Mom update: They released her from the hospital. I asked her if they figured out what was wrong and she said, “It’s neuropathy”. I told her that that’s a symptom, not a cause. She then said something about arthritis and they gave her steroids (which is, I believe, consistent with the arthritis diagnosis) and something for her circulation.
Anyway, major drama over. The ongoing drama about assisted living and all that merely rolls over into another inning…
I’ve whipped up a little holiday drama myself this year, fueled by trying to cook in a postage stamp size kitchen with my elderly mom yapping at me how I was doing it all wrong/ insisting I cook this instead of that/ her sink was plugged up/we had to stop everything to feed the cat right in the middle of the kitchen floor/and of course I couldn’t visit with my nephew and his gf visiting from San Francisco because I was stuck in the kitchen and later had a fucking mile high stack of dishes and pots and pans to wash. Then we drove home in freezing rain after I took one step out the door and went skidding on ice and fell on the driveway. (We practice for The Big Christmas Feast by doing the exact same thing a month beforehand, on Thanksgiving.)
But this is minor stuff and just to be expected. … The only real holiday family drama story is the year my mentally ill brother (pre-medication, when his wife divorced him and he was living with my parents) lost his shit on Christmas eve, punched a hole in the wall, and yelled at everyone asking why they didn’t just fuck off and die and get off his back. Shortly after, a strange car pulled up outside and he ran out and jumped in and disappeared for two days. (oh, and the driver was black! a black stranger!) My mother was of course hysterical and crying and all ‘oh, my poor baby, who is that man and where is he taking my poor baby?’ and at one point said, ‘this is the WORST Christmas EVER!’ Ya think??? I burst out laughing, and that didn’t make things any better…
Hmm, well:
-My uncle showed up embarrassingly drunk to the restaurant his daughter works at and they now aren’t getting along.
-My aunt is having an affair (again) and we all suspect that her husband is gay. The marriage will probably end, but we’re all concerned because there are kids to worry about this time.
-My uncle seems to be getting prescription drugs through my grandmother’s health insurance or something like that, I didn’t really pay much attention to this one.
Along with a myriad of other crap. Being a member of my family means dealing with one Freudian delight after another.
Jesus. My family drama is considerably milder than what I’ve read here. Our latest was my good-for-nothing 37-year-old cousin, who ended up divorcing his wife because she had the gall to suggest that maybe he should starting more like a responsible adult, rather than joining online wine appreciation forums and squandering all their money on expensive wine they can’t afford. The irony was that she was willing to work thing out with him but he just divorced her without a second thought. His parents cut him off for a while but then he lost his job and was unable to pay the rent on their apartment, so they ended up taking him in (they should have left him to fend for himself, imho). Then he announced that he wanted to start a restaruant and asked his parents to provide him with the funds.
He always was a spoiled brat. That’s problem with growing up as the oldest son in a uber-traditional Korean family. You think you are awesome and then expect everything to be served on a silver platter for the rest of your life. My aunt is stressed out and I feel sorry for her, but really, it’s partly her fault. She spoiled her sons rotten. She even spoiled the dog she used to have - originally it belonged to my other aunt, but then she became seriously ill and could no longer take care of it. We took it in for awhile and my mom whipped the bastard into shape - he became a very good natured and well behaved creature - but then we gave him to my first aunt and she turned him into a spoiled, ill tempered little brat.
Anyway. Thank God I only see my dad’s side of the family four times a year. That’s more than enough for me.
Yes. Standard Mom stuff. We usually drive up to the mountains and spend Christmas at her house, but last year we were essentially trapped in her house by the snow for 3 days. Completely snowed it. It was basically a Shining situation and I’m surprised we all made it out alive. This year, for that and other reasons, I suggested that mom come to SLC for Christmas morning. To make the deal all the sweeter, I got her a very nice room in a hotel downtown AND made reservations for one of the very few restaurants opened around here on Christmas. We all thought we were in position to have a great Christmas. What silly, silly girls we were.
First, we told Mom to be here by ten. Instead of saying, “Okay!” she argued with us until she was almost in tears, claiming we would open our presents without her. We told her we had no intention of that, and to just be here by 10. Ten comes and goes with no sign of her. Finally, at 10:40 my sister calls her and we learn that she hadn’t even left the house yet! Okay, all right, not the end of the world, but it was pretty fucking annoying. She finally got to our place at noon.
We began unwrapping presents and mom started acting like an excited four year old. You know when toddlers get over stimulated and can’t sit still for 5 minutes and get all up in everybody’s faces, demanding attention? Imagine that, except she’s 47. Still, it wasn’t too bad and I was optimistic until my sister made an innocent comment. “Wow, look at this mess.”
Mom immediately responds with “You can just leave with me.”
We all frown. “Leave with you where, Mom?”
“To the hotel. I’m checking in now.”
“Check-in isn’t until 3 and we were going to see a movie…”
“CHECK-IN IS WHENEVER I SAY IT IS. THEY’LL ALWAYS LET YOU CHECK IN EARLY AND I WANT TO LEAVE NOW. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? NOBODY EVER MENTIONED A MOVIE.”
“…yeah, we did. we were going to go see Sherlock Holmes.”
“NOBODY EVER TELLS ME ANYTHING! FUCK! MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS, RIGHT? ALL I WAS TRYING TO SAY IS THAT SHE CAN LEAVE WITH ME WHEN I GO!”
