Also known as Christmas Eve…

How many ugly Xmas sweaters?
It’s been one day at the parents’, and so far, so good. Only one or two moderately offensive comments about Democrats (hello, I’m sitting right here) and Muslims. Mostly it’s my stepdad telling us how much he doesn’t like Christmas and he doesn’t want any presents. And then saying how we should open all the presents right now and asking my mom if she’s remembered to wrap the powerstrip (yes, you read that right) that they bought for my little brother. He’s got seasonal schizophrenia obviously.
J has made himself sick devouring the super-rich, extra chocolaty cookies my pastry chef sister made for him. Finally, somewhat sympathetic (though a little sick of hearing about how his tummy doesn’t feel well) I told him to get out of the kitchen while I hid the cookie tin. No more cookies for him.

mmmmm...chocolaty
UPDATE: I continue to find new places to hide the cookies and regulate his cookie consumption to two at a time. I am the Cookie Nazi. No cookies for you!
UPDATE: How many ugly Christmas sweaters were under the tree? None! At least, none for me. My sister got one. We call it a Christmas sweater because she got it for Christmas. Even my mom doesn’t buy sweaters with Christmas decorations. Still the one she got was red and it was hideous. So it definitely counts.

After the storm: Christmas morning.
My sister, J, and I made a last minute trip during a surprise snowstorm (yes, I have pics of the inside of a cookie but not of the snow) to Whole Foods to pick up some beer and champagne for gifts for my brother-in-law and pies for Christmas dinner. When we left my parents’ house, the plan was to pick up something for lunch after we were done at Whole Foods because, if there’s one thing you can bet on at my mom’s, it’s that–despite vast quantities of food–there’s nothing that you’d actually want to eat. But it was snowing like mad when we left, and it was cold and very blustery, so we decided to skip the extra stop and try to scrounge something up.
At home, I made J a sandwich. Fresh ciabatta roll, turkey, muenster cheese, pickles. Then I went to put some mustard on it. There were five open mustards in the fridge: two yellow, two a horseradish whole grain mustard, and a Gulden’s spicy brown. Horseradish and turkey don’t really go together–and yellow mustard is really only for hot dogs and hamburgers–so I grabbed the Gulden’s. It was a squeeze bottle, and those are tricky, always shooting out that gross little bit of mustard water before the actual mustard comes out. So I took it to the sink and gave it a squeeze. A disgusting stream of brown-colored liquid came from the bottle. Not your normal mustard water, that’s for sure. I looked at the bottle. There was this giant brown spot in it. I’m not sure what it was, and I didn’t look too closely. I checked the date. It had expired back in late summer.
Fine. Horseradish isn’t ideal for turkey, but whatever. If J was going to be picky, he should have made his own sandwich. I grabbed a bottle. But fool me once…blah blah blah…so I checked the label first thing. May. 2007. Seriously. I got the second one…March. 2007. Well, obviously, I did the only thing I could do: I used the yellow mustard (which had a 2010 date) and put the other two back in the fridge. Hey, it’s not my fridge. Later my sister, with whom I had been sharing the details of this little mustard misadventure, spotted them lurking from their spot in the door. She threw them away, the better to protect future sandwich makers from dodgy condiments.
| Clearing away the lunch mess and breaking out the cookie cutters, we began to make cookies. The dough was well-chilled, though, as usual, the room was stifling, so we had to work fast before they dissolved into a gooey mess. |
 cookie cutters |
| And still, somehow several of them puffed up to nearly unrecognizable shapes. This year, instead of the royal icing we normally use for cookie decorating, we went with meringue. It was interesting to work with. We had white, green, and yellow meringue; a bag of Skittles, and some red crystal sugar. |
 Yes, those are Skittles. |
| And we had to pipe with homemade wax paper cones. There’s only so much you can do. The meringue does make for fabulous beards, I do have to say. |
 ...Everybody's waiting for the man with the bag |
We finished the cookies, and gathered around to play a little MarioKart. I suck at games, I admit it. I make wild hand gestures causing my character to plummet to her death, run into walls, or get bogged down in quicksand. Then I swear a lot at the television. My family understands this about me and tease me but not mercilessly. I talk smack but take the teasing with fairly good grace.
In the middle of a race, from the kitchen we hear my stepdad, who’s making a sandwich. Pastrami, rye bread, cheese, mustard….mustard? Where’s the mustard? There were two open mustards in the fridge. I just used them on Wednesday….
UPDATE: We went to Target on Dec. 26 and purchased two new bottles of mustard–one horseradish and one spicy brown. Just to emphasize how long overdue that was: French’s had changed the packaging! We hardly recognized what we needed to get. Also, on a similar note, J went to take some Advil and discovered it had expired back in 2008. Now, normally I’m not a rabid date-checker, but by now I’m feeling pretty paranoid. So if I didn’t buy it while I’m at their house, I will be checking the label.