Dysfunction Junkies
Two high school besties reconnect and commiserate their stories as they navigate the dysfunctions of life from marriage, families, illness, death of childhood families, and creating healthy boundaries. Join them each week as Chrisy and Kerry share their stories and life lessons all with a zest of wit, humor, and love. They may not have seen it all, but they have seen enough!
Dysfunction Junkies
Flash Back Friday: Holiday Hangover And The Seven Fishes
It's Flashback Friday. We flashback to Big Bertha and the 7 Fishes episode. The sparkle fades, the lights glare, and the house suddenly feels too quiet—so we leaned into the holiday afterglow and compared notes on what actually makes this season work. We kick off with the mood on December 26 and the great decoration debate: keep the glow through New Year’s or pack it up fast and reclaim the living room. From there we tumble into leg lamp pride, inflatable brainstorms, and the origin story of “Big Bertha,” the colossal tree that barely fit in a station wagon and exploded open in the living room like a scene from a classic holiday movie.
Food traditions take center stage as we walk through a down‑to‑earth Feast of the Seven Fishes—shrimp, smelts, whitefish, sometimes squid—frying in shifts, sharing horror and humor in equal parts. If you’re craving relatable holiday stories, practical laughs, and permission to rewrite the rules, this one’s for you. Listen, share your own best and worst traditions, and help us build a smarter, lighter sled for next year. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell a friend who still smells like fryer oil.
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Welcome to Flashback Friday, the special edition of the Dysfunction Junkies Podcast. We may not have seen it all, but we've seen enough. And now, here are your hosts, Chrissy and Carrie.
KERRY:Hello, junkies. I'm Carrie. And I'm Chrissy. So it's the day after Christmas. How are y'all feeling out there?
CHRISY:Um, disappointed like always, I think, probably. That it's over. Oh, that it's over. It's okay. It's sad, and you know, and yeah, you you such a buildup uh for the last, you know, six months of our lives have been about Christmas. Exactly. Because that's the world we live in now. But so how long are you gonna keep those Christmas decorations up? Actually, I know. You think I'm really crappy about and I used to be horrible about not getting them down within a reasonable amount of time. Yeah. But for the last few years, I've been really good about basically I feel for me, I like to have them up through New Year's Eve.
KERRY:Yeah.
CHRISY:And on New Year's Day, because that's sort of just a day where you're kind of just sort of getting through the holiday, reflecting, and you just kind of you know that there's nothing else coming up.
KERRY:Right.
CHRISY:Uh you want to kind of I do take it. I want it down. I don't want to remember any of this stuff now.
KERRY:Well, for me, since I took my Christmas decorations down 48 hours after they went up mid-December, I'm good.
CHRISY:You're good. You don't have to worry about I'm ahead of the game. You've been you've had all your stuff put away for weeks now. For weeks now.
unknown:Yeah, you have that bad.
CHRISY:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:There was a time. There was a time where we went from Christmas to Valentine's Day. Oh, it was closed. There was a February. It was closed. There was an early February.
CHRISY:I must have been drinking a lot back then. I don't know what the hell was going on. That just in the the to think about it now, it just has to be totally depressing. I mean, it's maybe some people can still find joy in looking. And the decorations are they're beautiful and they're lovely. Yeah. But I just feel for me personally, when you don't have the uh looking forward part of what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_02:So do you see these people though, they put they keep trees like a tree up all year around.
KERRY:And they just change the theme. Well, no. No, yeah, I can't get into that.
CHRISY:Because for me, the tree represents that specific holiday. Yeah.
KERRY:So well, we thought before we completely wrap up the holiday season, we'd throw our uh Big Bertha in the Seven Fishes uh flashback episode. We're flashing back uh to season one, episode eight, back in the very early days of the podcast, our Christmas episode. So we hope you enjoy as you're winding down from your Christmas activities, whether you're activities, yeah, whether you're just sitting at home, you know, with a full belly and commiserating that you ate too much over the holidays, or maybe enjoying your presence, or maybe you're enjoying family visiting today or whatever.
CHRISY:But I would like to hear from anybody who's enjoying family. Thank you. Yeah, true.
