Christmas was an interesting and very fun one here on the Allen farm! As you can tell by the rather odd title for this post. I'll explain promise.
So. Christmas Eve.
I'm trying to plan out a trip to see some college friends in the Sacramento area, but as I flew home, my baby Pearl is still in Illinois. My dad's company has a few trucks though, mid sized, that he uses to get the boys out to different jobs in the woods. Try taking a honda civic out in the back country, you just can't do it so he provides the trucks so they all can show up on time. But it's winter, they're not in use and so I asked to use one to travel down to see friends.
One minor detail though…they are all manual transmissions. Stick shifts. Pearl is an automatic. And my car before her too. I kinda know how to drive a stick but only if it's a tractor or the ancient feed truck that only sometimes can get in to 3rd gear.
Uh oh.
So my dad and my little siblings (they both can drive stick as they live at home and that's what we own now, manuals) have me driving everywhere and teaching me how to not kill it every time I make a stop.
The first couple times in town were pretty bad…I killed it 3x in one intersection and there were cars behind me and I got so flustered I almost got out of the truck and quit. My little bro was laughing and yelling "Come on!!! GET IT TOGETHER! Why do you get nervous?? C'mon man!"
Thanks dude that's superrrrr helpful.
How people behind me probably reacted to my driving. So much anger.
But now I'm a lot better and haven't killed it at all (fingers crossed it stays that way) I should put a bumper sticker on the back saying "Newbie behind the wheel. Stay back >10ft."
How I think I drive.
What my SeaStar and all other drivers say when I actually drive.
Christmas day was a pretty chill one. We did presents with the immediate fam in the am and spent the day cooking for our Christmas dinner. My sister had gone to some friends to exchange gifts and came back with all the latest gossip about the town. She's telling me and mom how so-n-so threw a bonfire party and got busted for using the parents' booze. "I guess the party didn't have any hard alcohol, but I don't know what the difference between hard and soft alcohol is, but that's all they had."
Keeping track of all the types of alcohol is hard, it's ok.
Yep. That's my goody two-shoes sister. Stay away from that 'Soft' alcohol…We all died of laughter.
She tries but she's pretty naive and doesn't care about drinking or partying and if it doesn't involve volleyball, basketball or cows or disney movies it doesn't matter to her. Never change SeaStar, you're still great even if you don't like soft or hard alcohol.
Yes you are, SeaStar. You are that innocent.
The rest of the day was pretty quiet, I got everyone SIU gear so we looked like the biggest Saluki fans but I'm perfectly ok with that.
One big Saluki Family. One stop shop for me!
And then that night we wanted to try out my brother's new hunting gear as he got camo pants and boots and head lamps. But it wasn't just for my brother to go hunting.
One fun fact about my brother…he truly believes in Sasquatch.
Yep. That Sasquatch.
I'm very serious. We live in the boondocks and he goes regularly out back behind our property searching for signs of bigfoot/squatches. He even watches the show Finding BigFoot to keep up on the latest squatching techniques.
So my bro, my sis and I got all of the camo gear on, head lamps and went out in the pitch black dark to go looking for Sasquatch.
I wish I was joking.
Ready to find us some Squatches!
We ended up walking around in the dark with these dinky head lights and visions of CSI and Criminal Minds episodes come to mind and now every little twig breaking makes me panic and sweat like none other. And it was 30 degrees and dropping. And not just dark but SUPER dark because we don't have many lights out in the boonies naturally. Nothing but 3 head lamps. Sweet. Then bro leads us up this super steep hill to check out this spot he thinks is totally a squatch den and then we end up to an area none of us have ever been and I had had it. "No. I'm done. I do not need to end up getting lost in the boonies and freeze to death or find a freaking sasquatch without so much as a pocket knife to protect myself. I'm going home." After much debate (mostly yelling at each other so even if BigFoot was out there he would have ran off anyway we weren't very quiet) we tried finding the trail to go back.
Close to the house bro sees the big dipper and we all start looking at the stars.
They're so many it was crazy.
We feel safe enough to turn our head lamps off and just gaze up at the stars. Everyone should go out in the middle of nowhere and do this. It's too hard to explain, you can see every single constellation, the north star, everything, it's so beautiful. But then we start to get just a little frightened about being in the complete dark so we hurry on back.
Right as we walk back on to the property and can see the house, we call dad and bro goes "So we found a body but we don't know if it's BigFoot or human so we didn't touch it but you're going to want to call the Sasquatch Specialists and probably the CIA, FBI, NCIS, CBI, and CSI too. Oh and are you with mom? Can I talk to her?"
He's such a smart ass. So proud of him. He takes after his sarcastic, sassy sisters, that is a given.
We're giggling and pushing each other when all of a sudden…
"BAHHHRUUUHHHHH!!!"
SASQUATCH?!?
nope. just my dad. he had hid behind one of the trucks and trailers and yeah. he got us. good.
cue the screams.
"DAD!!!! OH MY GOD WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?!?"
He's laughing so hard he can't breathe. Good riddance we got the crap scared out of us.
And that was my Christmas. Just another day in the boondocks.
Merry Christmas from some amateur Sasquatch Hunters. We clean up pretty nicely.
To be continued!
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