I’m getting anxious about Thanksgiving. Last year I offered to host, and my mother-in-law said, “No, I’m having Thanksgiving! But you’re welcome to come!” Meaning I could sit at home alone with a frozen turkey dinner, or appear as ordered. My house is half the size of hers, and I can’t accommodate the dozen people she had anyway. But I have my grandmother’s china and my mother’s sterling silver, and I really want to have a holiday meal with them. (Yes, I know I can use them any time I want to. I can serve pizza on them. I want to bring them out for a holiday, and I think it’s my turn.) I’ve made dozens of Thanksgiving dinners before my family all died or moved away. I know how.
So this year I offered again and she would not answer me. It’s a week away and I still do not know what we’re doing. I do know that five of the people she had last year are not coming. I can do 7 or 8. She’s stonewalling me. I feel that she has claimed the position of matriarch and has co-opted all holidays and will not relinquish them.
If I had any other relatives, I could have my own Thanksgiving dinner and invite them, or go to their house. But I don’t. My closest relative is a cousin’s son who lives almost four hours away.
If I told my husband I want to have my own dinner and tell her she’s welcome to come, he would stand by me. But I don’t want a feud or confrontation. I just want my own identity instead of being sucked into someone else’s. I want to cook a holiday meal in my own home, and use the dishes that my father bought for his mother with his WWII Army pay and the silver that my mother bought by a coupon every week, hoping that we’d win the war and she could redeem the coupons.
I’m just stuck again. And I’ll make rolls and a cheesecake like every fucking year.
I would just tell her that you are staying home and cooking this year, and that you’d love to have her join you if she’s up to it. And then stay home, cook a sumptuous meal for you and your husband and maybe a friend or two, and enjoy the holiday your way. It doesn’t sound like any great loss if she doesn’t come (other than to your husband, I guess). There’s always Christmas, and next year too.
What do you guys celebrate in December, if anything? In Spain it’s between a 3 and 6 banquet season, so even the most posessive of matriarchs eventually accepts that it’s better to hold different ones in different homes, but I’ve known many American families which only got together for Thanksgiving.
Anyway, call her and ask directly, or have your husband do it if you think that’ll work better. My family generally follows the approach of “each deals with his bloods” and it usually works well.
Uggghhhhhh, I have a stupid cold. It started with an itchy feeling in my sinuses on Monday, yesterday I was a bit stuffed on one side and felt a bit worn out, and now I feel full on sick. Sore throat, runny nose, sneezing, ugh. And on top of that I had to get up early for a conference call and had a horrible sleep, so I’m also extra tired. I hate being sick!
Rant rant rant against my daughter’s doctor who had us wait 2 1/2 hours for her first appointment and over an hour for the follow up. (I should say at least an hour because when I asked how long it would be and the receptionist said there were still two people in front of us, we left). Now I need to find a new doctor and don’t like the ones my insurance company gave me to call.
I’m going to talk to my husband about it. Thanksgiving is nothing at all to him and he just doesn’t see the importance of the big festive meal, but he does understand my frustration with her. And in their family Christmas Eve is a big overblown mess with abbondanza! but to me Christmas Day is the holiday, and we can’t wedge them out of their jammies to even eat lunch. If I can’t get Thanksgiving, maybe I can get Christmas dinner and guilt them into attending.
Condescension aside, people, I didn’t see it because I did a search on “mini”, not a search on “rant”. Sorry I pissed in your guys’ Corn Flakes. I know I broke one of the sacraments of the SDMB. :rolleyes:
I lost my ring. I don’t know when or where, but it’s not on my finger and it’s not at work in my usual areas. It’s also not in my pockets or my mittens. Maybe I’ll be lucky and find it in my bed when I get home or beside my car when I leave work (I once found one of my mittens in the parking lot a couple months after losing it… I had to get boiling water to loosen it from the pavement and give it a wash, but it was just fine).
It’s a sentimental thing. A cheap silver ring with some Celtic knot work and a red gem that was the first thing I bought myself for me after digging myself out of a hole nine years ago. I’ve worn it practically nonstop since then, and my fingers don’t change in size a whole heck of a lot but they do flux depending on cold and how hydrated I am. So it seems like I’ve lost it and I feel weird without it on.
I can’t seem to wear jewelry this week. I also lost an earring (somewhere in my car when I took off a scarf). The earrings were even cheaper and waaay less sentimental but I am not happy.
God damn it, I have a lovely liquid cooled desktop gaming computer. I am composing this on a stupid half braindead EEE PC netbook because all 3 forms of arthritis I have are flaring on me, and have been for the past month, and probably will continue keeping me stuck in bed for the next month, and the only fucking flash based MMORPG that I have been able to find [and have been playing for a month] just announced that they are wrapping up and closing down the servers Dec 9th for permanent. Fuck fuck fuck. Now what the fuck will I do to keep sane? My main contact with the outside world is the internet.
aruvqan: That MMORG wouldn’t happen to be a Zynga game would it? They also said they’d shut down Vampire Wars on Dec 5th a few days ago. Promised me some bonus in Mafia wars which I never got and have been spamming me ever since. I do despise Zynga and will micturate on their virtual grave if/when they go bankrupt.
I just got rid of a lot of Ikea/thift store stuff. My living room looks so big now. My rant is all the kitteh toys I found.
I thought I had kept my home clean, but I tossed out about eleventy thousand milkrings.
arovqan, when I had my foot surgey, I killed all the monsters and read the entire internet in a week. I hope you don’t die of boredom. It really bites.
I totally sympathize and hope you’ll be able to find something to replace your game (?) to occupy your time. I have only 1.5 forms of arthritis (Drs keep going back and forth as to whether or not I have number 2) and flaring is the bitch.
Last time I was hard core laid up was back in 1996, post op from having a tumor removed and healing up waiting to start chemo. mrAru set my amiga up in the bedroom so I could recline Roman-style and I played 2 games so frequently that with one of them I could literally do a walkthrough without even seeing the person playing the game. [I had a friend call me with Eye of the Beholder 1 pretty much at the beginning and I walked her through for 45 minutes until just before the final level. When I bought a PC version of the game 4 years later, I could still do the entire game as a walkthrough.:D]
Well, at least I can manage to do the Amazon Mechanical Turk on this damned EEE PC. Slow but it is a few pennies towards my book addictions!
What the hell use are cat medications that can’t be crushed or dissolved easily? When hidden in food, they’re just spit out. When crushed into wet food, they’re eaten, but it’s so damned hard to crush them into the food.
I have more mini-rants, but I can’t think of them. I will be back. :mad:
As a cat servant, you should know that part of the ritual of moving furniture, stoves, fridges, etc. is the treasure trove of cat toys (including all the improvised bottle cap/twist tie/hair elastic ones) which are retrieved from behind/underneath, with the cats waiting impatiently for each freshly discovered object to be tossed into the middle of the floor so they can promptly bat them back under the rest of the furniture.
I bought my cat a nice little felt ball for her to play with (she likes to pick stuff up and cart it around sometimes) - it took about 2.5 seconds for her to lose it.
I made a little song - Sitting here, hacking up phlegm.
Glad I only work part-time,
So I can stay home today
And sit here and hack up phlegm.
