The only one I really dread seeing is one of my brothers-in-law but he hasn’t shown up for the past few years. They live a long ways away and usually can’t afford to fly here for the holidays. He’s the one who tries to get us to smoke pot with him before dinner (they’ll never know!), and is verbally abusive to my sister-in-law. I have another brother-in-law who likes to get wasted beforehand and sometimes makes stupid comments, but I still don’t dread seeing him that much.
My grandmother’s behavior during large family gatherings can be too much for me at times. She’s bossy anyway, but get her in a large group setting and she goes nuts. She has gotten a little better in the past few years since we’ve convinced her to do dinner buffet style. Otherwise she never sat down once during dinner no matter how much we told her we didn’t care if the gravy boat was half empty, we’d rather have her company (and no, she’d never let us do it). Still love her and look forward to seeing her though.
[QUOTE=ivylass]
At the wedding, I about fell out of my seat when he said to my sister before God (heh) and all “I prayed to God for a submissive wife, and he gave me you.”
:eek:
[QUOTE]
Your BIL said that to his wife at his wedding? Out loud? Wow.
Well, this is pretty mild compared to some of the more outrageous things I’ve read in this thread, but…
My father-in-law. He’s a nice enough fellow, but he’s deaf as a post and dumb as a brick. My wife and I have lived in Springfield, Illinois for almost six years now and he still asks us how things are in Chicago.
You have to say the same thing to him four times before he hears you, but if you raise your voice he gets upset that you’re yelling.
Fortunately, he doesn’t have a Thanksgiving dinner, per se. Rather, Mrs. Homie and I just stop by his house for an hour or so after the real Thanksgiving dinner with her mom’s side of the family (they’re divorced).
Yeah, but you have to careful about the dosage. Sometimes alcohol makes them hyper.
Here’s a NYT article on this very subject, with holiday examples like Mom’s new boyfriend wanting to talk about non-turkey breasts) and ways to deal with stresses encountered during the ritual.
Yep. Swear to Og. I’m so glad my step-mom wasn’t there…she would have dragged my sister out of the church by her hair.
This is the same guy my sister (remember, fundie) wanted me to meet before he was divorced from his first wife. See, he thought the divorce was final but he found out his ex didn’t file all the paperwork. So, my (remember, fundie) sister is seeing a married man. And I, pagan that I am, refused to meet him until the divorce was final.
Uncle Leo(Seinfeld)? :eek:
Had my ‘Thanksgiving’ meet up early. We all stayed at the same hotel for an uncle’s funeral. I met with the sibling who is my Mom’s executor; I made two toasts: one to our dead uncle and one to leaving the room if ‘that damn estate thing from Mom’ came up.
The hotel had complementary breakfast off of the lobby. We all just happened to meet there an hour before the funeral. It was awkward, but I shook hands with people and said hi to people who’d been nothing but hurt to me in the past few years. Our kids played well together.
Everyone was good at the funeral, and Arlington National Cemetery does a damn nice funeral. (he had met all the criteria to be burried in the ground there easily; I jotted down the ‘section number’.)
The get together was at a really nice place after, and a cousin who I really get along with well but never get to see announced ‘open bar’. My wife was nice enough to remind me “hey, they’re paying for all of this out of pocket. House wine and no more than one.” The point was well taken; my uncle hadn’t been well off. All of our kids played well together again. The same family stories got told, perhaps for the last time.
I miss those cousins already, but I know I’ll never see them again. I dreaded the possibility of seeing my siblings in traffic the whole drive home.
Oh, and if anyone wants an update, that construction on I-95 in Delaware still sucks.
Oh, I did want an update.
I heard that it was still going on, even though the web site has said all along that it was to be finished by 11/21.
NORMALLY, we drive to Philly on Thanksgiving.
This year, we’re driving to the Jersey Shore and I’m planning on taking Rt-40 to get out of Maryland. I don’t think it’s going to be “clear sailing”, but hopefully it’s not the horrorshow that I-95 is.
Two weeks ago, I went up to Philly and took Rt-1.
What a mess.
The immediate family isn’t a problem. I just find one of my sister-in-laws’s brother-in-laws to be a pain in the butt: talkative, interrupting, know-it-all, pushy.