The discussion turns into a brief fight, until we agree that Mom should leave then and we’ll meet her at the movie theater. Only AFTER the fight (and her departure) do we realize that the show is sold out and there’s not another one we can get to before our 6 o’clock reservations. Okay, no big. We get our shit together and decide to go to mom’s hotel room to play Beatles Monopoly until it’s time for dinner.
Here’s where things began to go poorly.
First, mom has clearly been smoking pot. She’s also been drinking straight whiskey BECAUSE IT’S CHRISTMAS!! She wants to control every single thing, and so when we don’t immediately do what she says, she freaks the fuck out (regardless of how ridiculous her suggestions are). Somebody told her that the hotel has a spa in the fitness center (it doesn’t). That person also told her the hotel has a pool (it doesn’t). And wrapped up with a suggestion that she order the TURDUCKEN at the very fine restaurant we had reservations for. When I refused to call the restaurant and PRE-ORDER the turkducken, she started shouting profanities at me.
Then she went back into hyper-four year old mode. “I’m going to take a shower, well no, I think I’ll take a bath. Wouldn’t a bath be nice? I really like baths. HOT baths. Oh, I hope this water gets hot. Somebody watch the puppy while I bath. Well, I guess I can keep the door open a little bit while I take my hot bath but nobody come in! Hahaha. Do these pants look good? I don’t know what pants to wear. These are leather, but I also have denim. Denim is good enough for the restaurant, right? Or maybe my leather pants? Here, let me change my clothes again. What do you think of this sweater? Can you believe that the water isn’t hot yet? I should call and complain. God, I hate to make people work on Christmas, you know, I really do, but can you believe they didn’t even hold the door for me when I got here? I told them that it BETTER NOT HAPPEN AGAIN! I MEAN JESUS CHRIST, THIS IS MY FUCKING CHRISTMAS AND I EXPECT TO HAVE A LITTLE RESPECT AROUND HERE. I wonder if my water is hot yet.”
On and on and on and on. She drank a couple of hot toddies. She smoked some more. She finally settled on the leather pants and shoved her little dog in a purse and went down to the very expensive restaurant (probably the most high end place I’d ever been in). In the interest of saving time, I won’t detail all the ways she embarrassed me, but it included fighting with my sisters over the prices of their dinners (“I CAN’T AFFORD THAT!”) (Note: When we made these plans, she did agree to pay for their meals. My husband I were paying for our own). She had a long island iced tea and her dog almost escaped from the bag. Then she came back to my place and smoked some more.
Then she refused to leave.
She spent the next two hours insisting on playing Beatles Rock Band and becoming increasingly abusive and aggressive as her performance worsened (because she was both high and drunk off her ass). She started yelling louder and louder until I couldn’t even hear the tv and BANGED on our drumset until she basically broke it. Every time we tried to get her to stop, or at least calm down, she would yell at us anew about how we were ruining her fucking Christmas, etc. Finally, my husband called her a cab and essentially kicked her out of the house at 10.
The next day, my youngest sister and I ran away to Phoenix (650 miles, 11 hours, worth it) and my mom insisted on spending Boxing Day with my husband and my other sister, effectively ruining a second day for them.
The random, over-the-top rages were often interrupted by crying jags for no rhyme or reason. Many of her shouting fits were incoherent and nonsensical (“I WANT TO PLAY ROCKBAND SO I GUESS I’LL JUST TAKE A TAXI HOME. YOU’D LIKE THAT, WOULDN’T YOU? GOD YOU’D LIKE YOUR MOTHER TO TAKE A TAXI ON CHRISTMAS.” “Fine, don’t take a taxi, and I’ll take you back to your hotel right now.” “YOU JUST HATE ME WHY WON’T YOU LET ME PLAY ROCKBAND?” “Fine, we’ll play and you can take a taxi to the hotel when you’re ready.” “I FUCKING HATE YOU! WHY DON’T YOU JUST KICK ME OUT RIGHT?” “…”).
Well, this turned into a really long story. And I don’t think I even properly related the horror of the day.
You were very eloquent, pepperlandgirl.
This has been a really interesting thread.
Not exactly family drama, but this was our daughter’s first Christmas (she’s 11 months old, so old enough to appreciate the toys), and my husband woke up at 5:00 AM Christmas morning puking with a 101-degree fever for the 2nd time in two weeks. My in-laws came over to open presents and he was too sick to come down and do it. Our tree had fallen over in the middle of the night and the water from the base soaked all the gifts we’d put under it. We ended up opening wet wrapping paper in the living room because I couldn’t be sure that I’d cleaned up all the broken glass. No daddy, no tree, no pictures of her first Christmas because we would have been taking pictures of our coffee table and a television set and a big pile of sodden paper. My husband didn’t wake up except to puke until 6:30 that afternoon. My in-laws ended up taking Josie to the family Christmas party without us, so she could open the gifts that other people got her, and I could stay home and take care of my vomiting husband.
Wolves are pack animals, and have better social skills than that.
Pepperlandgirl, I hardly know what to say about your post, it was just horrible. The thing that haunts me, though, is that poor little dog. What kind of monster puts a poor little dog into a purse and takes it around like it’s a cell phone or wad of tissues, into a restaurant, no less? I’m sorry you have such a situation, but the poor dog…