Last time on Ramblings of a Hopeless Khowaga: Claudette discovered that Emilio was sleeping with Consuela, but the father of Consuela’s child remains unknown. Nora stopped Denny from taking over the corn cob holder company, but not before discovering that Kenny has been working with the Singleton Syndicate to feed them inside information since the beginning. Alicia’s rare brain fever gave her a new outlook on life and her relationship with her adopted father, her step father, and her real father, once it was finally revealed that they’re all the same person.
Nah, I’m just playin’ ya. You didn’t actually miss any of that, although wouldn’t it have been interesting if you had?
It’s been a quiet week around these parts. I spent the weekend with my folks … which is much less stressful than it used to be, now that they live twenty miles away. I get to sleep in my own bed and when I get really bored I can call it a day and go home. Family ties are great that way, ain’t they?
On Saturday we went wining in the Texas Hill Country and stopped out in Fredericksburg, which is the German kitsch capital of the Hill Country. Originally it was founded by German migrant families — one of whom was the Nimitz family of WWII fame — and now there’s a museum out there devoted to Admiral Nimitz (that part’s pretty small) and the new, much larger George Bush Museum of the Pacific War, which details every battle that took place in the Pacific arena while managing to be slightly factually inaccurate at the same time (I loved the bit where they kept talking about the “Ottoman Turk Empire” and described how after World War I, Britain created Saudi Arabia as a colony. Stuff you just don’t learn in grad school!).
My father has no sense of culinary adventure, and when we arrived in Fredericksburg, the aforementioned kitsch capital of the Hill Country, with its Main Street that has street signs in German (how quaint!) and the eight billion antique shops and bierhauses, he decided to pull into the parking lot at Chilis, at which point my usual reserve (shut up) gave out and I simply said, “Seriously?”
The resultant lunch at the biergarten was quite lovely, thank you for asking.
A few bottles of wine later, and it was a nice Saturday.
Christmas itself was a quiet affair, just the three of us, since Ray spends the holidays with his family and it’s better all around if I’m not there. My mother continually asked if this bothers me, but it’s something I’ve come to accept in the years that we’ve been together and it’s the best solution we’ve managed to work out. I just don’t think that going to visit his family would be a good idea, not at this point. Welcome to the wonderful world of gaydom.
Ray came back yesterday, after I redeemed myself for last year’s faux pas when I went to the Crate and Barrel after Christmas sale and didn’t buy anything. This year, I was right in line when they opened, and the line was short … er than last year’s. Still, I managed to snag some nice stuff.
And now I’m in post-holiday debt. Actually, I’m not in debt yet, but my savings account ain’t looking too good at this point. So much for that end-of-year bonus. Ugh.
I hope you’ve all managed to survive the holidays in one piece and that you’re having a merry, safe time wherever you happen to be!
