Am I the only one who dreads the holidays?

Okay, so Thanksgiving has been a bust so far. I didn't go to my parents' house (where ALL the food is), but our plan was to grill a couple of steaks mid-afternoon or evening. But then I got a blinding, bordering-on-nausea headache, which is starting to ease up but is still there. So steaks have been postponed to tomorrow.

I went to my SO's stepbrother's house, where they deep fry the turkey and are pretty decent people. I felt really embarrassed at first because most of them hadn't seen me since the stepbrother's wedding, so the first 20 minutes was me explaining how I lost all my weight, and then proceeded to eat all of the food. It was all in all a pretty good time, although I miss my own family.

I listened to old people be very close-minded, went by my girl name for the day, and got very sick (not because of the food, though, the food was awesome). Not so exciting. I missed my side of the family a lot. I'll get to see them Saturday though.

Oh yeah! I heard one of a set of my SO's older relatives (we made some stops to visit people before dinner) pronounce Nicaragua in a way that made it sound like a racial epithet, and another one bitch about how Obama took his money away. Always a fun time!

One of the dinner guests was complaining about Obamacare, and Quat was like, "um, that's the only way I could get health insurance." Guest said angrily, "Yeah, and I'm paying for it!" Motherfucker. (Note that Quat pays for insurance just like anyone else; the only difference is that he can be covered now instead of denied because of pre-existing conditions.) And THEN old guy starts bitching about his Medicare not covering enough. What the fucking fuck.

Oh! And I just found out my sister's ex-husband and his 2nd wife had T-day dinner with MY father. Dad plays host to her ex, but doesn't even call his own kids on a holiday. I'm really kind of hurt, although I should know better...

The answer, clearly, is to troll the fuck out of him. "No Republican worth his salt actually pays enough tax to be worth complaining about; that's what accountants, LLCs, and deductions are for. Are you lying, or just incompetent?"

Well, the incompetent part is obvious. The guy's dumb as a box of rocks. I've known that for months. And my MIL would have gotten mad if we'd argued with her guest, so we just left as soon as we could.

Last time I talked politics with my otherwise quite sharp and sensible dad I called him a halfwit to his face. (That was because he was buying into Jack Welch's BLS number fabrication conspiracy theory.) We try not to discuss politics.

I know I've mentioned this here before, but my dad thinks Obama's trying to set up a monarchy. On the rare occasions we do speak, I try to avoid politics altogether.

To be fair he did succeed King George II Bush.

Thanksgiving went really well. Like, even better than my wife expected, and she forces herself to stay unnaturally positive so that my moping and groaning doesn't get her down before we even get to the family event. I had a good time, the food was great, we didn't spend way too long around people, no one got too drunk, it was great. She's now trying to tell me that Christmas is going to be just as great. I don't buy it and will continue to believe this Christmas will be even worse than the last 9. Hooray holidays with family!

Thanksgiving went fine for me as it usually does, but man I wish my stepdad would tone down the ultracon/OBUMMER/the food riots are coming just you wait rhetoric. He's mostly harmless but it grates on me. You watch Fox news bro, come at me when you use something resembling an actual news source, like the onion.

Also people posting WHEEE I'M OUT BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING! on FB make me weep with despair for humanity.

Is it okay with y'all if I just pretend this Thanksgiving never happened? Because of work, I didn't get to see my family and have a traditional meal. I felt sick all day Thursday and worked almost all day Friday, even though the office was closed. This morning my aunt died, so tomorrow my poor parents are driving 8 hours to Louisiana for the funeral. Other than a pretty good steak Friday night, this long weekend has sucked ass.*

* But more so for my mother.

Yeah, well I had to host my in-laws, so there!

In seriousness, I'm sorry for your crappy holiday and for your family's loss.

To answer the thread title: No.

One down, two to go.

Sorry to hear it was so bad, Jerri. My condolences to your family.

triggercut's 2012 mix is here!

I'm due to spend Christmas 2012 in my apartment 3200 miles from the extended family who are all hoping to see me, doped up on Percocet, and probably accompanied by my...rather overbearing mother who insists that if at least one family member's not there to keep me company, my dying grandmother will raise hell.

I have rarely felt less like celebrating, which is why there's not a single bit of decoration in our apartment (if you don't count my snowflake blanket) and why the only holiday baking I'm planning to do is fudge. The lesson I'm taking from all this is that the next time I need to have any major health concerns, schedule them for July.

