Monday, December 31, 2007

This Is Mean

This is Christmas



Oops! Died again. Sorry. Weird, yes, but weirder still that it didn't take.

Maybe I don't understand Christmas. If it passes and the primary thought left in my head is, "Have I permanently damaged that relationship?", I think I might be missing the point. Or, I just don't get how it works. Either way, I don't want "Christmas" to happen at my house again.

Whatever it is, it isn't working.

Brother was thoroughly depressed/depressing. Mom was hostile. Dad was as ever. Even though Mom and Dad have the Golden Anniversary on the bubble, Mom's decided that leaving Dad is going to be the answer to her problems, or at least it's going to serve as a trade for a better set of problems. Great, but whatever way you want to look at that, none of it is my fault. Take it outside.

And as for Mr. Wallow In Self-Pity, I don't know how to cure your problems, but I do know that moping isn't a cure for anything. Neither is the plan of WAKE UP, TAKE NAP, SHOWER, TAKE NAP. You've got to give the Prozac a fighting chance there, Admiral Shuteye. Well, at least you got SHOWER in there. Count it.

To put it as eloquently as I can muster, the whole affair really sucked really bad. It sucked. No - after last year's pukefest, I can see that my daughter is "off" a certain restaurant. I'll give her that one. The fact that you guys keep trying your damndest to make Japanese food a Christmas Eve tradition only further proves your complete insensitivity - towards your own granddaughter/niece for fuck's sake. Find a Hibachi place in your town and get your fill some other time of the year. Here's another hot tip: It won't kill you to make a 1/2 hour appearance with my wife's family and have some food, but it will be embarrassing for me to try to explain that "they just didn't feel like coming." Morons. How about doing it for my wife?

Yeah, let's definitely do this again next year.

Mom just couldn't wait to leave. It was, again, pretty embarrassing to see how anxious she was to get the hell out, and she did a LOT of moping on the 26th, when my brother decided he needed one more day up here. When the morning of the 27th came, Mom put whatever could obviously fit in the car, threw the rest in a box and told me to mail it. She assured me (with some hostility) that there was no way it was all going to fit. Right, except I spent five minutes and got it all in there without problem. Didn't even keep anybody waiting. That's how bad she wanted out of there. And to do what? I'm not really sure.

Of course I don't want to do this again, but there's little chance of any other option because my brother's got nothing going on down where he lives and his whole plan is to just bring his kids to someone who has a plan (and then ignore them while he mopes and looks for pity and continues to not have a plan.) I don't travel during the holidays because travel ruins holidays. I always say my gift to everyone is that I'm not going to ask them to travel. Stay where you are and enjoy yourself! That's what I always say. Never works.

Not that this worked....

But I had an awesome Christmas. The Wife and daughter kicked total ass and got me something great. I got my Dad the fairly interesting and amusing gift of a home security system, which I thought was the perfect thing to both satisfy his addiction to gadgets, and properly serve his paranoia. (As an interesting side-note, I called Mom a couple weeks ago looking for ideas for Dad, or at least looking to go in on something with her. She had nothing. I told her about the lame security camera idea and she said to get it and then asked to split it with me. B-A-C-K-F-I-R-E)

I also did well for my wife this year, and when I reflect on the simple and thoughtful gifts we gave each other, that's enough for me to go on.

Everyone else can go fuck themselves.

Merry Christmas, bastiges!

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