We got here (to a town on the outskirts of Chicago) at about 11 last Friday, and we're leaving on a 6 AM flight tomorrow. It's only been a week, but that week's been plenty long for me to realize how much I miss my Dad's side of the family out here. Don't get me wrong -- Mom's side's great and fabulous and a lot of fun, but even though they're close geographically to us, we don't really see them a lot. They never all get together -- there's an aunt I haven't seen since I was too small to remember, and somebody's alway's feuding with someone. Not to feed into a stereotype, but if anyone's ever seen the depictions of Jack's crazy Irish family on 30 Rock -- there's a lot of that shit that they just don't make up. Except that my grammy's awesome and not at all like Jack's mom so there.
Anyway.
Both sides of my family are big. Like, really big. Mom's got two brothers and four sisters. Dad's got four brothers and a sister -- so technically his side of the family's smaller, but I always say there are more of them, because in my head, there are. I think it's because, when my dad's side of the family gets together, there's always one hell of a lot of noise. All of his brothers and sisters are married, and most of them have kids, and some of those kids have kids -- so it's kind of this rowdy noisy gathering of people, and I never really thought to count which ones were actually my uncles and aunts or not.
So if I've ever lied to you and said I had seven or eight uncles, I wasn't lying to you -- I was just talking about them in terms of the amount of noise they make.
It also makes me really sad that most of you won't ever meet these people, because they're all awesome and such fun -- especially my Nonna.
She's this little old Italian lady, and she's gotten littler and older since I saw her last, three years ago. She's somewhere around 86 years old, and shorter than I am. She's got the most adorable accent and way of saying things that I've ever heard, and she's just the best. She's always trying to do things that she shouldn't be -- always wants to help do the dishes no matter how much we tell her we've got them, it's fine. She walks around
Nonna also was really, really pretty when she was younger. And while we were looking around the room I'm staying in, my brother found this picture of her -- it's old and faded and it's kinda wrinkled, but it's a nice picture of her sitting on some stairs or something. On the back, though, there's this adorable handwritten poem, and I'm putting it up here so that it doesn't get lost, so that it's somewhere.
You
I hold most dear the friends I have
found tired and true
But of them all the one most dear
my love, is you
My friends share talk and laughter
for an hour or two
But when my heart seeks comfort
my love
I come to you.
So there's that. And it's in this really tiny handwriting, and the pen's all faded on it, but that's what it says. It's just super adorable because I don't know, you just don't think of your grandparents in this lovey-dovey context but there they are being cute and writing poems and stuff.
Moving on.
We spent Christmas Eve at my uncle's house -- he lives right across from Nonna. All the aunts and uncles were there, a cousin or two -- and the highlight of the night was all of my uncles, and my cousin coming downstairs dressed in sunglasses and santa hats singing and dancing to 'jingle bell rock' and giving out presents. yeah. That's the thing I love about my Midwest relatives. They have fun and they're not ashamed of it and yeah. It rocked, basically. Also my cousin is going to Shanghai for a semester with his college, which is pretty boss -- though I don't envy the length of the plane ride he's going to have to take.
Christmas Day, we went to my cousin Julie's house -- she's not actually my cousin, she's dad's cousin, but she's been cousin Julie to me forever and ever and ever. So she's my cousin. She has two adorable little girls who are about 10-11, and they got their first cellphones for christmas HOMG. Needless to say, these cellphones are leaps and bounds above the rock that I was gifted with as my first communication device. I mean, they're not smartphones or anything, but they're thin and they flip. These two children have gotten ahold of my number, and have been texting me nonstop. BOOYAH. I'm absolutely determined to be the cool cousin to them that their mother was to me.
Sidenote. I am tired because it took me three tries to get the right form of 'their' up there.
Anyway it was awesome and lots of fun and mob stories were told which are great because most of my family's avoided that scene, but by-marriage people and stuff have been involved. Seriously, though. Fun stories, fun people.
We pretty much chilled on Monday and Tuesday, which was swell, because we got to spend time at the house with Nonna which was good. Also on Tuesday I drove my uncle's car to run errands with dad. Yeah. About that. He has some kind of older Ford Taurus and compared to my Accord holy shit. Nothing runs right on that thing, you have to fight it to get it to start, wrestle it to switch gears, shit, even the blinkers are a hassle. But everyone survived so all was well in the end.
Wednesday we had a superfun day -- we went out to the botanical gardens where my aunt works. The gardens themselves are huge, and I'd love to see them in the summertime when everything's in bloom. They had this cute exhibit inside though, it was all kinds of chicago landmarks, buildings, etc, replicated out of natural materials, really realistically. They were fabulous -- not to mention they had it SNOWING INSIDE LIKE REAL SNOW BUT IT MELTED AND WASNT COLD. Not kidding, guys.
But also, we got to see where my aunt works. She's a botanist. But like. A kickass one. Because she's studying invasive plant species nad her lab's wicked legit, trust me guys. Also, one of her mentors is currently trying to derive some kind of fuel from mushrooms and apparently his research is actually making headway which is goddamn cool as far as I am concerned. Also did I mention my aunt is a for real legit scientist that does important stuff? She is a cool cat.
Thursday was another chillin' day, we were supposed to go to the Art Institute of Chicago (museum, not shitty marketed school) but dad wasn't feeling hot, so there was much chilling with Nonna. We also ninjasnuck out to this Italian market that's kindof like a Paces but better and we bought her some kind of cakey-thing that she likes a lot called Panforte -- not to be confused with Panetone or however you spell it. I also went on an Italy nostalgia trip and bought all the things that were imported that made me remember going to italy which was bad but awesome.
Also I've been typing this post (also doing other things) while waiting for it to be 3 AM central time so that we can get ready to go for our flight home. After all, I miss these guys like crazy, but I miss you guys back home too, and I'll be on home turf at 9 AM. See you all soon!
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