KERRY:So drop a line when you hear about it. But anyway, so here is Big Bertha and the Seven Fishes.
CHRISY:Enjoy everyone.
KERRY:Hello, dysfunction junkies. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy holidays, and all the other happiness in between. How are you doing today, Chrissy? It's Christmas.
CHRISY:And I need to talk to you real quick about one thing. What's that? What I did last episode. What'd you do? Last episode, you're telling me you don't decorate because you're always having a great time somewhere else. Lucky lucky.
KERRY:Yes, I do tend not to decorate.
CHRISY:I love you, Carrie, because we've known each other a long time. Yeah. And there's nobody I'm more comfortable with from the time we put in in prison. I mean school. When I say what I'm about to say, even though I love you to death, it's our safe space. It's not that I'm concerned for your well-being here. Which is horrible to say. What I'm concerned about is that you're not suffering enough. Oh, Chrissy. You gotta decorate, suffer, babe. I don't think there's anybody out there when you really diagnose what you're doing out there with all your decorations are crazy. Inflatables, the reindeer, the lights that never all light up. You got one out, you got a string out. Forget the fuse thing. The fuse thing. That never worked. Decorating is for suffering in holidays.
KERRY:Or for suffering.
CHRISY:Or celebrating. I know they say family. It's really celebrating the suffering. Celebrate the suffering. Celebrate the suffering. And Carrie's not suffering enough, people. I guess I'm not. No tree. Nope. No nightmare getting it up. No nightmare having two bulbs the same way, too close together on the tree. That's my whole thing. I can't, I have to space out. You can't have two red bulbs next to each other. God forbid.
KERRY:Okay, wait. Maybe, maybe this will calm your heart.
CHRISY:All right.
KERRY:Give it to me. We have one thing that I failed to mention when I said we don't decorate, because it's really not me who does it. This is my husband, Jim. He loves the Christmas story. So we do have the full size in the front window from Thanksgiving until New Year's. Well, actually, I think it's January 8th, because that's when technically you know That's Elvis' birthday. Yeah, well, that's also the Epiphany, Chrissy. Remember? Back in Frank School. What? Back in Christ's school. Is that a really is that a Catholic thing? Yeah. When the three kings come and Christmas technically ends. What? Were you high? Were you drinking? Yeah, yeah. Epiphany? I thought it's what you have when you have a good idea. Yeah, the good idea is it's all over. It's done. So, anyways. So from Thanksgiving until January 8th. Elvis's birthday. That is when the full leg lamp is up at our house. So do we get credit for that?
CHRISY:Yes, only because I I did mention that that is a legitimate, fantastic Christmas classic. Okay. So I won't crap on any of that.
KERRY:Okay. So we're redeemed?
CHRISY:A little bit maybe, but I have the only decoration I have from that is I have a life-size version of when the kid's tongue is stuck to the pole. I put that in the window. No, I'm kidding. I don't have that. But wouldn't that be great? That would be good. Because again, that would be somebody suffering.
KERRY:Oh my gosh. We have a big flagpole in the field that's next to our house. I think along with the Karen inflatable, we need the inflatable of the kid that I can put up to the flagpole. Now that I could get into for Christmas decorations.
CHRISY:You know what? If I see this stuff in people's yards, I'm gonna be, first of all, elated and excited and thrilled. And then I'm gonna get mad because we gave you the idea. But these are good ideas. Forget the other stuff. You need the uh Karen on the roof and the kid with his tongue stuck to the roof.
KERRY:Oh god, that kid's name. DJ Nick, you have to find out what that kid's name, the one that stuck his tongue to there. It's so good. It wasn't Randy. No, it wasn't Randy.
SPEAKER_02:Randy was a little brother.
KERRY:He was a little brother, yeah.
CHRISY:It was uh Schwartz. No, it wasn't Schwartz. Schwartz was the one that talked the kid into it. Flick.
KERRY:Flick flick. I I had to go through my names real quick. There you go. Okay, so yeah, all right. I'm gonna I will put that on my agenda for next year to find or or make some kind of a flick, you know, scarecrow, dummy, whatever, and put it on our flagpole. Yes. So I will have flick and we'll have the um leg lamp. That would be classic. Okay, okay, now you're excited about decorating. Now I'm excited about decorating. Okay, Christmas is over.
