Christmas time and beer

After 3 and a half years of nursing, I have come to a few realizations. Among them: I will never understand certain people. I will always, despite my best efforts, silently pass judgement on people I do not agree with. I will always have a job because people will always be sick....and I will always work weekend, holidays and nights because apparently children do not understand the term "normal business hours". Thankfully, my beloved place of employment rotates holidays pretty fairly...thus ensuring that I will not be forced to work 2 Christmas' or 4th of July's in a row. Unfortunately, this still means I have to work Christmas eve and night. Fortunately, my odd family has long been comfortable with celebrating holidays on random dates. One of my favorite Thanksgivings took place in April. Therefore, upon learning that my rotation was up and I would be working Christmas 2008, my family quickly made plans that allowed me to participate in the holiday festivities.








In keeping with our adjusted Christmas plans, a few days after Christmas last year my father and sisters gathered in my living room to celebrate the Steph portion of the holiday. What started out as a cozy, joyous event quickly turned into an all out screaming match and so much beer painted on my wall that I would be scrubbing it off for the next 8 months.



Returning home that morning after working 4 night shifts in a row....(meaning I worked 48 hours in 4 days, slept approximately 12 hours and ate 3 meals total for my work week....MERRY CHRISTMAS!!) I greedily climbed into my bed anxious for some much needed sleep. I was awoken a few hours later by the sound of my father dragging and dropping either my Christmas presents or a dead body into my house. Although he had my 2 sisters there to entertain him until I ventured out of my bed, his resonating voice quickly ruined my slumber and forced a cranky Stephanie to join her family prematurely. Many times my irrational and fickle sleep patterns have ruined my day, therefore I assigned myself to my irritability and began dressing for the festivities, all the while listening to the escalating voices emanating from my living room.




A few minutes later I found myself standing in the middle of a ghetto Christmas party. My gifts were strewn across my couch, surrounding my family, plates and bowls of snacks, wine glasses, beer, guitars, band members, cats and the always present lifesized robot (a Halloween costume that later served as a mascot of sorts for this period of my life). I sat down, grabbed a breakfast beer and joined the shouting match that occurs each time any more than 2 Schramm's are present in the same geographic location at the same time. Despite my crankiness, I found myself completely content and happy to celebrate with my family. We enjoyed the snacks, drinks and I even got around to opening up my Christmas presents. In fact, I was so distracted this festive environment that I barely noticed Laura's text messaging finger's were busier than usual. Likewise, because this was (at least in my mind) our rescheduled Christmas Eve, I assumed both of my sisters and their boyfriends were going to hang out at my house for the remainder of the night. (Quick side note: During this period of my life, it is completely safe to say that my sisters and I were all completely obsessed with each other. Fresh into my life-stage entitled "Club Schramm", I found myself hanging out with them and their boyfriends most every weekend). Even my usually cynical father expressed his pleasure at enjoying a relaxing rescheduled Christmas with his daughters...although he insisted on hanging his gift picture to me on the wall despite his over consumption of alcohol. (Oddly enough, I have found that most drinking nights at my house involve at least one type of power tool, leading to profanities, which leads to hostility, which leads to fights, which leads to more drinking...standard Schramm night). Regardless, the general atmosphere of my living room was that of excitement and joy....until Laura abruptly announced that she was leaving.



My little sister Laura lives her entire life as though she is still the popular cheerleader from highschool. She is constantly talking to her "best" friends via phone, text messages, instant messages, facebook, smoke signals and amateur telepathy. Most of the time it is hilarious to watch her attempt at multitasking her family, friends and boyfriend....other times it is annoying to get placed in a line waiting for attention. One of her most annoying habits is making plans and then changing them for someone else, then crying about how sad she is that she did not go forth with the original plan...ie she makes plans with me, changes them for her friends, and then calls me crying and telling me that she wishes that she would have stuck with her original plans with me. (Laura has the most obvious emotional problems of all the Schramm girls haha) Anyway, this is exactly the situation we all found ourselves in on this most sacred and holy of rescheduled holidays.



