Here Comes Santa Claus

This past week my hubby has been working on an overwhelming IT upgrade at work. He normally works long hours, but this past week he has been putting in almost 15-16 hours a day working alongside a collaboration of people from all over the country who are there to provide support for their products during this installation process.

Saturday night, they decided to call it quits relatively early and the hubby invited two of the guys in from California over to our house for a beer. The one guy (who was at least in his 40's) had never been out of California in his life and wanted to try some of Chicago’s infamous deep dish style pizza first at a local bar. Cool.

One they arrived at the house, we exchanged pleasantries and while we did, it wasn’t hard to notice the overwhelming smell of whiskey coming from Mr. I’veNeverBeenOutOfCalifornia (Mr. INBOOC). The other guy was driving, so no worries.

Mr. INBOOC’s cell phone rang within minutes of his arrival. It was Mrs. INBOOC and he proceeded to blurt out all kinds of things about thick pizzas and snow and ice and how we have 50 foot Santa’s here in Chicago.

“You wouldn’t believe it, honey, I never saw a Santa that big in my life. And their TV’s here in Chicago....as big as the Santa!”

WHAT? 50 foot Santas? The hubby and I exchanged suspicious glances. Now I wasn’t so sure it was only whiskey he was drinking, although, he was right about my TV. It is pretty nice, if I do say so myself.

Mr. INBOOC then headed upstairs to retrieve himself another beer from the refrigerator and complimented me on what a nice house I have. Before I could say “thank you”, he says, “You even have an oven and everything!”

An oven? Yes, I have an oven. It’s nothing spectacular and I bought it on a good deal because it had a dent on the side.

“You don’t have an oven?” inquired The Rock Chick. I know this guy makes darn good money.

I guess at one time he did have an oven, but the door fell off of it so now they just use their charcoal grill. Ok, whatever.

We (kids included) settled downstairs to watch the Bulls game and Mr. INBOOC asks my husband and I if we are grandparents!

Yes, my hair is a little bit gray and I have an appointment with Miss Clairol, I really do, but I just introduced him to all of my children, the oldest of which is 16 and flopped down on the floor moaning because of some teenaged tiff over snowboarding with one of her friends. My other children are 15, 13 and 12. I thought it an odd question to ask.

Then he said that his daughters of that age do have babies. Ok, then.

It really was hard to have any kind of conversation with Mr. INBOOC because he seemed so shocked at everything. Ovens, TVs, snow and teenagers without babies, the whole Chicago world was all so amazing. I’ve never been to California, but I’m betting, minus the snow and ice maybe, they have ovens and big screens and teenagers without babies over there.

I thought he was kind of weird.

After they left, the hubby and I were shaking our heads and wondering how much whiskey that guy had devoured during dinner.

“We have big TVs, ovens and 50 foot Santas here in Chicago!” The hubby and I roared with laughter until we both had tears in our eyes.

50 foot Santas! C’mon! How’s he going to fit down the chimney?

“Take it easy there, Grandpa. You don’t want to hurt yourself”. I joked.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! We were on a roll. Of course, it might have seemed funnier to us because the hubby and I were both fueled by a serious lack of sleep and a couple of rum and cokes.

Sunday morning I dragged myself out of bed to drive Oldest Daughter to work. As I turned the corner, I burst out laughing almost uncontrollably. Oldest Daughter gave me that “Mom’s finally gone off the deep end” look.

One of my neighbors had their home decorated for the holidays and it even amazed me! I went back last night just to take a picture!



It seems Mr. INBOOC wasn’t as drunk as I thought. We really do have 50 foot Santas here in Chicago, I’ll give him that.

I still think he’s a little weird, though.