CHRISY:This is not.
KERRY:Oh no, I still got time. This is only December 25th. I have till January 8th.
CHRISY:Well, this is uh, you know, I'll let it go for this. We'll have to discuss this further next year, see what you did. But again, people, if you decide to do this, we want to see those pictures. Send us those pictures. They're gonna be so great.
KERRY:So when you were a kid, okay, you you seemed a little shocked that we maybe cut our own tree down. So you've never done this going out and cutting your own Christmas tree down?
CHRISY:No. Really? Never. Okay. God forbid, that sounds my father would have probably punished me if I would have even brought that up as an option. I wouldn't have even thought of that.
KERRY:Yeah, no, we've done this as far back as I can remember. And we're always, you know, that was like always the big thing is to go cut down the Christmas tree. And so we would go find these places. And I remember one year specifically, we went to go cut down the tree, and I think the place is still around. It's over there, like past Hubbard, someplace over there. But, anyways, we went to cut down this tree. So we cut down the tree. It was my mom, my dad, and myself, and pull the tree to the station wagon. And it just cracks me up to this day because this is, I think, why the Christmas story, or or the I always say the Christmas story, uh Christmas vacation movie cracks me up so much because it was so much of our life growing up. So we got this tree, but instead of putting it and tying it to the roof, my dad thought it'd be a great idea to let's just pull it into the back of the station wagon. So we lowered the seats down and we pulled it in while it didn't fit because it was freaking huge. So my mom had to drive this home, and this was like 20, 30 miles away. So we had to take the freeway, you know, 55 mile, 60 mile an hour road to get home with this Christmas tree half hanging out the back of the station wagon. And my dad and I were inside with the tree, literally holding it on for like holding on to it so it wouldn't fall out as we were driving down the road. So I just remember us going down the road, me hanging on to this tree and hanging on to like the seed of the, you know, that was folded down, and my dad on the other side, and the slush from the road flying up and stuff to cut this tree down. So then we get it home and we bring it into the house, and they did have it somewhat corded up a little bit, but it was it was huge. So we did the whole thing where we put it in the stand and that whole scene from the um Christmas vacation where they cut the wire and it's and you know, fly that literally was what happened. So that specific tree was called Big Bertha, and from then on, every tree we ever tried to get always compared to Big Bertha. But yeah, I'll never forget hanging out the back of the station wagon going 55 miles down the road. No, no seatbelt, you know. Well, no seatbelt. Twine from the tree.
CHRISY:The tree was secure.
KERRY:The tree. Well, the tree was secure.
CHRISY:All of you were gonna fly. We were collateral damage, yes. But the tree was gonna be alright. So yeah.
KERRY:So that was the beginning of that Christmas cutting down trees tradition in our house.
CHRISY:Yeah, no, always in my lifetime have had artificial.
KERRY:Did you ever even go to the tree lot and get a real tree that was already cut?
CHRISY:I think I remember driving by them sometimes and be like, you know, my aunt and her husband at the time and my cousins uh when I was real little, they used to have real trees. Yeah. And I do remember this, and I can still remember in the house where they well, at least where I remember actually I remember they had them in two different places in their living room. One was uh in the one corner, not too far from their front door, and then the other one was over by their front window. So they had two trees. Well, no, no. I'm just thinking different years here.
KERRY:Oh, okay, not two trees at the same time.
CHRISY:No, but I mean they were real trees, and the one year the one thing I do remember is when they had it over by their television, one of them old 70s televisions with the wood case it was encapsulated in big antennas, yeah. The whole 70s vibe. They used to put like those icicles, I think I remember on. Oh, I hated that. And I just remember thinking, this is me again, because I'm annoyed when I can't have a clear shot of vision to my television. Right. I used to have to go over there after school until my mom got off work. And that tree, the icicles would stick to the TV from the static. And I'd be like, you know, do you want to rethink this maybe placement? Uh I can't see what's going on on the television. I'm stuck here and I can't watch. Yeah, I remember being agitated by that. And I do seem to recall there was always controversy as to who watered the damn thing. Did you water the tree today? Is it watered? It looks like it's drying out. Somebody water the tree. Oh my god.
