About the party

I got home last night.  Ron was slumped in his wheelchair in the kitchen, snoring.  You know the saying about letting sleeping dogs lie?  I didn't touch him or even say hello. 

I went to bed.  They were active next door but not too terrible.  In fact, I remember thinking, "If they did this every year I could live with it".  They were outside talking at normal volume and some kids were running around.  Not much different from my aunt's house.  Although everyone related to my aunt is much better behaved. 

I went to bed, drowsed a little.  I heard Ron moving around but he wasn't yelling or falling.  We got to midnight.  Things were actually tolerable. 

Then one of them got on a PA system and started shouting into the microphone at the top of his lungs.  They have a small yard, maybe 1500 square feet of free space, which they had apparently set up with chairs right outside my bedroom.  He started calling names, people were going "OOH" and "AAH' so I assumed they were passing out gifts.  That went on for quite a while. 

The guy apparently thought he was a comedian, he kept going on and on into the microphone.  Maybe he was manic.  About this time Ron got himself to bed.  Good.  I didn't have to worry about him falling (much, he has fallen out of bed a few times). 

Hours more of shouted commentary into the microphone, people drinking (you can tell when someone has been drinking, by the way they react to certain things), etc.  I reminded myself the kids were not kicking things into the side of my house. 

They started chanting a phrase, in spanish, again and again and again.  They must have said it at least 50 times.  It was not anything to do with Christmas or God, I know those words, it sounded political maybe.  It was awful. 

I thought it couldn't get worse, until... they began singing.  They sang the first few bars of a couple of Christmas carols, in English, but they didn't know the words so they stopped pretty quick.  They sang the first chorus of a few Christmas carols in Spanish.  They were very bad at it.  Then they went back to the political (?) chanting again.  They did that for a good 20 minutes.  What is this, a rally or a Christmas party? 

They eventually wrapped it up and got relatively quiet.  I fell asleep.  When I woke up, they were gone. 

Ron woke me up at 4:30, fighting with the toilet.  He was delighted I was home, but quickly hid it.  He hadn't processed any of the party and thought they had been quiet all night.  He was quiet and went back to bed. 

I slept fitfully and got up around 9:30.  I'm going to open my presents, next.