2009 Holiday Family Drama Thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

well, this year my mother told my daughter that she was anorexic, needed to quit ballet, start eating more & exercising less. My daughter is 18, and about 110 lbs; very slender, a dancer, and eats like a horse.

She also told my 15 year old son that if he continues to play football he’ll end up not amounting to anything in life. The boy is a star player, and despite some academic setbacks early in the year he’s really turning things around.

At least my father was well behaved; no drama from him this year. Last year he told my then 14-yr old son that he was an asshole.

I am glad I live hundreds of miles away from them and only see them a couple of times a year.

New Years will be spent in the company of people we actually care for, and who care for us.

42

My only drama was pre-holiday when UPS broke the package I was expecting and then dragged their feet too long for me to be able to get it on time. So I cancelled.

Mom had her fourth and last chemo session on the 21st. So she was not up to doing anything on Christmas and this was fine by me and my sister. I get annoyed with my more right-wing religious relatives and can generally handle it by being as bland and noncommital as possible. But my sister gets ulcerative and plays the “look how tolerant and open-minded I am about your idiocy” role. This annoys me even more than the relatives because she’s just as bad but from the opposite direction. So not having to deal with them and not having to puruse and purchase Thomas Kincaid, Precious Moments, or NASCAR-themed gifts more than makes up for missing out on the big feast.

43

I’m sorry An Arky. :frowning: I know how difficult it must be for you having just gone through it myself. My thoughts are with you.

44

There’s a reason I live in a different state from my brother and sister :smiley:

45

Pretty mild stuff, compared to most of what’s in the thread… really it came down to the spectacular lack of “drama” under mildly rotten conditions.

I came down with a sore throat and fever on the 22nd. My parents were due to make the eight-hour drive here on the 23rd. We all decided that they’d better put off their visit till New Years…

But on the morning of the 23rd, though I still felt like shit on a stick, the fever was gone. I felt so bad about borking everyone’s plans that I told them to come anyway.

I spent the time sitting on the sofa, coughing and watching everyone with red, encrusted eyes. Once or twice a day, when there weren’t enough leftovers to feed everyone, I got up and cooked food (and they ate it. wtf?) On Sunday I drove myself to a Convenient Care clinic and got diagnosed with a sinus infection *and *strep throat, and given antibiotics. Thank god.

My husband did some cooking and cleaning, bless his soul, and is always the only life in the party at these gatherings. We are also renovating a house, though, and he’s exhausted from hand-holding the crew in addition to working a full-time job with a 45-minute communte. On Christmas Eve we all went to the house to see the progress. It was raining. We found out that the new roof (which we’d delayed the rest of the renovation TWO MONTHS to get on, and which was an unexpected expense in the first place) … was leaking. He went into the attic and stayed there, silently, for about fifteen minutes… quietly freaking out I guess… then solemnly drove us all home and went to the garage, where he howled out the roofer on his cell phone.

He wasn’t getting much sleep, either, because I was coughing all night, and my parents were in the guest bed, so he couldn’t escape. I tried to go to the sofa whenever the coughing got so persistant that I wasn’t going to sleep anyway.

By Sunday my parents were ready to leave, but it was snowing hard. They tried to go, went two miles, and turned back around. They spent the rest of the day sitting around quietly, tapping their toes and checking the weather. My cough was at its absolute worst; I’m sure I was driving everyone crazy. They left before 7:00 on Monday morning.

There were no tears or raised voices or confrontations, but damn, it sure wasn’t a cheerful stress-free holiday.

46

My drama was really a lack thereof.

We are adopting two beautiful, wonderful children. It is very exciting and very scary.

My parents are beside themselves (they gave us a video camera for christmas so we could take videos of them when we have visitations since they don’t get to meet them yet). My sister is dying to get her hands on them. Even my grandma, who is not known for being particularly forward thinking, has been sweet about wondering if they will like her.

My husband’s parents have barely mentioned it. It’s like they don’t realize that these are their grandchildren! Broke my hubby’s heart.

(Luckily, there is so much going on that is good that he is easy to distract.)

47

Now we’re going to yell at you too. :wink: Just* let *the old bitch get lost!

48

Blissfully little drama this year.

My cousin cheerfully announced that she and another cousin* had nominated me to host Christmas dinner this year. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except she told me this on December 19th. Without offering to contribute anything except her scintillating presence. Because nothing says Christmas like cramming seven people and a hyperactive toddler around my four-person dining room table, right?

I had some reservations about hosting a big family gathering this year, because I would be working all the way up to the Christmas Eve and it wouldn’t leave much time for shopping and cooking. I told her so in the hopes she’d offer up something… food, help, moral support, money, anything. Instead, she said she’d make other plans.