KERRY:Yeah, it's a lot of work. Yeah, no, no, no, no. No. And that is why, again, why I don't like to decorate too much.
CHRISY:Well, I can understand. If I had to have a real tree, then it wouldn't probably be happening. I love the idea, and people always talk about smell of it, it's wonderful. It's Christmas. It means Christmas. The other thing I remember is they hurt. Yeah, they if you touch them, they're pwned, they're gonna poke you.
KERRY:But you gotta get the right kind. If you get a white pine, they have long, soft needles and they don't hurt.
CHRISY:So if you buy the right kind of tree, then Do I look like somebody who would ever buy the right kind of tree? I'm probably gonna buy some that's got thorns on it, and that would be my luck, and constantly stab through the whole Christmas season. Thank you.
KERRY:Like having Legos on your floor.
CHRISY:Oh, yeah, those are fun.
KERRY:Um, so what's your family's tradition uh growing up? Like what was your Christmas Eve, Christmas Day traditions? Did you have any?
CHRISY:Nightmare one, nightmare two. Okay. So Christmas Eve, we are not a hundred percent Italian.
KERRY:Uh-huh.
CHRISY:Well, I'm half. My mother was a hundred percent.
KERRY:Okay.
CHRISY:And my father was Italian by default, uh, I guess, because he grew up on a side of town that a lot of Italian families lived on. So he was comfortable with that culture, uh-huh, even though he was not Italian. So Christmas Eve was the nightmare of any of you Italian families out there. We had to eat fish. Seven fish. No, we never had seven. But that's what the tradition is. That is, and some I think there are some people who actually do like up to eleven. Oh my gosh. We we scanned it down to about four. I mean, uh I think when my mother was little, because she was closer to the whole fool Italian doing everything, yeah. Um, they used to do like eel, and there's a f fish that's real salty that begins with the letter B. DJ Nick. Buckala. Thank you. Uh we didn't do that one. We had the basics shrimp, okay, smelts, white fish. Actually, I think we only got it down to three. Then when my husband came and started celebrating Christmas with us, we revisited squid. Oh. But my mother didn't like to do squid, but he likes squid. I I I like it. It's it's good. Um so we did maybe sometimes do squid, but what we would end up doing is the women would sit in the kitchen and usually the guys were at the table watching us suffer. And we had like stations. Yeah. Who was on shrimp station, whitefish station, smelt station. And we would fry. We'd have all these like little kind of tabletop fryers. No, well, yeah, we did have that, and then my mom would have like this big heavy-duty pot on the stove that she would put oil in. And so you were in different places, and you had the flour and the egg thing, and you the way you dip the fish, and all of that was specific. So much work. And your hands were coated in breading and the nails. That's gross. It was horrible. And you smelled like fit. Why did we have to eat all this fish? Why? Why? My father always had to make his cocktail sauce, which was good. He wanted it, where he put so much horseradish in it, yeah, that when you ate it, your nose and I mean you could your sinuses cleared for a week.
KERRY:That's my kind. I like it.
CHRISY:And it was good. It was good. But he had that that was the one thing dad made the cocktail sauce for the fish. And so, and then we had to have angel hair pasta. Oh, of course. No meat. No, no meat. Very offensive meat on Christmas Eve. Don't know why. Because you gotta have fish. I guess. So we had fish.
KERRY:Did you go to any services like midnight mass or anything like that? No. Okay.
CHRISY:So we had please, because I saw I I know that you did. Oh, yeah. I want to hear about this because this is sort of a novelty. I not that I I have been to a midnight mass, but it was not something that we incorporated into our holiday.
