told you i would continue it didnt i?
we overslept. the plans were to all meet at 6. and um, waking up didnt come easy. i, had to wake everyone up, even the cats.
so people came. mostly family. my aunt mike. his friend ‘i forgot her name’ and her son ‘damien’ (not his real name, but fucking close enough). my great (yeah right) aunt. my father and his wife. and another aunt of mine. we got along pretty well, until i started having a problem. figures right? im generally the most easygoing of the bunch, but said aunt started to piss me off something special.
she had gotten some chocolate from my sister for x-mas, but decided that she didnt need the extra weight. so she made a comment TWICE about how i should take it. because of course, the obese guy must like chocolate right? keep in mind, this woman is almost as large as i am, and easily doubled my dinner intake that night. What the Fuck?!?! I dont get enough of this shit in my normal day-to-day life, i have to hear it from family too?
I took the high road. I didnt say anything. I did settle on a few leers strong enough to make milk curdle, and let it go. Until the clean-up. They were trying to decide on what to do with the leftovers, and the same aunt pipes up first. “Lanny’ll take it home”. (ok, I havent gone by the name ‘Lanny’ in 10 fucking years. but old habits die hard, yes. this is the second, and last, comment she makes about me this night.) I’m pretty good about feeling out comments. this was less a ‘he’s a single guy, he can always use food’ and more a “he’s a fat guy, he wants the food’.
it’s after this comment that i go into the bathroom and sit for about 20 minutes. yes, in the dark, and in no mood to deal with people. My own Aunt did this to me. I hadnt done that in so long, i was doing so well, only to be undercut by family.
I know how being old works. You get overly opinionated and think everyone is entitled to listen to every fucking insane thing you have to say. I deal with this every day at work, i’m used to it. but to inflict pain on someone you fake caring about is cruel. she’s never really liked me anyway. when i moved to oklahoma, she and her husband went full force with the religion. forcing it upon my sister and I like it was oxygen. they laid it on so thick, my sister would cry alone in the bedroom. she being younger and not so independant, succumbed to it, and went with them to spare her the headaches. I didnt. I wasnt buying any of their bullshit (still dont). They’re the textbook example of people going to religion for personal gain, scared to death that all the ‘hellraising’ they did in their youth will catch up with them in old age. why not be the biggest and the best ‘holy-roller’ they can be! that will reverse all the years of depravity and cheating (oh yes, you know it) they’d done.
as Katrina would say, “whatever.”
she finally left, my father and his cat-allergic wife left (eyes watering, sneezing, miserable — poor woman). my other aunt left then my sister, aunt mike, his pal and I played a game.
I like playing board games, so i had a wonderful time. it was only heightened by seeing myself do a charades-like ‘bike messenger’ and seeing my aunt mike get all the shirley temple and judy garland questions (like i thought he would). I then left for my drive home, absorbing the good and the bad of this years holidays.
for all the bitching i seem to do, this years was probably the best christmas i’ve had in years. i can only hope everyones holidays went as well as mine…