Ready to just skip Christmas and move on to a New Year's party while on drugs.

AWW YISS! Man, I wondered why it was later than usual but reading his post I get it.

Thanks, triggercut !

Hey, thanks to y'all and I hope everyone enjoys it. Sorry for pushing it out so late!

Gotta vent for a sec, and this is going to be somewhat lacking in Holiday Spirit.

My family is very big on Amazon wish lists. They're basically mandatory, that's the only way any shopping gets done. My mom and my brother's MIL are the biggest proponents of these things, so this year I dutifully updated mine and removed old items and added maybe 20-30 new items - basically anything I could think of that was even remotely interesting, like every TV show I've ever heard was great but never watched, stuff like that. So I'm doing my usual last-minute shopping for everyone else this week, and both my mom and my brother's MIL have a total of about SIX items on their wishlists. Half the stuff is out of stock or is all interrelated (the items go together) so effectively I've got nothing to go on. Now it's the eleventh hour, and I'm still empty-handed as far as gifts for either of them go. It's frustrating that this whole wish-list thing is effectively a one-way street.

Solution: Amazon gift cards!

Also, I really hate traveling at Christmas. Weather-wise it's about the worst time of the year, with some combination of snow, heavy rain and/or wind likely. With my family on Vancouver Island that means I need to spend about five hours on a combination of bus/ferry/car to get home, with the possibility of canceled sailings or other long delays. It's stressful and unpleasant.

Last year I stayed in Vancouver with my partner and we had a nice dinner at home while the weather raged outside. It was nice.

Looking forward to listening to it.

Really liked your blog post, but liking it there meant registering and whatnot, so I'm liking it here instead.

Fuck rules.

I've finally caved to family pressure to go home (Pennsylvania) for the holidays. Despite the endometriosis, despite the extremely rocky immediate family relationship, despite the fact that my grandmother is apparently barely healthy enough to host Christmas anyway. Mom claims she and Grandma can take care of "all the awkward questions" between them, but I know my family. This will be too many days of dodging questions about school, my health, what I'm doing in California, the boyfriend, and everything else on this year's "things we're not talking about list." The only reason I'm going is because I was basically blackmailed into it.

At least my sister will be there.

I seriously don't understand why anyone's parents would force their child to be somewhere for the holidays that they don't want to be. If I told my parents I'd rather stay in Nashville, they'd be sad about it, but they wouldn't badger me. I don't think it's just because I'm an old woman myself; I can't see them doing that even when I was much younger. I guess I'm just lucky that way.

After the Thanksgiving my family had, I'm determined to drive down there and do my part to make Christmas a bit nicer for my folks.

GodDAMMIT. My MIL compromises and agrees for my people to arrive at 11:30, even though she really wanted them to come at 1:00. I just called them to see if they're on the road, and it turns out they're only 15 minutes away -- 1 hour and 15 minutes early. What the fucking fuck. *headdesk* Do they just not think about other people? I don't get it.

Bah.

Also humbug.

Update: turned out to be the best Christmas ever. But I'll take that outside the humbug thread. :D

Except for my brother sending me a picture of the very nice wine I was missing out on, this "ruined" Christmas turned out very nice. Family went to sleep happy and I'm watching Die Hard while finishing off the Barolo.

I could do this again just the four of us (but it would be a hard sell to my mother).

Is it wrong of me to be a little exasperated about my aunt? She knows alcohol triggers my cluster headaches. She made a point of showing she remembered this when I was at her house for her birthday a few months ago.

And yet for every one of the last three Christmases - the years I've been having this shit - she's gotten me a bottle of wine.

Nope. Sounds perfectly right to me.

Sometimes I wish we were more of a drinking family. Being drunk would make my always-on-the-cross grandmother and the little Ted Nugent-loving shit my niece married a lot more tolerable.

Alternatively, jerri, you could take a gleeful pleasure in trolling the fuck out of them until they learned to shut up around you.

This approach may have side effects which are worse than the current situtaion, of course. :)

I did threaten to stab the Nugent fan with the scissors I was using to wrap gifts. Actually, his being a fan wouldn't be so bad if he hadn't insisted on playing a video on his phone of an interview with Uncle Ted about gun control.

I would love to be a gigantic holiday troll, but I behave because I want my mom to have a nice Christmas.