She also opted out of visiting our grandmother at the nursing home, because we weren’t planning on taking grandma out for lunch as we sometimes do for special occasions (it was Christmas Day - everything, including the Jewish deli around the corner, was closed for the day). We were swinging by just before lunchtime, though, so I told her she could easily bring something from home if she wanted to stick around and have a bite with grandma. Too much hassle, she says.

Shortly after that, she posted on her Facebook that she was boycotting Christmas because of her stupid family and was going to spend the whole day at home watching TV and getting drunk instead.

Did I mention she’s 32 years old? :rolleyes:
Meh. Her loss. I had the lovely drama-free Christmas Day I wanted. My mother and I visited my grandmother in the morning to bring her her gifts, then came home to unwind for a bit before I got started on cooking a lovely dinner, which I enjoyed thoroughly in the company of The Boy and Mumsy Dearest and a great bottle of wine. Then we capped off the evening by watching a nice little black comedy called Death at a Funeral and laughing our asses off (much better than the saccharine sweet holiday specials, IMO).

Sorry to hear some of you weren’t able to dodge the bullet.

  • Speaking of the other cousin, I have no clue what she thinks of this… we rarely talk, and when we do, it usually consists of me sending her multiple messages before I get a return call/email.
    Hell, she couldn’t even be bothered to answer any of my Facebook messages earlier this month about the present I was planning for our grandmother (all I needed her to contribute was a few recent photos of her and her family, since I knew she didn’t necessarily have the funds to chip in for the digital photo frame I’d picked out).
    For all I know, she may not have even known about this whole “let’s go to Mahna’s house and make her feed us dinner” plan. If she did, though, I’m thoroughly disgusted with her too.
49

I see that if nobody’s going to feed her for free, she doesn’t feel it’s worth the energy to bother attending.

50

Ding ding! We have a winnah!

I understand what it’s like to be broke during the holidays, because Og knows I’ve done my share of part-time jobs for crappy wages… but last I checked, offering to help out with the prep work or washing up afterwards doesn’t cost a penny.

Best of luck with your mom, BTW. I know how tough it is to convince an elderly relative that their life might actually improve by moving into a home… at some point, living at home isn’t so much about independence as it is about isolation, but they don’t like to see it that way. It does mean giving up a lot, but the flip side is that instead of being left alone with nothing but the TV for company, there are other residents to chat with and activities to keep them engaged.

51

Congratulations! How old are they? Boys? Girls? One of each? You must be so excited - when do they arrive?

52

Things were all going pretty well up until about 10 Christmas night, when my mother hung up on her brother-in-law, flung her cell phone across the kitchen, and burst into tears.

He had called to ask why she signed their family up for cable for a year. She explained that she’d done it because they wanted to watch tv but didn’t want an antenna or a converter box or a new tv (which they had originally asked for and then changed their minds about a week out.) He told her, in precisely so many words, they didn’t want cable, either. She snapped at him to cancel the damn thing, and that’s when the phone-throwing and crying started. Poor Mom. I don’t think it was his behavior that set her off–he’s been a mannerless, thankless boor all my life–but more the amount of time and effort she’d put into the gift.

We’ve been listening ever since the digital conversion that they can’t watch tv. They don’t know if the problem is with the set, or the converter box, or their rabbit ears, and they’ve taken no steps to figure it out. (I suspect they live too far away from a station to get good signal w/rabbit ears, but that’s really neither here nor there.) They announced months ago that for Christmas they wanted everyone to pitch in and get them a new tv, so Mom’s been watching the sale circulars like a vulture to get them the best possible set within our budget. She’s done research on the various brands, what all the little numbers mean, just how close they are to a transmitter and whether they should get a decent picture with just rabbit ears. When they announced the week before Christmas they didn’t want a tv after all, she spent a couple hours listening to why they couldn’t hook up an actual antenna to their house, and then spent three days arguing with their local cable company about whether or not their street and house existed and was within the service area. She put more time and worry into this than she did the rest of the family put together. Having it thrown back in her face just broke her heart.

And on Sunday my grandma had a little breakdown on us. Grandpa is dying with colon cancer, and he had a really rough patch right before Christmas. He was very debilitated, and she wasn’t a lot better, so it was suggested that things were getting to be too much for her and they should get help or think about a nursing home. And then various oars got stuck in and someone told her that if he wasn’t being taken care of, she could be declared a menace to her health and he could be bundled into a nursing home over both of their objections. Grandma is high-strung and prone to worry about the most unlikely stuff, and this terror that doctors and social workers were going to swoop down and drag him off kicking and screaming had been gnawing at her for over a week. She’d been holding it together well, but when she finally got a little time alone with me and DoctorJ, the floodgates just opened. He didn’t tell her anything lots of other people hadn’t been telling her this whole time, that there’s about a million reasons that won’t happen, but she finally seemed to calm down and really listen when he said it.