However, I plan to go wherever he isn’t and maybe take a nap, if that’s what it takes to shut him out.
My cousin’s in-laws are a bunch of snobs, but that makes them relatively easy to avoid…since they don’t want anything to do with us anyway.
I guess I have it made, compared to some of you.
My sister - aged 21 at the time - threw a screaming, door- and plate-slamming tempter tantrum in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner last year. Well, not really the middle, because I don’t think she actually got any food before my dad sent her to her room.
Oh, and yes, we had company. (A family friend, who asked, “Is it me? Because it feels like she does this every time I come to visit.” No, we assured her, it’s not you. It really is her.)
Unfortunately, I am on the other side of the planet at the moment and cannot share this special day with my beloved sister. Damn.
Jehovah’s I understand, but what have Buddhist’s ever done to society?
[BOT]
My SIL. She is a very nice, decent, caring semi-intelligent yet complete toolish kinda person who worships at the altar of Martha Stewart-Pottery Barn and is the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever had to be forced to associate with.
[mindless blog ranting Just Scroll On By]
She’s such a fucking prude who also lacks the Sarcasm Gene[size=1]c’mon! It’s my largest Defect, peoples! and it does slay me to admit she isn’t the horrible mother I wish she would be so I could smite her even more than I usually do when I have to think about her which I try not to think about her at all as it isn’t my mess to clean up. But that is because she is having her mother raise her kids while she teaches someone elses kids and she stays at her mommies house when her husband goes on a b-trip. OMFG. is all I gots to say. Oh, and he was just made partner at his law firm. It is an extremely co-dependant situation that makes my eye tic. I’m not bitter. Nope, nosirree. I wish I could crap all over my mother like that and still be able to look other people in the face when they gush to me , " I don’t know how you do it all! [/size]
Thanksgiving is at her house this year and she always has her husbands family, whom travel in a pack. A big bland pack of harmonizing Evangelicals. It takes them 15 minutes to harmonize ( blandly) thru the Happy Birthday song for me and my BIL. It is torturous.
They are nice people but so farking bland that when one of the aunts said (noticing me knitting) she was into crochet, I made a comment, " Oh, so you are a hooker, then." She.didn’t.get.it.
Hell exists.
It is family meals.
Something about, I’m sure it’s whispered, the Chinese Carry-out we did a couple of years ago for Turkey Day was just simply Not Done.
Beautiful rant! I know you’ll be sure to disshevel the dish towels and fuck with the forks…you know…just enough to rock her world. And peek around the corner and giggle when she frets about putting everything back “just so.”
Sorry to say, but since my alcoholic SIL and BIL died, I think I’m the family member everyone dreads. Hey…it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
:eek: I think we are related …
Well, their belief of God is wrong, don’t you know. :rolleyes:
Her ex had some lovely Buddha statues he used to have in their house as decorations. She was going to throw them all away until I rescued them.
I think she’s mellowed a bit…she actually went to see the LOTR trilogy, and years before she had given me her copy of the animated Hobbit because of the “magic.”
My stepmother. She has a gift for making even the most earnest greetings and happiness to see you look forced and insencere.
My BIL (sisters hubby), a 34 year old adolescent who gets along famously with his 12 y/o son, mostly due to their similar level of maturity.
At least this year I will be spared the racist crap of a couple of my grandparents circle of friends.
My grandfather is kinda the fun one of the group, 88 years old, damn near deaf, card carrying, flag waving, fuck the damn liberals, republican. He loves debate and me and one of my uncles keep him engaged for hours. It sounds like an argment, but its really fun for all of us.
I talked to my mom a couple of days ago. She’s always been a bit narrow-minded, but we’ve had some good talks, and I thought maybe she was overcoming some of her bigotry. However, during this talk she mentioned that she’d been chatting with a new friend who comes from L.A., and he’d told her all kinds of stories about how the leading men of Hollywood would sleep with other men to get the roles they wanted. (All except Tom Cruise, that is.) Mom just thinks it’s such a shame, how the queers run Hollywood. It just makes her sick.
:smack: