Oh. All it takes is a box.

Isn’t that Christmas/Thanksgiving all over?

Wrap things up in a neat little box, and make everything good.

 “The One Where I Wrap Things Up”

As we all know, the true spirit of Christmas™ is fighting, so it’s good the Friends™ are putting me and my wife to shame with their bickering.

Ross is annoyed at Rachel for exchanging gifts. Joey’s still mad at Chandler. And Rachel is having a go at Monica for hitting on sexy Richard’s son. Ew. As fetishes go, eye doctors with the surname “Burke” is a pretty specific one. Thankfully she stops before he gets his head stuck in her Turkey… if you catch my drift. (There’s always next year…)

But it is sad seeing the “Chandler and Joey’s friendship is a bit like a relationship LOL” joke being played straight for once. Even if I love the Italian swearing.

Joey and Chandler are still fighting over Kathy, but things with me seem to have settled a little.

I’m still getting regularly full of “Christmas cheer”, (alcohol) but whatever ennui lead to my drunken outburst has gone. Whether it was money troubles, the emotion of Chandler Number One leaving, or worrying about my family I’m feeling a bit better now. Especially now work’s over!

Like Rachel, I nabbed as much stuff as possible on the way out for Christmas gifts.

Unlike Rachel, in my drunken state, I completely forgot to take my secret Santa to our Christmas party! I was gutted, all week I’ve been terrified of how crap it would be if I forgot.

But I needn’t have worried; it turned out my person forgot theirs too!

We’re as bad as each other…

There’s another thing I shouldn’t have worried about.

Remember all this time I thought my parents were unhappy at my wedding? Big news:

My sister is pregnant!!

Sorry, I should have said sooner, I was hoping something Friends™ related would happen. Like them deciding to call it Ben, or her giving birth and me never spending time with it. But it’s going well; I’ve even seen a picture now. My wife just managed to stop me replying with “Amazing sis, I never thought I’d be so happy to see your insides!”

Anyway, it turns out she left the wedding early with morning sickness, and that’s why my parents were worried. Of course I didn’t notice she’d left at all. But hey, it was the biggest day of my life! I can’t be held responsible for every pregnant woman on the premises.

So I’m feeling a LOT better about that now, if a little silly for thinking it was something to do with me. I have to remember the world does not revolve around me and Friends™. Not even on my wedding day.

All this leaves me with is the problem of how to make things up to my wife. I’ve agreed to try and be less of a self-absorbed bellend. But she’s also surprised me by asking that I stop referring to her as Janice.

Can’t I just spend Christmas in a box instead?!

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

For our works Christmas™ do we went to a club with an ACTUAL BALL-PIT IN IT.

Which was great, until I immediately lost my wedding ring.

Desperately scrabbling through the sea of balls, it didn’t take long for my workmates to notice and help out. We all methodically moved our hands over the grimy bottom of the pit, until my friends cheered! They’d found ANOTHER persons ring.

Tossing it back in the pit we resumed our search.

Only kidding… we tracked them down and they were very grateful, and I was delighted when we found mine shortly after.

Apparently though, I drunkenly suggested they hadn’t been grateful enough, and should buy us all a round of drinks. Before rapidly back-tracking when I realised that would apply to me too.

Merry Christmas everybody!

“Just the one, then” I thought, at the after show party.

Who was I to look a gift horse in the mouth?

I had two.

“Just a couple, then” I thought, at Chandler Number 1’s leaving drinks.

And, of course, it all went wrong.

“The One Where I Cross the Line”

Given past behaviour, it’s no great surprise a party celebrating Chandler leaving was a boozy affair. I say celebrate, as I’m obviously delighted one of my Real Live Friends is moving abroad for three years.

I never thought I’d look forward to season seven.

It was all fine until we missed the last train home. The Friends™ do bad things, like cheat while on a break, fall in love with each others’ girlfriends, play horrendous keyboard solos.

But they never seem to get paralytic and go on a drunken rampage.

And now Janice, quite rightly, is hugely pissed off. If I hadn’t just read the Wikipedia™ article on, the Roman goddess, Victory I’d feel utterly defeated.

We made it back home eventually and are giving each other a bit of breathing space. Hopefully she can forgive me for my drunken state. But, whilst Chandler and I try and work out how to make amends, I’m now free to ponder the big questions. Like why do Chandler and Joey still not have a bathroom lock?!

You’d think they’d have learned after seeing Joey’s dad naked in the shower. But now Chandler’s had the same problem with Kathy. It’s almost like Chandler and Joey WANT to see each other naked. I don’t know what’s worse; that it’s been three years and they still haven’t fixed it, or that it’s three years since I watched that episode and I’m still writing Real Live Friends.

Even though it’s Chandler and Kathy who cross the line, I think I spoke too soon about Joey being ready to settle down. He’s dating another woman alongside Kathy! Which excuses her and Chandler’s behaviour if you ask me. But who’s looking for excuses?

Janice certainly isn’t. There’s a general feeling in the air of “what comes next?” How do I make things up to her? How will Chandler fix things?

But also, what DO you do once you’ve done the wedding and got the house? If things still aren’t perfect? And all it takes for you to lose your shit is 4 beers, 3 years of your friend abroad, 2 months of parental disapproval, and a partridge in a fucking pear tree.

