I feel like all I’ve done this year was complain about the rain, but I have no remorse, in fact I am doubling down. People live like this in Seattle, they say. I do not live in Seattle. I did not consent to be rained on to this degree. The rain has been so unrelenting, it is difficult not to feel as though God has forsaken the DC-metro area.
Record wettest calendar year on record set in Washington @Reagan_Airport
pic.twitter.com/S9e4vyeJ24— NWS DC/Baltimore (@NWS_BaltWash)
December 15, 2018
And look facts people, I am right. My complaining is justified. But I tried to pull up my bootstraps because even with the most rainfall on record, I am not giving rain Satan the opportunity to ruin my holiday sight-seeing, and more importantly, some boomer to write an op-ed connecting my soy-weakened constitution and inability to cope with water.
So we tried to visit the Capitol Christmas tree but every single walkway was flooded. So we looked at it from afar as I tried to hold an umbrella with one hand, and take a photo with the other, all under gale force winds and horizontal rain. The umbrella was contributing fuck-all, so I just let it dangle by my wrist as I desperately tried to wipe the camera lens then quickly hit the shutter, I don’t know what the shutterspeed is but it was evidently less than the speed of rain + the time to hold an open umbrella that is now whipping back and forth out of the frame.
We went to the Canadian Embassy Christmas tree, which was blessedly elevated and closer to a sidewalk. There having given up on the polaroid camera, I was trying to hold onto the umbrella, which kept inverting, and take my cell phone out of my pocket, when I made the mistake of trying to hold the cell phone with my mouth as I zipped up my jacket since it was pelting rain, and I bit two holes in the gorilla glass screen cover.
There were two like, lit emos, like obnoxious goth-y former English majors cradling each other in a most conspicuous, posed sort of way, in front of the Christmas tree, and they would not fucking move. Like minutes are passing, you think they could stand to the side for 10 seconds so another human being can take a photo of the tree, especially since it is pissing rain. At this point I became suspicious they wanted to be in my photo, as if I were their personal street photographer. Perhaps they thought they could find themselves tagged on Twitter as “lovely likely militant Whovian couple canoodling outside Canadian Embassy tree” but really unless they were a) engaged immediately prior to me sloshing up the Embassy steps or b) one (ideally both) of them is dying, I think they were inconsiderate twats.
The tree was beautiful though.
By the time we got back, my boots were soaked. My jeans were soaked. My coat was soaked, with the left sleeve that was trying in vain to hold the shitty umbrella completely soaked through. We couldn’t hang anything in the closet because it wouldn’t get enough ventilation to dry so we opened all the doors and picked door corners to hang things off of, as I stuffed my shoes with wads paper towels. Changed clothes and then put socks on over my tights, because my boots were still wet, and packed a change of the thickest Reebok tennis ball yellow sports socks in my purse to change into at the restaurant if the first pair soaked through on the walk to the restaurant. Everything was soooo damp. Walking in the rain with all the warmth providing potential of your coat and shoes now gone and now having swapped pants for nylons was miserable even though it was a short walk to a happy place.
I love DBGB. We got a table by the window so I was able to look at the shops lit up by white Christmas lights and all the other poor fucks clutching their hoods to their faces as they attempted knowingly the futile task of minimizing wetness. We were all getting soaked. Immediately. There was no mitigation. Yet we all tried. We do not like to leave before the end of the movie.
Describing food seems kind of stupid, I’d throw in an apologies-to-the-field-of-culinary-criticism, but really, what are you doing. I’ve never felt like I could taste something as described, I just want to watch the chefs I hate based on personality get voted off The Final Table in the most personally and professionally scarring way possible.
I did have a cocktail table called High Noon that mixed bourbon and tequila together yet was somehow delicious.
We walked back. The discomfort escalated. We capped off French bistro with Live P.D.
Then, for real life, I slept through it but my sister was awoken to the sound of an adult human man throwing a scooter at another adult human man.
Christmas Eve-Eve we watched Murder on the Orient Express with a coffee table full of charcuterie and I still cannot believe that small pieces of French bread, cheese, and meat can make you that full (even when consumed at a blistering, constant rate over a 3-4 hour period) or that Kenneth Brannagh was Detective Poirot.
Christmas Eve we did the Winter Lights which is always my favorite fucking thing. It was actually nice out so all the little kids were hanging out the sunroofs (sunrooves?) losing their minds in their little hats and mitts (and one little Asian girl in earmuffs, omfg) and being adorable. The only other thing I wanted was to hear “Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey” on the radio and it started just as we turned into my neighborhood and stopped just as we were getting out of the car and when I turned around their were people walking a Chihuahua behind me, so basically my Christmas miracle.
We ate tortiere and cheese fondue and Cajun sausages my Mom ordered off the internet. Yeah. They were good, but internet meat purveying still has some hurdles to achieve mainstream acceptance. Again, all the fancy internet sausage and the best combination was still a chunk of bread dipped in cheese.
On Christmas, we started drinking nearly immediately, which is an excellent way to start Christmas. I made Old Bay bloody Mary’s. I made mimosas. I made lunchboxes. I discovered a love of amaretto and made Amaretto Rose’s. We made eggs benedict as per family tradition. I put a packet of Vietnamese Cock Soup in my sister’s stocking. We watched probably six hours of Fixer Upper, including the “Shotgun House” I had heard about while Googling spite houses the night before (Christmas miracle #2).
For New Years, I watched an obscene amount of Reno 911, ate the rest of the charcuterie assortment plus a baked brie, and for the third year in a row watched Don Lemon get drunk while drinking the yellow label Veuve Clicquot. I also ate 12 grapes, which an episode of Modern Family told me was a Colombian New Year’s wish thing, which I was beginning to wonder if I just misinterpreted because I never heard about it again, but then CNN sent their New Year’s correspondent to… somewhere Spanish speaking that I can’t remember… and she brought it up as well. Two sources. It’s legit guys, the grapes are legit. I just figured I have never eaten grapes at midnight any other year of my life, and my life has turned out like this, so might as well give the grapes a shot.