I had the same problem with Yorkshire puddings - the local Loblaws had none, and I was told that they hadn’t received any at all, and my daughter had specifically asked for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for Christmas day. However, the Club House packaged mix (in with the gravy and sauce mixes) turned out perfectly for our Christmas dinner.
I hate Christmas.
I don’t like large gatherings of people.
I don’t like being surrounded by people I have nothing in common with.
I don’t like spending a good portion of my day listening to inane stupidity that passes as civil conversation among the less… enlightened.
And Christmas brings all of that together in one place.
I have been with my wife for 21 years. And every year except one our Christmas routine has been almost exactly the same: get up at crack of dawn to put the turkey in the oven, do the presents thing with each other (and later, our kids), and then haul ourselves over to my in-laws where we lay out a big spread (we cook about 70% of the meal) for the family to inhale without so much as a single kind word of gratitude or even acknowledgment.
21 years… after all this time the cute little toddlers that were part of the family when my wife and I first got together are now adults in toxic relationships with rugrats of their own. So these adults in their 20’s, whom I still see as kids, are screaming at their own kids. The adults are discussing the incontrovertible fact that 1) Covid isn’t really what’s making people sick, 2) Covid actually was created by those sneaky Chinese, and 3) it’s all an attempt by Biden the Libtards to push their own agenda.¹ After 3 hours of this shit I was about ready to commit seppuku right there in the living room.
Oh yeah. The living room. There isn’t enough seating at the dining room table so everyone sits in the living room with a paper plate and a plastic salad fork from the picnic supplies. It makes eating nachos at the ballpark a joy in comparison.
Three of the 12 or so people there were quite proud of the fact that they were all open carrying pistols on their belts. They announced this was just in case someone came on the property. That way they can Rittenhouse² the bastards who dared trespass.
We finally left after 4 hours. Every year it’s the same damn thing and every year, 30 seconds after walking in the door, I cannot wait to leave.
Ironically, the best Christmas was last year when my FIL was sick with cancer (or, sick with cancer treatments anyway). He was going through radiation in a city about an hour south of us and had taken his fifth wheel trailer down to stay in while he went through treatment. We decided to bring him a Christmas dinner and spent the afternoon visiting, exchanging gifts, and in general having a thoroughly pleasant time. Just the four of us and my two in-laws. No politics, no redneck hayseed chest-thumping, no conspiracies. This year… the misery returned.
Definetly a first-world problem, and I probably shouldn’t take it all as hard as I do.
¹ For many years my two sons would get so mad at me when, after 4 hours of visiting, I started hinting that I wanted to take our leave. In the car: “Mom, why does dad hate your family? Mom, why does dad hate Christmas?” They, of course, wanted to stay and play with the toys and games they had been given. This year they both witnessed the Biden bashing and the conspiracy theorizing. My son, 16 and sitting next to me, engages me in a text convo: “Dad. I can feel my braincells dying listening to this garbage. WTF?”
“Now you know why I don’t like sitting here all day. They may be family but when you peel back that thin veneer you realize how fucking whacko they really are.”
“This is like every Fox News talking point condensed into Cliff Notes form. They can’t really believe this shit, can they?”
“I’ve been hearing this for 21 years. The first year it was about how God personally directed SCOTUS in giving GWB his rightful place as leader of the country. Yes, they really believe it.”
“I want to go home. Can we go home now? I need to play some video games and regrown my gray matter before it’s too late.”
“Does it make sense now? Why I’ve never wanted to stay?”
“OMG yes.”
²An actual comment made by an actual family member. Thankfully a distant family member that I never have any interactions with outside of wife-mandated family get-together, but still. How revolting.
Holy cow, that sounds like a day in hell. I hope next year you put your foot down and refuse to participate, especially now that your son is onboard.
Lancia, you indeed have my sympathies. I wouldn’t be able to stand that.
So I bought some little bags to collect dog poop. We have a Covid dog my wife bought because she couldn’t stand being alone while teleworking every day, and it still poops and pees on a pad indoors. To pick up the poop, we (usually me) turn a bag inside out, grab the poop, turn the bag right-side out, tie it shut and toss it in the trash. It never stops being unpleasant but I’ve been doing it for more than a year now so whatever.
Our supply of bags was going to run out so whatever, I order another box from Amazon, scheduled to be delivered on Friday. Friday rolls around, and by midday even though their estimate says “arriving by 10PM” I’m skeptical since it still only says “ordered” and not “shipped”, let alone “out for delivery”. Even after 8PM the status doesn’t change, which suggests either Amazon is testing new teleportation technology or they’re full of shit. By 10:15 it’s clear the latter is the case. Finally they fess up and say:
“Delayed, not yet shipped”
“We will email you as soon as this order ships. You won’t be charged until then. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
That’s useless. I check the item’s page and if I were to order it now, it estimates delivery January 11-18. So clearly what happened was they ran out, they probably don’t know when they’re back in stock, and didn’t bother to tell me until after the item was scheduled to arrive.
Okay, whatever. I can buy another brand which should arrive Tuesday, I probably wont run out until then, and I’ll just cancel the original order. I mean, nothing has been shipped so it shouldn’t be a problem.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Bullshit Amazon. I ordered this package on Monday to be delivered Friday, it’s now Saturday. It isn’t going to be shipped “soon”. You lying fuckers.
I did order a new one because I need it badly. I’m sure sometime mid January or February or whatever a beat-up box will get dumped on my doorstep and I’ll find somewhere to keep it for a year until I might need it when this other box runs out. What a clown show.
———————
Speaking of the dog making a mess, I’m irritated that we had a party on Christmas Eve despite the fact that my wife is still recovering from surgery so I have to do everything physical. Our downstairs is pretty small so there’s nowhere to sit. It’s worse now that we have the dog my wife got without consulting me, and I’m picking up dog shit as I’m gingerly maneuvering around people that are standing around in a crowded space. And then the dog vomits, I’m cleaning it up, and then the dog knocks my food over as I’m cleaning her puke off the floor because I had to abandon my plate to address the emergency. At that point I flat-out told my wife I’d had enough, and went upstairs to spend the rest of the evening alone in our bedroom.
Also our 7-year-old is coughing all over with her cold (not Covid, she was tested) and I’ve been dealing with a stomach problem for a week, so none of us were particularly healthy with this crowd. A crowd that’s double the expected size since many people who said they weren’t going to make it decide to show up at the last minute. (I had actually thought it wasn’t going to be so bad this year, fuck me.)
I’ve insisted for the past 9 years that our house is too small for these parties. Her relatives have bigger houses but we have to host the party each year because in my wife’s words, “If we don’t then they can’t get together.” Fuck them, if nobody else will step up they don’t deserve one damn it. I’m sick of a decade where my wife is guilted into this shit. The one good thing about Covid is last year we didn’t have one and it was so nice.
So my husband’s family decided to visit this Christmas. Lovely, but I haven’t decorated the house in nine years. Not since the last Christmas visitation (my family).
Back in November I dug out the decorations. All was good except I couldn’t find the outdoor garland. I made a feeble attempt to find new in a store or two without success so off to the internet. That stuff is expensive! Geez.
Finally found some not cheap but tolerably priced at Walmart online. I’d heard their online ordering was actually pretty good (I refuse to set foot in a irl store) so I did the deed - a month and 1/2 ago.
And received notification that it had shipped a few days later. Wonderful.
Not.
No tracking info on the tracking site. No ‘in transit’. And finally the ‘delivered by’ date came and went.
So I contacted their ‘customer service’ bot who escalated it to a person I assume. “oh dear. We will contact the vendor and they will get back to you within 24 hours” I’m told.
Only not.
Contact them again. Same answer. Only this time it’s 72 business hours (with a weekend - the one before Christmas - in between).
By this time I couldn’t care less about the garland since it’s definitely not going to arrive before Christmas and I’ve found an alternative decoration. I want a refund.
Oh, and they periodically send me an email to ask me to review my satisfaction with my purchase.
So, before I go another round with ‘customer service’ I check the order shipping status. “delivered” it says.
Narrator: no, it wasn’t.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow when I call them yet again.
My DIL had one of those, and Ford supplied her a loaner vehicle until they could fix it (several weeks). I would suggest sitting in the general manager’s office until they find something for you to drive (they are a car dealer, they have cars they can loan to you).
Christmas was yesterday. So why is WMAG still playing Christmas music? The Federal Communications Commission needs to be notified of this violation!
To be fair, the twelve days of Christmas have just started.
I fixed some lovely Yorkshire puddings for Christmas Eve dinner. I followed all the tips and hints, and I was successful: they puffed up enormously tall, and looked like miniature hot air balloons.
But when they puffed up so tall, they pushed out the oil in their cups, and unbeknownst to me it dribbled to the floor of the oven. Yesterday, when I turned on the oven to fix dinner, the kitchen and house were soon filled with choking smoke from the burning oil in the oven. I turned off the oven and to the tune of all the smoke alarms in the house, opened all the doors and windows to air it out.
So today I have to do a self-clean on the oven. It’ll result in my husband complaining bitterly because it (a) smells bad; and (b) keeps us tied to the house for a few hours while the self-clean goes on.
Fun fun.
For those of us who have a wood fireplace.
For those of us with a metal plate built into the floor of that wood fireplace. That’s the one that we flip up when before we brush the ashes down.
Inside of your basement in the wall 15 or so feet beneath that fireplace is a metal door. On a regular basis, you really do need to clean the ashes out from behind that metal door.
You might think that it couldn’t possibly hold that much ash in there. You’d be wrong. I pulled out nearly four full buckets of ash today. Honestly, at the beginning, I thought that it would only be one full bucket.
But then… all of a sudden… I heard… a Rumbling Sound…
Yes, Christmas was only yesterday… but for me Lent came Early this year…
( Merry Christmas, Happy Boxing Day! )
I don’t get how young couples do Xmas these days in this country (UK). Trep jr came back to us first thing on Xmas eve (to work from (our) home - COVID and all that); and my Daughter-In-Custom-And-Practice (DICAP) went to work and subsequently went back to her parents. I think it’s a strange thing to do, splitting up like that, but it may have saved us serious bother.
Well, the two families did get together on video yesterday for the annual Xmas day quiz, which was lovely; and late in the evening DICAP tested positive for COVID. Shit. She bailed from her parents this morning, driving herself home, and Trep jr bailed from us. They are back in London now. Trep jr tested negative.
All are well, which I am thankful for, but Trep jr and DICAP are now isolating and have had their Xmas and New Year ruined - and we’re still waiting to hear how her family are. We don’t think we’ve been exposed but this evening I had to ring the friends we’re visiting tomorrow to explain the whole sorry story, and tell them that if they now don’t want us to come that’s absolutely fine. (Pending testing tomorrow, that’s still on). Today we avoided seeing people and went for rainy local walks instead.
This is beginning to feel like last Xmas, except more infectious and with added testing.
j
I loved the whiskey glass set, but the ding us who shipped it put the stone cubes in the glass!
Shattered. Fire it up!
Still couldn’t tell them. Afterall it’s thought that counts even if it’s from a dingus.
It’s embarrassing… but I have always wanted ‘whiskey stone cubes’.
They just always got ‘Vetoed’…
…
Ok, I’m not going to lie. Truthfully? I’ve wanted to meet and drink house whiskey with a SO many famous people at casinos!
And the ones who smoke? Fuck Me, but I wanted to smoke cigars with them.
But that’s a pleasure reserved for Billionaires who finance films…
Most years when we get our one annual snowstorm, I’m the first one out shoveling, and I always clear the sidewalk in front of my next-door neighbors, too. This year I got out after the neighbors shoveled. They managed to stop shoveling the sidewalk exactly at my property. Dicks.
I got some for Christmas but they are more like squat cylinders, like round cubes if that makes sense.
On the contrary, it appears to have arrived astonishingly late.
By all means, do take your communion as it is offered.
I am so sure that our Lord’s forgiveness will come upon you.
Someday.
Mos def squares, from Canada ya kin 
My kid got COVID. I was like ‘oh, shit, you got muggle blood’ and she just laughed.
She’s fine. 20yo, more pissed that she has to miss work for the next week, but over the past two days we could hear the improvement in her voice. Symptoms started Thursday, peaked on Friday, she was bitching about the MTA yesterday, so things are back to normal. 
Mom and I put together a care package of course