What do you get for the man who’s got everything? (In my dad’s case, whichever new Game of Thrones spin-off they’ve released instead of the actual sequel).

What’s next when you get what you want but can’t seem to enjoy it? Every change just brings more complications. Like Chandler you say outwardly: “All the pieces of my life are falling right into place!”

But what you mean is “swallow our feelings, even if it means we’re unhappy forever.”

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

Once again the more serious the storyline, the sillier the b-plot must be. Like Ross and his keyboard, I’ve got my own stupid thing going on in the background.

Mum’s been trying to convince me to let her friend fix my noisey gate, which I do not want fixed thank you very much. It’ll be my only warning if someone tries to break in!

But it lead to the following exchange…

Mum: “Are you aware of the expression ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’”?

Me: “Are you aware of the expression ‘you can lead a horse to water but not make it drink’”?

Mum: “What about cutting your nose off to spite your face!”

Me: “That hasn’t got a horse in it.”

Thus, I win.

At least that’s what I thought until my phone pinged with another text 6 hours later.

Mum: “I suppose I’m flogging a dead horse!”

Touché, mum… touché.

It’s Kathy’s birthday! Timed perfectly by the writer’s to coincide with my wifes.

Much like Chandler and Kathy’s burgeoning attraction, my wife’s present involves antici…..

pation. She’s got tickets for a show which unfortunately isn’t till February.

I’ve made it up to her by throwing in a coupon for “one hour of Me love”.

“The One With the Free Beer”

I can relate all too well to Joey’s struggle to get a better present for Kathy than Chandler.
And now, with Christmas on the way, I wish I had a friend like Chandler to swoop in and buy all my presents for me. Hopefully not due to being attracted to my wife though.

Paget Brewster, who plays Kathy, does an excellent job of playing a woman caught in a complex situation. I’m looking forward to seeing this play out!

There was one throwaway line about Joey which made me pause for thought. He was once in a relationship for three whole years?! This must have been before the start of the show.

But his character makes a lot more sense if you think, maybe, he spent his early twenties in a relationship. Maybe he’s been trying to make up for lost time the whole series? At the minute he’s anything but the “player” first introduced, his last two girlfriends look like genuine attempts to build a relationship. Good on you Joe!

Another person making attempts to move forward... is Ross. The undercurrent of tension’s still there with him and Rachel but he’s super keen on his new date! Until he sees her apartment.

It’s a pretty grim state of affairs. But makes me feel better about falling into old habits with the cleanliness of our house!

We’ve developed a running joke about a CD Janice found in her pocket on the way out and threw in our garden to “pick up later”. The running joke being me pointing out it’s still there every week. And Janice continuing to do nothing about it.

At least she’s nowhere near as bad as Ross’s date, although I’d never say no to a messy, farcical sex scene.

Just hopefully with less rats.

Maybe our house would be cleaner if I spent more time tidying and less time reading about ‘Vein of Galen Aneurysmal Malformations’ on Wikipedia™. I admit I had to give up on this one after feeling a little queasy. With that and Monica and Phoebe’s new business catering for funerals (yes, really) I’m getting a bit freaked out.

It’s high time Monica got her career back on track. Apparently she’s been unemployed for months. How has she been surviving?! Fortunately Phoebe is also recently unemployed, and yet somehow has 500 dollars to spare, so they can work together. This leads to the world’s most awkward funeral when Phoebe interrupts the singing widower to demand payment (yes, really…)

It reminds me of the morning after our wedding. The receptionist made a mistake and asked me to handover hundreds of pounds for our room on checkout. Even though it was included in our wedding package. Deathly hungover, and basking in the glory of the best day of my life, I’m ashamed to say I just laughed and walked off. Leaving my wife to clear up the confusion.

I’m still a little concerned about my parents that day to be honest. They really did seem out of sorts.

Dad put me in awkward position the other day. As if to highlight my feelings of inadequacy over “never buying him a drink” (still hurts…) he gave me a pricey looking “Vintage Ale” as a gift when I went round for tea. I then appeared even more mean, and ungrateful, when I tried to have the “it’s a nice gift, but I’m not really drinking at the moment” conversation.

Could be worse, Cannibal Boss had the same thing happen with her parents and they asked if she was pregnant!

I shouldn’t feel too bad about my dad, seeing as he gave my brother in law one too, I highly suspect he won them in a raffle.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

This week I’ve mostly been knocking on doors and being a plant. Sounds strange, but true.

Being a door knocker is the most irritating. We’re STILL trying to get our internet sorted out. Not naming any names *cough* Richard Branson *cough*

Even though we were told it would take 8 to 10 days, every time I ring up there’s a new problem and they add on another month. The latest excuse is them telling me they now need permission from SIX of my neighbours to dig up a driveway.

So, I’ve been traipsing from door to door, feeling like a Jehovah’s Witness trying to spread the love of a holy Virgin™.

Being a plant was much more fun. Janice was putting on a kids production of Little Shop of Horrors™. But none of them were big enough to man the plant. So I stepped up for my fifteen minutes of fame.

It was super fun in the end. And imagine my delight when the kids gave me a present at the end of the week!

A crate of beer…