Chaos Attraction

Changed Holidays

2013-12-16, 11:59 a.m.

I'M NOT AT WORK TODAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!! Sadly, I still woke up way too early on the weekday morning schedule, but still! I am not at work! At 8:50 a.m., I was in my jammies and bathrobe watching Revenge! Booyaaaaaaaaaaah!

Since I'm traveling and packing today, I'm going to answer yesterday's prompt today: "What do you miss the most from your childhood holidays, now that you are an adult?"

Pretty much everything! Very little remains in my life compared to how the holidays went when I was growing up. I mean, I still own Christmas trees and I still see my mom on the day, but that's pretty much literally all that stayed the same.

(a) Presents: This has gone to hell as I've gotten older, because Mom is just not up to going out and buying things I asked for and keeping them a surprise from me any more. She will randomly buy me stuff in front of my face in the months before Christmas, so I already know what I am getting long before December 25. If I'm lucky, there might be a few surprises because she ordered from some mail order beauty product company or other, but that's about it.

(b) Decorations: Nobody's up to doing that any more either, that fell apart after I moved out of the house and wasn't able to do them any more. I felt sad reading this entry--I understand the urge. But once I finally admitted the Santa thing, pretty much all of the decoration work that didn't involve heavy lifting or light installation ended up on me. Good thing I like decorating, though. But in my case, if I wasn't there to do 'em, they don't get done. That's weirdly mom-ish of me, hah.

(c) Spending time with the relatives every year: Okay, so no longer doing this with people that hate us is not a big loss. However, it does lead to....

(d) Actual Christmas itself is a fucking crapshoot from year to year. I never know what I'll be doing or who it will be with. Some years we are totally alone, some years we are with random people. As of this writing, I have no idea what we're going to be doing other than we'll be in the olde hometown because I doubt we'll want to stagger to my place the day after flying back into California. I would bet we just end up sitting around the house alone together because nobody will have the energy to make plans. I just hope some Chinese or Thai restaurant will take us without reservations over there because I doubt we'll be that prepped ahead of time. I'd be happy to repeat last year's Jewish Christmas activities, but again, doubt anyone will have the energy to haul into SF that day.... plus we are planning to go over there the next day anyway. Maybe we'll just go see Saving Mr. Banks or something.

I have never flown on a holiday before, and I'm assuming all kinds of travel drama is going to ensue and bumped flights are going to happen. I'm debating having a conversation with Mom ahead of time about how if something like that comes up and they want to offer people deals to give up their seats, that maybe we should take them because other people have homes and families to get back to in time and we do not, so why not just sleep in an airport? She'll probably get pissed at me for suggesting it, but...it's the truth, eh?

The traditions we have now, of a sort, are of the travel variety. I insist on going up to the Grass Valley/Nevada City area at least once a year, though I think Mom's interest in doing that is kinda petering out to some degree and I don't know how long that will be. We usually go somewhere during my time off--on shorter time off years it's just to Monterey/Carmel, on longer years there's been Disneyland and this year, Hawaii (woo hoo!). And at some point I end up tooling around SF with Mom and/or Jackie seeing the sights around Union Square. I do enjoy that.

But there is no denying that Adult Orphan Christmasses are generally kind of an awkward, weird bust most of the time. I don't really enjoy the actual holiday itself any more. Pre-holiday is awesome, but the actual day? Feh. I do miss having something to look forward to on the 24th and 25th, and these days I do not. But.. that's just how it is. Don't really know of a way to change that.

And after this, whether or not I will have Internet access is going to be...well, we'll see. I am promised free Internet in Hawaii and Mom has a new computer even if I can't ger her wireless to work, so hopefully I can keep up with the posting instead of having a pileup at the end of the month.


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