KERRY:And this is one of the things that, you know, again, disclaimer here. We may joke around a lot and we we make fun of things or we tease about things, but I do very much, I mean, I have my faith and my religion and things, but you know, our family did take it to a my family took it to a degree. So when I say things like, you know, pull out a rosary or whatever, you know, I'm not at all trying to be mean or anything about my faith. It's just, it's just this how we grew up. And so it was an old extreme. But when it comes to Christmas Eve services, I do my absolutely fame favorite service to go to is Christmas Eve midnight mass. But I want it to be at midnight because that's when it's supposed to be. There's different services if you have it earlier at nine or whatever. So growing up, we would go to midnight mass, which I really adored loved. And then what we would do is we got home from Christmas. Now we were always allowed to open one gift. So when we get home from Christmas Eve midnight mass, we were allowed to open up one gift. And usually it was like my sister, one sister that was still at home. We would be allowed to exchange each other's gifts. Yeah, then we would go to bed and Santa and the whole thing in the next morning. But now, as an adult, now what it's become for us is we go to midnight mass, and then when we come home, we have the hot cocoa and we open up all of our presents so that way we can sleep in in the morning. We don't have to get up early. We don't have no reason to get up early to sleep in and enjoy it. But here's what's funny. So as my mom and dad got older at their church, you know, it's a lot of older people. So they wanted to do midnight mass, but none of them wanted to stay up for it. So they had midnight mass at 9 p.m. I just think that's just so funny. It's like, okay, that's not midnight mass, that's the 9 p.m. mass. It's a little different, you know. But but they would say, No, we're going to midnight mass at 9 p.m. And sometimes it was at 8 p.m. You know, it just depended on the weather. If the weather was really going to be predicted to be bad, they would up the time, you know. So so I just think that's hysterical.
CHRISY:Get you coming through those doors. They had to get us through the doors. That means adjusting midnight mass.
KERRY:Midnight Mass is really at 9 p.m. So, anyways, I just I always laugh about that.
CHRISY:So I'm curious. Now you went out at midnight. Yeah. You're not home. Yeah. You're not in bed.
KERRY:Yeah.
CHRISY:What Santa had to what park up on the roof with Karen and wait for you to get home and go to bed.
KERRY:I guess he was servicing the other parts of the country that until and then after.
CHRISY:All the people who were at midnight mass were now on the list.
KERRY:Yeah, they had it. We were later on the yeah, our delivery time was a little later. Wow. So wow.
CHRISY:That see, I would have had a panic attack if I was little. It had to be a midnight mass. I'd be like, you know, you guys got me here. I don't want to be here. Santa's gonna get pissed. I'm not home, I'm not sleeping. You're you're really I'm gonna lose gifts over this. I'm screwed.
KERRY:I was never, it was never a worry because it was always just like, oh, Santa's delivering to the other people. You know, when you go home and go to bed, it'll happen, you know, in Christmas morning. But here's what I did hate, and I think you had a similar experience, being that we had sisters that were older, so we grew up, you know, kind of by ourselves at this point in life, is we'd wake up Christmas morning, but you had to wait. Did you have to wait?
CHRISY:Well, I did. You also?
KERRY:Yeah, yes, especially once I got like in my teenage years, where I knew how do I how do I say this without where the whole Santa Claus thing was a little bit differently perceived, you know. So to give any way any secrets about Santa. Right. But um, yeah, so we we would have to wait until they got their asses up out of bed.
CHRISY:Oh yeah, okay. Uh I'm making crazy noises with my mouth because I'm just so frustrated with this whole concept that I had to do. My sisters were either married or just out of the house pretty much by the time I was eight, nine years old. So, and I was a lover of Santa uh longer than than most kids. I was watching TV all the time. Ain't nobody. I wasn't sitting around trying to figure out the secrets of life. I was just watching TV. So Christmas would come. Couldn't sleep all night. Yep. Work my way downstairs. God damn, mother load. Yes. Gifts everywhere. For me, right? Right. Me. Me. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. Don't you go near that tree. Mm-hmm. We have to wait for everybody to get here. Mm-hmm. What? Yep. I gotta wait. Yep. Now, my sisters didn't start families real early after being married, but you know, they didn't sh they were in no hurry. Right.
KERRY:Right. Because they're having their Christmas morning.
CHRISY:One thing about my sisters was is that they really, really, really loved being able to get themselves dolled up.
KERRY:Oh yeah. I remember.
CHRISY:And that was priority for them. And it wasn't a short process.
KERRY:No, especially back in the day with that 80s and the hair.
CHRISY:80s hair? Yeah, all that hairspray. Uh-huh. The lighter on the pencil. Yep. Yep. Black in the eyes, baby. Oh yeah. Because you're not going to present off for Christmas unless you have raccoonas. And big hair. How are we going to eat all the leftover fish? What do they say? The big hair closer to God. The bigger the hair, the closer to God. That's right. So I was punished by having to sit there and stare at them things. Yep. And wait for them. Usually. I was going to say, Yep. Maybe. Finally. And then just agitation with gift opening. Yeah. Because somebody would try to hand out stuff, you know, or look for tags and names, and here's yours, this is mine. What the hell is this? I mean, and here's the order you have to open them in.
KERRY:Like, let me just rip into it. Let me pick which one I want to open. Oh no, you didn't have that.
CHRISY:That sounds like a whole thing. What do you mean? You they would tell you how you had to open your gifts.
KERRY:Yes, which ones you had to open in which order. You know, okay, well, you gotta open this one because this is from so and so, or you have to open this before you can open this. And so you couldn't just like, oh, look at these presents. Woo! No. It was very structured.
CHRISY:Yeah, no, I think it was every man for himself once we did open. And then once in a while you glance over to somebody and sort of look and see, what the hell you got going over there? What do I got going over here? Okay, okay. So uh the other thing too was my family. Well, my dad was still alive and I was already married, didn't have kids yet, but we had to buy for everybody. Yo, we didn't do a gift exchange, we didn't just buy for kids. And having to know everybody in the family and what they might like. Yep, it's horrible. It's horrible. We don't do my we've gotten to the point my husband and I don't even buy for each other because we have kids. Yeah. So that kind of went away. And I don't miss it. No, it's just you focus on children. You have your son, daughter-in-law, grandson, grandson, granddaughter, granddaughter, and that's the fun. Right.
KERRY:Well, and you know, and that was probably the one nice thing about growing up in a family that didn't have a lot of money, is we initiated the gift exchange early because it is ridiculous to buy, especially when we had a family. Remember, I said, you know, our Thanksgiving and stuff, 30 people like in it. I mean that you know, so if you had to buy for all those people, we couldn't afford that. So we did start the Christmas gift exchange early. So you only had to buy for like one person, you know, besides mom and dad and those you lived in the immediate household with, the rest of them you only had to buy one for. So that was good and helpful. But I'll never forget probably the last Christmas where we actually had to wait for my sisters was when I was 16. So this was when we were in high school together. I don't know if you remember when I we my mom and we had Shelties. We had okay. I absolutely the very first Sheltie that we got was at Christmas. It might have been my freshman year. I can't remember it's freshman or sophomore year. Well, anyways, so we get up Christmas and they let me open up a few gifts, but then we were waiting for my sister to come. And it was waiting and waiting and waiting. And it was like, oh my gosh, it was just like, come on, like it was just a such a letdown. And so I guess my mom and dad could see that they were like, like, this is not going well. And they kept calling my sister, like, you need to hurry up. And finally they couldn't wait anymore. And so they said, Okay, we're gonna give you your real, like your big present. And that's when they bring up this puppy. They had gotten me a Sheltie puppy. Well, here part of the problem they were having too was they couldn't keep the damn thing quiet. And they were afraid that they were it was gonna like if I had to go outside, it had to pee, I had to go out, I had to eat, you know, and my sister taking too long getting there.
CHRISY:So you're lucky the poor thing didn't just like collapse and you didn't open the box for a horrific surprise because it had to wait forever.
KERRY:Yeah, so that was that was like I do remember that was the end of waiting. You know, we no longer after that time waited. It was like, look, you guys are gonna be taking forever, you guys come whenever, but we're not waiting anymore on this. So that was kind of a good thing. But it took them 15 years to get to that point.
CHRISY:Now I would have to say that is that one of your uh as far as being a child, still a young person, parents buying you things, Santa bringing you gifts. Is that your b best memory of a gift that you received? Like what's your favorite? My favorite gift.
