Christmas this year started out fabulously. On Christmas Eve, I worked 9:30-6. Laughed at the people coming into Wegmans at 5:55 when we close at 6. Yes, close. Oh noes, people would be without Wegmans for 43 hours! WHATEVER WILL THEY DO?!?! Sorry, people get super-panicked when you take away the crutch of the fabulous 24 hour grocery store and when I close on holidays, I get to watch people acting like they just heard a hurricane is going to be coming through or something.
“Wegmans is going to be CLOSED from 6 pm on the 24th through 7 am on the 26th?!?” They ask incredulously, “What will we DO without Wegmans?! I need to buy 7 billion gallons of milk, and toilet paper, and food to feed 50 people for 3 weeks, what if we NEED something!?! ARRRRRGH!” and I laugh to myself watching the insanity although I partly understand it. Anyways, where was I?
So, worked until 6 on Christmas Eve. It really wasn’t too terrible. We were busy enough that I wasn’t bored out of mind, but not so busy that I had a panic attack. A successful day before a holiday, I think. 
Then I went home, took a shower and waited for Joel to pick me up for midnight mass with the Harmons.
Going to church with the Harmons is always an interesting event for me. I’m not Catholic. I’m not religious. I don’t believe in god or jesus or any of that hullaballoo. I should use the word hullaballoo more often, it’s fun to write. So, needless to say Catholic mass is a bit awkward for me. But the songs are good, and the stories are interesting as long as you see them as only stories. There are only a few REALLY awkward moments– communion and when everybody says entire paragraphs at the same time, freaks me out, man. Communion isn’t really that bad, now that I’ve figured out I can walk to the end of the pew and just take a step back to let everyone else go up. It’s probably going to be a little awkward at the wedding when I don’t take communion, but I can’t because I’m not Catholic, so um… whatevs. My favourite part of mass, though, is going with the Harmon brothers. Really.
Most of the Harmon boys are not what you’d call devout. Jeremiah and Jon make just as many, if not more, disparaging comments about the chruch than I do. Yet they put on their best Catholic act and talk along with everyone and go up for communion just to make their parents happy and then talk about how huge their balls are [jokingly] in the car on the way home. Recently, I’ve been feeling increasingly comfortable with the future in-laws, which is making both myself and Joel super-happy. I used to feel sort of awkward/out of place, but I’m slowly fitting in. Yay.
So then we went back to the Harmons, opened 1 present each and frolicked home for about 2 am. Joel and I made plans to do Christmas together at 7:30 am before we went to the Harmons.
I called Joel at 7:45 and woke him up. He still needed to wrap his presents for people and it was 8:30 before he showed up, which was okay, because we are super fast present openers. After our private Christmas, we went over to the Harmons for a boisterous Christmas breakfast and present opening with Jim, Jan, Josh, Targol, Citi, Jeremiah, Jen and Jon. It was the first Christmas in YEARS that all 4 Harmon boys were present. Ha, present. Almost all of our presents were from our wedding registry which was kind of weird but also sort of awesome. I never thought I’d be so excited about a coffee grinder or rice cooker. LoL. We hung out with the Harmons until noon and then drove to Syracuse to Christmas with my family.
TO BE CONTINUED…..
