go up it, but mostly we ended up sliding down it. It was slow going to say the least.

Finally, we saw something that looked like civilization: Vialpsee, a long lake in the valley way below—and let me stress the way below part. Because the worst part of the trail was to come: the part of the trail where you can see freedom in your future, but you just can’t get to it yet. On this part of the trail, Jason and I had to use our hands to crawl down a rock face while praying to God that our feet would hold as we moved one leg at a time in giant stretches. I think I about blew a hamstring, and it’s possible that I cried then because I was tired and hungry and wet and had been unable to sit down all day and was forced to urinate for the second time on a human foot path. But a hot meal and a warm bed were in my future—you know, just 2 more miles down the road.