KERRY:Yeah, that probably is. I know there was a couple things growing up, but again, we were, you know, didn't have a lot of money. So I I know one year I got the whole Barbie, like where she got where she had the the horse trailer and the horse and everything. But I think it was like two years after that came out, and so we my mom probably got it on sale at like a flea market or something. But that was a big deal for me because I you know wanted that. But yeah, don't really remember a lot of big presents. What about you? What was your best gift?
CHRISY:Well, I can break it down in decades for you. So in the 70s, it would have been the big wheel.
KERRY:Oh, the big wheel.
CHRISY:I love my big wheel so much so I still have my big wheel. Do you really? Yes, I do.
KERRY:Oh my god, Chris.
CHRISY:Gotta love the big wheel. 1976 big wheel. Rockin', rocking, rocking. Love the big wheel.
KERRY:Do you let did you let your kids ride it whenever they were little? No.
unknown:Oh god.
CHRISY:It's got lead in it. It's lead. You can't let anybody play with our toys. Our poison toys were poisonous. What are you crazy, Carrie? Good lord. I never looked into the cave. Play with my big wheel. Just for me and me alone. And then in the 80s, I got the Barbie dream house. I got the Barbie dream house. And you know how I got my Barbie dream house according to my mom. What? She never let me forget. The only reason I got it was because she hit the lottery. Oh. Because she liked to play the numbers. But you know what sucks? I got the Barbie dream house, and she went but hit the lottery. She bought the version that didn't come with all the furnishings. Oh. So I had to piece good that shit together. It was bullshit. You should have got a Barbie Goodwill. Well, you just gotta, okay, gotta get the living room, gotta get the kitchen set, gotta get this, gotta get the bed. I'm like, you know, Mom, don't sit here and give me your crap about I got you the Barbie Dream House.
KERRY:Oh my god.
CHRISY:I think I have if I have it anywhere, again, I have some of these pictures somewhere. I have a picture of me like just sitting in front of that thing with a big cheesy smile on my gosh. It was the Barbie Dream House. The Barbie Dream House. When my mother sold her house, I left that house there. It wasn't put together anymore. Wow. I I still You were able to emotionally detach and let go of something. I I didn't have a choice. My mom mom sold her house and was out pretty quick. And I took so many things. My husband's tried to be patient with me. I'm not going to give him too much credit though, because he hasn't always been real patient. He doesn't understand the concept of keeping any of this crap. Because again, he does say that it is full of uh toxins that uh you shouldn't be touching anyhow. But I did maintain a lot of my Fisher Price toys, which were always Oh, those were good. I mean, that's the best. That's the king of toys. But the Barbie Dream House, I remember it was bagged sitting in the corner in what we used to call the toy room in the basement. And I did glance at it several times, but then I'm thinking, you know, 35, 40 years, and it's probably got rut my father disassembled it and just stuck it in bags. So it wasn't together anymore.
KERRY:Oh.
CHRISY:And I was thinking, the screws, who knows where the screws are? They're probably rusty if they're even there. And then my husband will kill me because he's not gonna put this thing together. It's just gonna sit in pieces. So I guess it's sitting in pieces in a landfill somewhere.
KERRY:But rest in peace, Barbie dream house.
CHRISY:Gotta love the Barbie dream house. So what now I talked about fish and stuff for Christmas.
KERRY:Yeah.
CHRISY:What was your menu usually for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? Do you have specific stuff?
KERRY:You know, Christmas Eve, we kept it kind of simple. Didn't do too much on. I mean, like we went to Christmas Eve Mass. You know, we went to midnight mass, but we I don't really remember any kind of big dinner or anything.
CHRISY:Do you have the David Moan wine? Am I saying it right?
KERRY:Mor Mogan David.
CHRISY:Oh, I got the names mixed up.
KERRY:The David Moen. I mean Mogan David. I knew what you meant. Um no, so but Christmas Day is when we would have the big dinner. So we would have, and we always ate at noon. Like all holiday dinners are at noon at our house. Don't really know why or how that came about, but they're always at noon. So we would have a turkey again, because that's what we had every holiday. I'm sure it had something to do with being cost effective, but turkey. And then we'd have, you know, just all the stuffing and all the traditional, you know, Thanksgiving kind of stuff is what we had for Christmas. Right. So we didn't really have that, but that's when we would the Mogan David would make its appearance with its, you know, for us children, Mogan David, probably about a quarter of Mogan David to three quarters of uh Sprite. That's what we were allowed to drink.