53

Mom update: They still don’t know for sure why her feet are in pain, but they suspect some sort of neuropathy. Her roommate of three days (who was released today) is suspected to have had MRSA, so Mom (and her room) is now quarantined and they’re monitoring her for it. We laughed about her lousy luck for a while tonight on the phone.

54

crazycatlady, are you going to tell your brother about how much time and energy your mom put into their gift? He needs to know. Guilt the sonofabitch.

55

He sounds like the kind of person who wouldn’t recognize a guilt trip even if he went first class.

56

He’s not my brother, he’s my aunt’s husband. My brother doesn’t do shit like that because he wasn’t raised by wolves. And no, I’m not calling the fucker. He’s already looked from me to the car battery charger I got him, back to me, and announced that he already has jumper cables. If I talk to him again, he’s going to hear all about where he can attach his jumper cables. I already had to tell their son if he didn’t like the skateboard and pads I got him, to take 'em back to the store and quit fussing.

I forgot to mention that he called back Saturday morning at quarter after 8 to inform Mom that he’d called the cable company and they wouldn’t let him cancel the account because it was on her credit card. She just asked him point-blank where he got off being so breathtakingly rude, taking a gift and throwing it back in someone’s face. He hung up on her that time. Next year, I think someone needs a card saying a gift has been given to someone who would appreciate it. I’m thinking Heifer ducks.

57

Hello, here’s the drama! FIL wrote a letter addressed to my husband which arrived today, and marked on the bottom of the envelope “Personal and Confidential.” Yeah. My husband is a postal worker; I don’t open mail that doesn’t have my name on it somewhere.

Anyway, my husband read it and rolled his eyes hard. It was a bunch of “we have our differences but you need to think about your mother and you don’t see your mother and I had to explain to her* why you weren’t at Christmas and Thanksgiving and…” blah blah blah blah BS.

Oh hey, did you tell her the real reason we weren’t there**, which is that you’re a jerk whose first thought was after she collapsed not that you should figure out what’s wrong, but that you needed someone to take care of her while you went on vacation the next week, and you set about trying to guilt-trip two of your daughters into giving up their own vacations the same week to do it? Because you had been planning on taking that vacation with your wife but hey, if she’s sick with something unexplained (turned out to be heat exhaustion from the hot summer weather that week), then forget her, your vacation is important enough to leave her behind.

That’s just one little teeny example of his self-centeredness. Not to mention his decades of emotional and (when he still had the strength) physical abuse. My husband snapped and told him that when I’ve been sick before vacations, the only options he considered were ‘stay home with my wife’ or ‘if she says she’s ok, we go together and watch our pace.’ His dad said he probably wasn’t going to do that, and my husband said he had nothing to say to him then, and hung up.

I have to say, the resulting peacefulness has been lovely. :smiley: We’re planning on re-establishing contact around his mom’s birthday and I hope he sticks to his plan of not taking any crap from his dad.

  • She’s got moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Frankly, she forgets things she’s said to you in the same conversation; you could have told her we were in another room and I suspect she’d have been happy with that answer.

** There’s no use going to a family gathering when he’s mad at you. We went to Easter and my husband hadn’t gone to Mass with his parents, and that earned him the silent treatment and everyone else got spoken to gruffly, including yelling at a brother-in-law at one point. Ruins the whole thing. If you speak up about it, he yells more, and his siblings are so scared of making him mad/making their mother upset in turn that they go along with his behavior or try their best to ignore it.

58

I started the drama at the Christmas Eve dinner table. :o I can’t even remember what set me off, but I found myself having a shouting match with my mother, who is usually sufferable but somehow that night was on the far side of insufferable. She’s essentially good-hearted but very manipulative and loves to play the victim/martyr and thus can never accept responsibility for any of her mistakes, and I just couldn’t take it anymore and told her off. Even as I was speaking, I was embarrassed and furious with myself for losing control of my temper (especially in front of an audience), but I just couldn’t stop.

We patched things up afterward, but apparently not permanently, because today she stopped by and we got into another fight. Technically, she started it, but I kept it going and was actually quite rude to her…I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. :frowning:

59

Are you sure we’re not related? :slight_smile:

60

If we are, you have to take him next year.