On Christmas Eve, Tony and I drove down in our rental car with the Rudester. We had the borsch for lunch at Granny's. She didn't like it.
That evening, we had the usual Christmas Eve cold cuts and sides, including Jean's wonderful green Jell-O salad that, like so many things I mention on here, I would have sworn I'd written about before but doesn't turn up in a search. Dad and Jean had bought kosher salami for David but no mustard. He ragged on them all night because he couldn't put mustard on his sandwich. On Christmas day, Dad went to Acme—who knew it would be open?—and bought some Gulden's spicy brown. Before David and the rest of the Gerbers came over to Granny's for lunch—Dad had brought the leftover sandwich makings to Granny's too—I doctored the label of the mustard.
That's Souf Jersey–speak, bitches!
Rudy seemed underwhelmed by the squirrels-in-a-tree-trunk toy I got him.
Since then, he's played with the squirrels a bit. And I've gotten him to pull the squirrels out of the trunk to retrieve a biscuit at the bottom. And after we got home, Tony had fun posing the squirrels on and around our snoozing boy.
We started opening presents at Dad and Jean's before dinner and finished up, with the Gerbers handing out their gifts, after dinner. Tony got me a Smokey the Bear like I had when I was a wee lad. Actually, I think I had two back then because I wore the first one out, if I remember correctly.
He had said I was either going to love one gift he'd gotten me or I was going to chuck it aside, and he meant this one. I loved me some Smokey. It was such a sweet idea. He also gave me a book of amazing portraits of monkeys and apes.
Everyone enjoyed looking through it.
Jean and Dad had the cutest little tree on the table between the front door and the sofa.
Tony and I gave Granny an organic-flowers-of the-month-club dealie. Her first bouquet arrived a couple of days before we did.
I had hoped to make pop-up cards for everyone in the family, but I didn't get them done. I made a rudimentary one with a pop-up fork for the Gerbers that I thought turned out pretty well.
It reads: "Have dinner on us at the restaurant of your choice. But not Per Se, because that would be taking advantage of us and our generous offer. And no wine pairings for Mike and Matt. Remember how badly that ended last time. And as always, for G-d's sake, DON'T GET THE LOBSTER!" (The last line is a standard joke of mine.)
I had invisioned the Gerbers picking out a nice place (but not Per Se kind of nice), putting the bill on their credit card, and letting me know how much it was, so I could pay them back by check. Tracey and David insisted that we should all go eat somewhere together. So we're taking the four of them to Bistro de la Gare, our new favorite neighborhood restaurant, later this month during the next 'phews visit.
I had a little glass tree like the one in the pic. I got it in the 1980s at Lord and Taylor in NYC, 5th ave store on new years day. Mine had blown glass ornaments on it. I gave it to my mom to use as her Christmas tree the first Christmas after my dad died...1990.
Posted by: dan balko | January 08, 2012 at 09:31 AM