So, a few hours into the party, Laura decides to change the general outline of the night. She and her boyfriend would be leaving for another party. Although I was irritated by this news, it was Kate who felt obligated to perform her best irate sister impression and flip out on Laura. Turns out, Kate was asked earlier in the week to attend a dinner with a few of her friends. Her, being the nice sister she is, politely declined as she felt it was most important to spend the night with me, thus allowing me to pretend as though I did not actually miss out on the holiday. Therefore Kate unleashed a constant verbal assault on Laura from the time she announced her changed plans until she stood in the living room ready to leave. Not being one to miss out on a fight, I jumped right onto the assault boat and joined Kate in her attempt to make Laura rethink her plans and perhaps contemplate suicide. Even Laura's boyfriend Matt began to advocate for their continued presence at my house...leaving Laura backed into a corner with no allies and being reprimanded like a child. Like a light switch, this caused Laura to flip into the 8 year old version of herself. Her nasty comebacks to our unnecessary attack served only to escalate the fighting. All the while Kate's boyfriend Tom and now Matt sat silently on the couch....I assume they were petrified to talk for fear of being decapitated or castrated. (we have been told by numerous people, that we, as a group, are terrifying to deal with).



So, in our mature manner, we maintained this stalemate for an obscene length of time. Finally I decided to take the high road and make a move sure to bring a quick end to our battle. Channeling David the Gnome's fox Swift, I sprinted up my steps in record time. With unfailing focus, I snatched up Laura's pillow, blanket and curling iron and tucked them against my chest. I boldly and silently returned to the livingroom, opened my front door and threw Laura's belongings out onto the lawn. Proudly, I turned to face my family members thinking only of returning to Laura's room for more pillaging. Not surprisingly, my actions caused Laura to begin hysterically crying and start screaming louder. Surprisingly, my actions also caused my father to turn a shade of red I have never seen and jump up off the couch with a speed that made my Swift impression look like a dead turtle racing it's shadow. Before I was even completely back in the door, my father was in my face, commanding me to collect the discarded belonging and return them to their home. Although adrenaline has caused me to forget his exact wording, the general point of his fury was, "This is a nice neighborhood and we do not have mental problems, therefore, your (my) actions are entirely inappropriate." Fair argument. Ill even admit that I was wrong and insane. However, I was angry and hurt by Laura, I was being ditched on my Christmas, I was thrilled at being able to evict Laura's belongings and now I was being told that I couldn't act in a certain manner in my own house. (I'm sorry Mr Schramm...have you ever met me?)



My first unconscious reaction was to bring all of Laura's stuff back into the livingroom...mostly because Mr Schramm is terrifying when he gets all full of alpha male rage. My second reaction was to turn MY anger toward him...causing Laura to yell at me to stop acting ridiculous, which caused me to make the move to re-throw Laura's pillow outside, which caused Mr Schramm to slam his full beer bottle at the wall. Obviously. And let me tell you from experience, nothing solves domestic disputes better than breaking a beer bottle against the interior wall of a house. Yea...and so, at this point, I had succeeded in turning my family into trailer park trash. Although this should have triggered me to deescalate our current situation, I decided instead to continue fighting, only this time the object of my aggression was Mr Schramm. Therefore, a simple and stupid argument amongst siblings morphed into me threatening to call the police as well as antagonizing my father to hit me. Clearly I deserved to have a firehouse turned on me. However, my house as of yet is not equip with an industrial strength fire hose for calming down situations. Thus, I was free to continue fighting with my father and Laura .



Fast forward a few minutes and I had both sisters begging me to stop arguing with Mr Schramm, as he was screaming at us and now getting ready to leave. (I dont know why he was leaving...we were having such a great time). Eventually Tom and Matt regained their voices and stepped in as mediators, attempting to get my father to sit down, relax and calmly resolve our issues.


Now, it is easy to just blame our current hostile situation on alcohol..and in my case, alcohol and fatigue. However, I also think that it is safe to check the little box next to family history of mental illness as an underlying contributing factor. My father's upbringing was somewhat atypical and involved a fair amount of parental emotional issues that have resulted in his ultrasensative attitude towards social perceptions of mental health. i.e....I acted like a crazy person thus causing my father to channel his childhood and snap. Therefore, it was not the ridiculous chick fight but rather the evicting of Laura's belongings that triggered my father. Crazy is okay indoors but cannot be tolerated in public.





Anyway, back to the livingroom. Tom and Matt were still acting as UN representatives from Switzerland and bartering with my father to stay. Likewise, Kate pulled me into the kitchen and attempted to talked me down. Laura, on the other hand, proceeded to call her friends and invite them to my house...obviously because this was the best compromise to our issue (and an ideal party atmosphere). Regardless, after allowing an appropriate length of time go by, my entire family was able to congregate in the livingroom and discuss our fight. I apologized to my father for threatening to send him to jail and he apologized for providing the DNA necessary for Laura's creation. We all agreed that we acted insane and overreacted. We finally were able to get back to the joyous celebration of fake Christmas without argument, hostility or fighting. And my favorite gift of the night?...the gift of being able to clean up pieces of broken glass from my carpet and scrub beer off my wall for days to come.