CHRISY:Now, was that what you were gonna DJ Nick was gonna ask her? Because I think DJ Nick researched a little bit about your wine, and yeah, I think he saw that you're supposed to have it with like a lemon lime soda.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, really? It's one of the recommended things.
KERRY:Is it really? Oh, it is.
CHRISY:So you guys were doing it.
KERRY:Our own little wine spritzer thing, anyways.
CHRISY:But no, I'm jealous of people who could have turkey again at Christmas. We uh only in my household had it once a year. That was at Thanksgiving. It was Thanksgiving, and you never saw it again until the following Thanksgiving. And mom made homemade ravioli. Oh, that would have been good. Well, it was. It was usually always good, unless it it for what? Did you have it with meat sauce, like a red sauce, or did you put it in like uh broth? No, no, it was red sauce. And we had finally after midnight, Christmas Eve.
unknown:You can have meat.
CHRISY:Time to eat the meat. Um, so we had meat sauce, uh, red sauce, and the ravioli, ricotta. It was ricotta, uh ravioli uh in the middle, and usually very good. Very good. She would make them ahead of time, usually freeze them, and then she'd boil them that day. Some days, some years she'd complain they were the the dough didn't come out right or whatever. And then we usually had the leftover fish because we had just fried enough to the ocean. I'm sure we put a dent in the life of the ocean with all the fish we had to have and ham. Yeah. We had ham. Yeah. And my husband doesn't like ham, so he'd prefer I do a turkey again. I I've been trying to assimilate to new menus. It's not easy when you're beaten up with the same thing over and over again.
KERRY:But my most favorite Christmas day, and this actually just happened recently in the last oh probably eight years ago. It was first of all, because you know I don't really like the cold weather. So to me, cold weather should only happen from December 24th through January 2nd. That's when we could have snow, cold, whatever. That would be perfect. And then the rest of the year should be 80 degrees.
SPEAKER_02:Gotcha.
KERRY:That doesn't happen here. But a few years back, we had this beautiful Christmas. It was like 70 degree weather, it was so nice. I didn't have to go anywhere, we didn't have to do anything. I forget where even the rest of everyone else was, but we had no obligations. So we got we we went to our Christmas Eve mass, had our hot cocoa at you know one o'clock in the morning, opened up all our gifts, slept in Christmas morning, then we went horseback riding. So my husband and I took, we had three horses at the time. We rode two, I ponied one, and it was beautiful 70 degree weather, didn't see anybody all day, and then we went out for dinner. So I didn't even have to cook.
CHRISY:That was where did you go for dinner on Christmas?
KERRY:Was it day? Yeah, it was Christmas Day. I don't know.
CHRISY:It was like the movie where the only places opened are Asian restaurants or honestly.
KERRY:I think we went to like a Perkins or Bob Evans or some someplace like that, but it was in the evening, so by then things were opening because they started that whole thing getting ready for you know, like everybody returning their stuff, yes, yes, yes, yes. So it was like later in the day, so but it wasn't anything grand, but it was just nice because I didn't have to cook it. So gotcha. Well, hey, so there's our Christmases, wonderful, and we're about done with this, and now we'll get ready for the new year.
CHRISY:So boy.
KERRY:Well, for all of you listening, we want to thank you again for all of your support. We hope these last few episodes have helped made your holiday season a little bit better and a little more joyful, a little more tolerable. And we look forward to sharing the new year with you.
CHRISY:Yes, we do.
KERRY:Alrighty, so please be sure to check us out on our Facebook page. Uh, we want to hear all those uh feedback from you on what you had for Christmas, uh, what you did for the holidays, what you were eating. Just share it all with us, whatever you feel like sharing.
CHRISY:Absolutely.
KERRY:Alrighty, we'll see you soon, junkies.
CHRISY:Bye bye.
