I Don't Do Christmas Music

My Christmas was very mellow this year. I went to Pamala's family house for actual Christmas Day, which I think was funny, since they're Jewish. We had a really fun time, and Pamala made me this awesome scrapbook of our friendship with inside jokes. It was very heartwarming, brought a tear to my eye even. I felt a little bad, because I was like, "Here, I got you a shirt...", but it was a Hannah Montana shirt with her name on it, and she put it on right away.

Then Ricardo and I went down to Lake Elsinore to see Mama and Dennis, who were in town to see his family. We both stayed in the one nice hotel in my hometown, one Holiday Inn. I was looking forward to taking Ricardo to see the town I grew up in, because it would hopefully expel some impressions he has about me that are entirely incorrect. He seems to think that I am this delicate upper middle class white girl who has never even seen a Mexican before. This could not be further from the truth, but no matter how many times I tried to tell him, he wasn't getting it.

After spending three days driving around my hometown, however, he has yet to make any of the types of comments that he used to.

My hometown is...sort of like a conglomeration of all things trashy. There are trailer parks. There are hookers. There are crackheads. There are crackhead hookers. I used to work at a community center downtown, and one day someone taped index cards to the doors that read, "Watch out for the skinny black crackhead, she will STEAL YOUR MONEY!" I knew exactly who the note was talking about too. I once was accosted at a gas station by a three hundred pound toothless Mexican yelling "Ai, mami, call me papi!" My neighbor was arrested because he had a meth lab in his garage. My other neighbor had fried his brain with so many drugs that he used to walk around with a five gallon bucket that had no bottom in it. When my friends came to stay with me for a few days, they ended up with a used condom tied to their car door.

That is the town I grew up in people. Classy, right?

Where was I?

Oh yes. Christmas. So we saw Mama and Dennis. We got them each an ipod shuffle, and we also got them each a bigger looking, but cheaper gift. Mama got dark chocolate MnMs, and Dennis got a big bag of Cheetos. Because I'm awesome. I got some cool stuff too. Like a new ipod nano, which I love. It's so small! I'm kinda scared that I will lose it, but I got this nifty case for it, which helps a lot. Ricardo also hand made me a beautiful card that had three pages of writing in it that was so sweet and loving that I seriously cried. Because I'm a girl. I also got some nice teas from Dennis, since he goes to Thailand (or is it Taiwan? I think it's Taiwan. Crap.) for his job all the time. And a pretty watch. And a little diamond from Mama that I'm going to make into a nose ring.

For New Year's, we went to the Roosevelt Hotel and rocked out. See how cute we were?

Ricardo was there too, I promise.